Early dating as someone with anxious attachment
Hi! I (25F) started intentionally dating about a year ago. Before that, I had no relationship experience. After going on multiple dates, I realized I probably have an anxious attachment style. However, it got much worse this year after a sudden heartbreak at the end of last year, when someone I was seeing suddenly lost interest and disappeared without any explanation.
Since then, whenever I start getting to know someone and things become more emotionally involved (usually after a month or so), my anxiety gets heavily triggered. I start overanalyzing texts, social media interactions, response timing, effort in dates, sex, basically everything. It got to the point where I once vomited from anxiety because a guy took too long to reply.
I know this is affecting me in a really unhealthy way, and I’m already in therapy, but I’d really like to hear from people who struggle with anxious attachment too: how do you manage it during the early stages of dating?
I’m scared I’ll end up ruining something potentially special because of my anxiety. One of the hardest parts is that I can never tell whether it’s my anxious attachment making me spiral, or my intuition noticing that someone is actually pulling away.