Why Does Everyone Love Them But I Feel So Alone?

Have you ever been with someone who everyone else seemed to love, yet you felt emotionally alone? In this episode, we explore why someone can seem warm and caring with everyone else but emotionally distant in their closest relationships, and how attachment patterns may help explain this confusing dynamic.

Email CT: ct@TheMindfulSPX.com

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Transcript

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Welcome back or welcome to the Security Podcast. My name is CT to help you understand why you love the way you do. Have you ever dated someone who everyone else seemed to love? Everyone else thought they were hilarious, or their coworkers thought they were so dependable. They drop everything to help someone move, answer a late-night phone call, or show up whenever someone needed them. But somehow, when it came to you, the person they claimed to love the most, they felt emotionally unavailable. They seemed distant. Affection felt inconsistent. Emotional conversations felt like work. And so you started to ask yourself, how does everyone else get this warm version of them? But I don't. And today I want to explore why this can happen and why attachment theory may be able to explain even more than you think. Because here's what I've learned: you don't truly meet someone's attachment style during the talking stage of a relationship or the just the casual connection. You meet it when emotional closeness or vulnerability truly begins. So this is why I've talked in other episodes where you can talk about attachment styles with your partner. You can express things logically, your wants, needs, desires, past relationships. You can talk about the attachment style dynamics. Or I think my style is this. And then you know they're like, oh, I think my style is that. And you can already see the the clash that they that they those your style and their style may end up becoming the outcome, but it feels good in the moment because you're able to talk it through with them in like a logical sense, but in reality, it just it doesn't really do anything. You're just kind of talking circles. So the illusion is that the experience is what makes it confusing. If I if I go back to the beginning of the whole point of this episode, so friends are seeing the kindness, coworkers are experiencing the reliability, just random acquaintances are seeing that humor from them, and everyone thinks they're this great person. Meanwhile, you're feeling something completely different. The emotional availability, the distance, difficult to really feel like you're connecting with. Maybe you feel like literally they have an energetic force field around them that's not letting you get too close. It's kind of like, oh yeah, come here. Oh, nope, too close. You feel like you're just gonna get zapped by some force field. That's sometimes how I have felt in the past. So you start naturally asking yourself questions, like maybe uh am I expecting too much, or maybe I'm the problem. If everyone else thinks they're amazing, why am I struggling so much? That self-doubt can become really painful. So it's kind of like a silo, you're in your own head, and you just start doubting everything. One of the biggest misconceptions about avoidance, particularly dismissive avoiding attachment, is that they're emotionally closed off with everyone. And often that's just not true. The key difference isn't who they're talking to, it's a level of emotional risk. So friendships don't require the same degree of vulnerability. A friend is rarely going to say, I need you emotionally, however, a romantic partner would, right? As intimacy grows, so does the emotional stakes. Their nervous system starts asking questions like, what if they become too dependent on me? What if I disappoint them? What if I lose my independence? What if this relationship starts requiring more of me than I know how to give? And those fears just literally do not happen in a lower stakes relationship. And I'll give you a personal example. I met someone online about a month before I had relocated across the country, and the first month everything felt incredibly warm, playful, affectionate, engaged. That that enthusiasm was very attractive to me. But then I moved, we started spending more time together, the relationship became real. Literally, the last time that we hung out, we were talking about what it would be like meeting her kids and what you know, when should we do that? You know, when when feels right to do that. So there's a lot of vulnerability there. And just in general, some other uh dynamics to the connection, things that we were planning to do, was was adding, I can kind of see this now from afar, you know, was adding more uh vulnerability or adding more emotional stakes to the relationship, to the connection. It was there was a deeper closeness that was forming. From my side, I was excited to explore that from her side that was scaring her and made her less affectionate, less emotionally present, and started the whole anxious avoidant cycle. And that's re it's uh it's like really hard to wrap your head around because the connection is going somewhere where like you you're you're feeling that closeness, and they are too, but how you're experiencing it is completely different. I want to say something important here too, that it's not a dismissive avoidant is not intentionally misleading people. They're not consciously thinking I'll be warm and they'll get attached, then I'll pull away. More often it's happening, it's something happening beneath the surface, you know, it's like not really conscious, or I guess I should say it's it's subconscious. They they genuinely enjoy the connection until the connection begins to feel emotionally heightened or risky, then their nervous system comes into play. So it's not saying I don't like this person or I don't want this connection, it's just and feeling like they can't actually give you what you need, which in in truth is isn't the truth. Like they can't give you what you need, they can't give you the emotional connection that you actually need. And also, I'm not saying that every emotionally unavailable person has a dismissive avoidant attachment style. Not every dismissive avoidant is going to behave this way. Attachment styles are just describing patterns, they're not permanent identities. We can all become secure, we can all heal, we can all become emotionally present, even when intimacy may feel uncomfortable. This is just my experience and my thoughts around the dynamic. So, just to summarize how someone can be present, warm, and enthusiastic in friendships, but not romantic relationships or struggle from the romantic side, it's because those more surface-level relationships, those acquaintances are much lower stakes for them, so they feel free to express themselves versus the romantic side, those stakes are higher. Sometimes the person who feels safest with strangers feels the least safe with someone who truly loves them. I know that's hard to grasp, that's hard to wrap your head around, and that's why it goes back to in patterns and everything that we're talking about to try to understand the dynamics so we can choose better connections that work for us, people that are working with us, that are committed to the connection and the relationship, and desire the same outcome that we do. Hopefully that was helpful, insightful, gave you a new perspective. If you don't mind, leaving a five-star review or comment wherever you're listening. This podcast really helps to expand the reach. Also, feel free to send me a fan mail. It's right there in the show notes. You can click the text link, send me a message. I would love to know your thoughts on this episode, other episodes. If you have any questions that you would like answered on the podcast, the inbox is always open. Until next time, take care.