#198: What Anxiously Attached People Need to Thrive in a Relationship
If you have an anxious attachment style, you already know how much your sense of safety in a relationship can depend on certain dynamics. The truth is, thriving in love isn’t about finding a partner who “fixes” you—it’s about being in an environment that supports you in feeling secure, valued, and chosen.
Whether you’re anxiously attached yourself or you love someone who is, here are the key relationship qualities that make all the difference.
1. Consistency
At the core of anxious attachment is a history of inconsistency—connection that feels amazing one moment and disappears the next. This unpredictability wires you to stay hyper-vigilant, scanning for signs that the relationship might be shifting or slipping away.
That’s why consistency is everything.
A partner who shows up reliably—both emotionally and physically—creates a relationship that feels like a safe resting place instead of a roller coaster. While steady love may feel unfamiliar at first, over time it helps you soften your guard and let go of the protective strategies (people-pleasing, overanalyzing, playing detective) that once felt necessary for survival.
2. Validation
Anxiously attached people often grew up feeling “too much” or “too sensitive,” which can lead to second-guessing their feelings and preemptively silencing themselves.
Validation in a relationship looks like:
A partner who listens without dismissing your feelings
Someone who can say, “I get why you’d feel that way”—even if they see things differently
Space for your emotions without shaming, defensiveness, or withdrawal
This isn’t about expecting your partner to be your therapist. It’s about knowing you can bring something up in a self-aware way and be met with understanding rather than minimization.
3. Clear and Responsive Communication
Nothing ramps up anxiety like patchy, unpredictable communication. If you send a message and hear nothing for days, your nervous system is going to spiral.
Supportive communication doesn’t mean texting 24/7—it means:
Responding within a reasonable timeframe
Letting each other know if you’ll be out of touch
Treating messages and calls as a basic sign of care and consideration
When you know you can reach your partner when you need them, you free up mental and emotional energy for connection instead of constant reassurance-seeking.
4. Safe Conflict and Repair
For many anxiously attached people, conflict feels threatening—either because it’s the only time needs get voiced (and it comes out in attack mode), or because any disagreement feels like it might end the relationship.
Thriving means having conflict that:
Stays respectful, even in heated moments
Avoids threats like “I’m done” as a weapon
Leads to repair and deeper understanding
When you experience a partner being upset with you but still loving you—and working with you to resolve issues—it rewires the belief that you have to be perfect to be loved.
5. A Shared Vision and Commitment
Anxiously attached people tend to be future-oriented in relationships, craving mutual investment and long-term certainty. This isn’t about rushing to lock things down—it’s about having clarity that you’re both on the same page.
Being with someone who is sure about you allows you to:
Relax into the relationship instead of scanning for signs it’s ending
Make plans together and build something you’re both excited about
Feel the reciprocity of “I’m choosing you, and you’re choosing me”
That sense of mutual commitment is deeply healing for someone who’s used to feeling like they care more than their partner.
Final Thoughts
Thriving as an anxiously attached person isn’t about never feeling fear or insecurity—it’s about being in a relationship where safety, clarity, and mutual commitment make those fears easier to manage.
If you recognize yourself in these needs, consider them a guide. Seek out relationships where these qualities are present, and be intentional about cultivating them with your partner. Over time, this kind of supportive environment will help you move toward a more secure way of loving—without losing the depth and devotion that make your attachment style so beautifully all-in.
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg.
[00:00:23]:
And I'm really glad you're here. Foreign hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about what anxiously attached people need to thrive in a relationship. So this is a follow up to last week's episode which was what avoidant people need to thrive in a relationship. And as promised, I am serving up the other side of the equation today in discussing the qualities, the conditions, the dynamics that are going to be most supportive for people with anxious attachment patterns to feel safe and secure in their relationships. So my hope in sharing this is that if you are more anxiously attached, you'll know what to be looking for, to be trying to cultivate. You maybe know what to steer clear of.
[00:01:10]:
And if you're the partner of someone who's more anxiously attached, this might give you a little more context for your partner, the things that they struggle with and how you can best support them. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Before we get into that, a couple of quick announcements. The first being that I have a brand new free training all about breakups. So if you're someone who is going through a breakup or maybe you've been through a breakup in the last few months and you're still kind of struggling to process it and move forward, this new free training is going to be hugely helpful. It's titled the top three mistakes keeping you stuck after a breakup and what to do differently if you want to heal and move on. So I've really aimed to distil down into this training. I the key missteps that I see time and time again from having supported thousands of people through this, you know where you might be keeping yourself stuck even though you're really trying to do everything you can to move forward.
[00:02:05]:
Things like comparing your process to that of your ex. I talk about in this training how anxious and avoidant people differ in terms of how they process breakups. Much like how we differ when it comes to relationships themselves. Breakups are no different. And I go into what you might see from someone who's more avoidant versus someone who's more anxious in terms of how they move through a breakup and what why it's not particularly helpful to compare and to make meaning out of the way that they're showing up. And I also talk about what it really takes to move on and how you can do that even if you don't feel ready, even if you're still missing them, even if you still love them. How you can really dig deep and support yourself to move forward with your life and to actually make the most of your breakup. And that might sound a bit crazy, but I really believe that breakups are a beautiful opportunity to turn towards ourselves, to learn the lessons and almost to go into a little cocoon and then emerge a beautiful butterfly on the other side.
[00:03:00]:
So if you are going through a breakup or you've been through a breakup recently, definitely check out my new free training. The link to register for that is in the show notes or you can also head to my website and find it there. Second quick announcement is just a reminder about my upcoming event in London. So if you're in or around London or you will be on the 13th of September, I would love to see you there. It's going to be a really lovely intimate gathering. I'm going to be giving a talk and then there'll be plenty of time for Q and A and I'll be sticking around afterwards to say hi to everyone. So I would absolutely love to see you there. Okay, so let's get into this conversation around what anxiously attached people need to thrive in a relationship.
[00:03:40]:
The first one is consistency. So I've spoken about this many times before on the show that consistency is so important to anxiously attach people, because inconsistency is really at the heart of the anxious attachment origin story. It is oftentimes the relational pattern that gave rise to our anxious attachment patterns in the first place. So that might have looked like a lot of different things, but the overall feeling, tone, the overall impression is I cannot trust in the reliability of love and connection. It feels so good when we're connected, but I never know if it's going to be there when I reach for it. And so I become hyper vigilant to all of the conditions surrounding my relationships, my environment, and I feel like I have to monitor for threats. I feel like I have to always be on the lookout. And even when we are connected, I'm waiting for that connection to be withdrawn or to suddenly change or shift because it never feels steady and reliable and predictable.
[00:04:39]:
And so what often happens is we end up recreating these patterns in our adult relationships. We end up gravitating towards partners who are maybe unavailable or who are maybe inconsistent themselves. Sometimes they're there and warm and loving and then Suddenly they pull away and we don't know what's. And while that's deeply triggering for us, there's also a familiarity to it that we maybe don't register as being unhealthy or unsupportive. And so it doesn't sound the alarm in the sense of maybe this relationship isn't right for me, it just sounds the alarm in terms of this is what I've come to expect of relationships. So what did I do in the past to try and take care of this situation? How have I dealt with this previously? So, as is the case for all of us, no matter what our patterns are, when we don't have that awareness and we don't have that intentionality, we do generally gravitate towards relational environments, relational dynamics that fit our adaptations and that by extension tend to mirror our early caregiving environments in one form or another. So all of that to say that inconsistency is likely to keep you in your anxious attachment patterns because all of the ways in which you have learned to adapt and all of your protective strategies, so your people pleasing, your fawning, your information gathering, you're playing detective, you're walking on eggshells. All of that is response to inconsistency.
[00:06:02]:
And so it's going to be really hard if you are in a relationship that feels inconsistent and unpredictable. It's going to be really hard to shake those strategies because that's what those strategies are designed to respond to. And you've got a lot of practise in reaching for those things in response to inconsistency. So if you're wanting to shift your anxious patterns and feel more secure and really thrive in a relationship, you're going to want to look for consistency. So a partner who's steady and reliable, who you can really depend on and count on, who you don't have to doubt, their love and their feelings and their affection. A relationship that really feels like a resting place rather than a roller coaster is going to be really supportive for you eventually. And at first it might feel uncomfortable, right? You might not really know what to do with that level of safety and predictability because your system is so wired for threat and unpredictability. But eventually, as you acclimatise to a more steady pace of relationship, you might find yourself being able to slowly step off the lane edge and maybe let down your guard, let down some of those more hyper vigilant protective strategies that were adapted to that inconsistent and unpredictable environment.
[00:07:14]:
You might find that all of a sudden you don't need to lean on those things so much because you do have this really safe, consistent, steady presence in your relationships. And that really allows you to soften into a bit more trust. Okay. The next thing that's really going to support anxiously attached people to thrive in relationships is validation. So a really validating partner and relational environment. So, again, I've spoken many times about invalidation as being part of that early environment for anxiously attached people. So feeling that you're too much, you're too needy, you're too sensitive, becoming so hyper attuned to the moods and emotions and thoughts and feelings of the people around you, almost to the point where you take those on as your own. Or you're certainly more attuned to them than you are to yourself.
[00:08:06]:
And what that can lead to is many things, one of them being a loss of self or disconnection from yourself, but also this inability to really validate your own experience and this over reliance on other people telling you that you're allowed to have the experience that you're having. So if I express an emotion and someone says, oh, that makes so much sense, that must be so hard for you. Oh, I'm so sorry. Then I sort of go, okay, great, I'm allowed to have the emotion. But if someone says to me, like, what are you talking about? You're being so dramatic. You always do this. I then very quickly backpedal and feel like I'm not allowed to have that emotion and start doubting myself. And oftentimes what you'll see for anxiously attached people is we do that before we even open our mouths.
[00:08:51]:
We go around and around in circles on am I asking too much? Am I being too demanding? Am I being too needy? Am I being too sensitive? And we're sort of pre preempting someone's defensiveness and rejection of us to the point where we end up suppressing a lot of things and biting our tongue and feeling like what we're experiencing, the things that we might be really worried about or scared of or insecure about, that we're not allowed to bring those up because we're going to get shut down. We're going to be met with defensiveness, we're going to be met with dismissal, or all these other things that can feel deeply invalidating. But what we tend to miss is that we're doing that to ourselves. We almost silence ourselves before someone else can silence us, because that feels less painful somehow and allows us to feel a bit more in control of the situation, a bit less rejected by someone else or Less like the connection is under threat. As I've spoken about before recently in my episode on self abandonment, we would rather abandon ourselves than have someone else abandon us. So all of that to say a relational environment where you can share something openly and have someone say, wow, that makes sense, or you know, I hadn't really thought about it that way, but now that you say it and I'm hearing it, I get it, or I don't see things that same way, or this is my perspective. But your perspective matters, right? All of these different ways of saying, I believe your experience, your experience is real. And I can see that.
[00:10:19]:
And that matters to me because it matters to me that you feel safe and cared for and loved here. And I'm not to push you away to deal with that on your own because I don't want to have anything to do with it. Whenever you're coming up against that kind of energy in a relationship, you're going to be deeply triggered in that way. Feeling invalidated, feeling alone, feeling emotionally abandoned. And that's kind of the opposite of what thriving is going to look and feel like for you in a relationship. So looking for someone who is really validating, who can really hold those emotions, not in a way that's expecting your partner to be a parent to you. It's not a substitute for you being somewhat regulated and self responsible in your emotions. It's not like you get to go and emotionally dump on someone and they have to be your therapist.
[00:11:06]:
That's not what I'm talking about. But having someone when you can bring a concern and you can bring that in a mature and self responsible way that they can hear you, that they can validate and mirror back and you can have a conversation about that, that's going to feel really, really good for someone with anxious attachment patterns. Okay, the next one is clear and responsive communication. So again, goes without saying that anxiously attached people have a really hard time with like infrequent, patchy, unpredictable communication. So if you text someone and you don't hear back from them for three days, that's going to send you into a tailspin. You're going to be wondering, you know, do I text again? What's going on? I don't want to be too needy, I don't want to be clingy. Where are they? What's going on? Are they ignoring me? Are they going to ghost me? Just save yourself the trouble of all of that anxiety by finding someone who can communicate reliably and directly without a big fuss, without it feeling like you're drawing blood from a stone to get a response to a text message. I say this having been in a relationship with someone where it was exactly like that.
[00:12:09]:
It was just the most basic things like answering the phone when I called or responding to text messages that he had read and then I'd send another one and he'd read that and he'd ignore that and it just drove me absolutely crazy. And when I look back on it, it's just such an unnecessary headache that I was giving to myself by persisting with someone who was showing that they either didn't have the capacity or the willingness to engage in basic communication in the way that I felt was reasonable and was in line with what I was wanting and needing. Now, caveat here. It's not about finding someone who wants to text all day, every day while you're at work. I'm really talking like within reasonable parameters here. But. But again, hopefully we can all understand that there are extremes and as always, we're aiming for something that's in the healthy middle. So at one extreme we've got.
[00:13:02]:
You never know if they're going to pick up the phone or call you back or respond to a text message in a timely manner and you feel like you're constantly reaching for them and never knowing if they're going to be there. Sort of loops back to the consistency point in number one. Just having this overall sense that if you need to get in contact with them, that's going to be easy to do, they're going to be responsive within a reasonable time. And to the extent that you can't reach them, it's not because they've gone awol, it's just because they are legitimately busy and you know that as soon as they can, they will get back to you. That's kind of the tone that I'm talking about here. And that just alleviates so much unnecessary anxiety for someone with anxious attachment patterns. It just removes all of these unnecessary conflicts and friction points that you would otherwise have and allows you to again, rest in trusting the relationship. Trusting that this person cares about you and respects you and thinks of you and treats you as a priority is considerate of your time.
[00:14:00]:
All of those basic things that are going to really matter for someone with anxious attachment. And obviously the counterfactual, the opposite of all of those things. Super triggering, probably frustrating for anyone, but very triggering for someone with anxious attachment. So steer clear of that. And if that's present in your relationship, I'd be looking to set some clear expectations and boundaries around it. And if things don't shift, then I'd be seriously considering whether that's a compatible relationship moving forward again, just because it saves you so much headache to not have to worry about those things. Okay, the next one is the ability to both navigate conflict and repair after conflict effectively. Again, I've talked about anxious attachment and conflict and all of the layers that can make this really hard.
[00:14:43]:
Some anxiously attached people actually feel quite comfortable in conflict because it feels like a form of intense connection and depth. And at least we're talking about the thing and we're having at it and it's open forum. I feel much more comfortable in that space, even though there's a lot of tension there. That feels better than turning our backs on it or sweeping it under the rug, which feels really intolerable. Other anxious attaches might lean more towards tiptoeing, and I don't even want to go there because the conflict itself makes me feel so stressed and scared that something bad's going to happen. And so I quickly pull back from conflict. Either way, there's a good chance that you have some sort of threat coding around conflict, that conflict registers as unsafe in your system, and that it is a threat to the relationship overall. Whether that's because I only know how to express my needs in conflict and it tends to come wrapped in blame and criticism and attack, or because I feel like the moment I speak up, if I say anything, you're going to threaten to leave.
[00:15:45]:
So whatever that looks like for you in your relationship, it's so important that you can have conflict without it feeling like an existential threat to the relationship. You know, if you've got it looming over you that any conflict could spell the unravelling of the relationship, and particularly in circumstances where breaking up has been used almost as ammunition in conflict. So whether one or both of you has said during conflict, I can't do this anymore, I give up. Whatever that is really, really damaging because it then is always waiting in the wings as this potential escalation that, you know, if I really stand firm here, if I really advocate for myself, you might say, enough, I'm not doing it, I'm done. Well, I'll just leave. And the person who's holding that trump card is always going to have more power. And we don't really want conflict in relationship to be a power struggle. We want it to be an opportunity to, yes, deal with whatever friction or tension might be there, but in a way that honours both of us, us, and allows us to understand each other better.
[00:16:49]:
And go, oh, there are unmet needs here that we maybe had blind spots around or we were so in our own experience that we didn't realise what was going on for our partner. It allows us to negotiate new ways of doing things that are ultimately in service to the relationship. So being able to do that safely and you know, there's plenty of research on this, that having safe conflict and repair is what sets apart healthy couples who go the distance from those who or stay together in really unhappy relationships. So for someone with anxious attachment patterns, feeling like you can have conflict and disconnection without it meaning this visceral existential threat, that is a very, very healing experience for you and that's going to really allow you to thrive in a relationship. Even though if you experience it for the first time, you might not trust it or believe in it, you probably still will feel like conflict is really scary and that it could mean the end of everything and that might influence how you show up. But over time, as your system becomes accustomed to, oh, we're like, we're staying in this and someone can be upset with me and still love me, someone can be disappointed in me or frustrated with me and still want to be with me, being able to hold those things because for a lot of us, we've always felt like I have to be perfect in order to be lovable. And so to the extent that I've done something to upset you, then you must not love me anymore. Having safe conflict teaches our body and our system that that doesn't have to be true.
[00:18:17]:
That we can be imperfect, that we can mess up and that we can come back together and repair and actually be stronger for it. Okay. And last but not least, a sense of shared vision and commitment. So again, it's no surprise to anyone that anxiously attached people are very future oriented in their relationships. And I think in part this can be coming from a place of, of fear, of abandonment and those sorts of things that we want to lock something down to buffer against those fears. But equally we do just tend to be oriented towards commitment and being all in and wanting to build something with someone, which I actually think can be a beautiful trait. And so being in a relationship with someone who is similarly minded, who is all in, where you don't have to doubt what we are and what we're doing and where it's going, obviously within reason you don't need to have it locked down on the second date, but that if you are in one of those long drawn out situationships or a relationship where they're resisting a label or there's this overall sense of uncertainty in their commitment to you and the relationship. I know how easy it is when you're in one of those dynamics to tell yourself that no, we'll just wait a little longer and I'm just being sensitive and all of that and that's great.
[00:19:33]:
But at the same time, trust me when I say that you are going to do way better with someone who is sure about you. And you know, relationships are really hard. If this is going to be a long term relationship and you are moving through life together, there are going to be lots of bumps in the road. And doing that with someone who is at least sure that they want to be with you and they want to do that with you and they are all in. I think that that is really, really non negotiable. And so having that sense of like both being on the same page, we are both on the same train, we are going to the same destination and we're both excited about being there. And doing that together I think is really going to help you to thrive and again to relax into the relationship rather than always being on the lookout for signs that everything's going to unravel and fall apart. And I think a really lovely bonus of having that is that you get to talk about those things and make a plan and have that shared vision which tends to be a really beautiful source of connection for anxiously attached people because you get to feel like I'm choosing them and they're choosing me and we're doing this together and we're working towards something.
[00:20:36]:
I think for any couple that's a beautiful experience, but particularly for someone who has always carried fears around not being chosen and people always leave me and I always want it more than they do. Having that deep embodied sense of reciprocity and mutual commitment is going to be so nourishing for you as someone with anxious attachment patterns and will really support your journey to a more secure way of being in relationship. Okay, gonna leave it there, guys. Thank you so much for joining me. I really hope that this has been helpful and has given you something to work towards, something to strive for, something to cultivate in your relationships. Whether you're in one at the moment or you're visioning out what the future might hold. I hope that this has given you a bit of a yardstick. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again next week.
[00:21:22]:
Thanks, guys.
[00:21:27]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships. You can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, relationships, insecurity, thriving relationships, breakups, healing after breakup, moving on, attachment patterns, consistency in relationships, validation, emotional validation, self abandonment, communication in relationships, conflict resolution, repairing after conflict, relationship dynamics, commitment issues, future orientation in relationships, relationship safety, self regulation, emotional safety, mutual commitment, relational environment, reliable partner, people pleasing, self responsibility, abandonment fears, intimacy, romantic relationships