285. Why You Lose Yourself When You Start Dating Someone w/ Chris Rackliffe

[upbeat music] Welcome, Chris, to Dating Intentionally.

I am so excited to have you on today.

We've-- I've followed you forever, and I love your work.

So can you tell our listeners just a little bit about what you do, who you help, and why you're here?

Absolutely, and thank you so much for having me on.

I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while.

So I'm an anxious attachment style coach, and I've worked with a few thousand people across six continents, so every corner of the globe, to help people have the healthiest relationships they've ever had, to heal from patterns of trauma and abandonment and codependency, and learn how to date intentionally, how to embody their values and what values-based dating really looks like, and how to find someone who's aligned with them in the ways that they need.

So they stop calling themselves needy and clingy and smothering and start owning the fact that they need certain characteristics in a partner and a partnership.

I love that.

And I mean, it's so wonderful that you've been able to help so many people all around the world.

How did you get into this?

I struggled with anxious attachment for many, many years.

[chuckles]

And I know you recently interviewed, uh, the co-author of Attached on the show.

Yes.

And Attached, I know was influential in your journey and was incredibly influential in mine.

I have a degree in psychology, and still it never clicked to me that the patterns from my childhood were impacting my adult romantic relationships.

But of course, that's how a lot of this stuff tends to come out and present itself, right? So when the rubber wasn't really meeting the road in my mid-20s when I was in New York City and going on all these dates and living this really interesting life from the outside, of course, but then crying myself to sleep at night thinking, "I'm broken.

I need fixing.

There must be something wrong with me," you know, I found therapy, I found Attached, and it was a situationship with an avoidant that really helped me understand these patterns in myself and ultimately led me to doing this work.

But I know what it's like to be up at 2 AM stalking someone on Instagram, looking at who they follow, and i- you know, if someone else has been added to their follower list, and looking at Snap Maps and just-

[chuckles]

... all of the kind of protest behaviors that people who are anxiously attached, you know-

Yeah

... engage in.