Hello Coco : A diary

Tag: attachment style

  • Healing My Inner Child and Still Choosing Heartbreak

    I think the last time I was this attracted to someone it was my first girlfriend back in 2014-2015. [We’ll call her Meredith] She was this magical unicorn of a person that when I saw for the first time, I instantly gravitated toward her. The energy of her attention was all-consuming and every type of analogy that touched on anything to do with the stomach, heart and lack of vocabulary when I saw her was disgustingly true. She made me feel special and motivated me to communicate more, taught me what the truest sting of jealousy felt like and eventually broke up with me because she emotionally cheated with someone else.


    That was only a 6-month relationship, but it took me almost two years to completely get over her. This love was uncontrollable, volatile and so very fucking exciting. It was like a drug, so much that we would spend every night together even if it meant driving home to gather all my things and making the drive to hers after work spontaneously.


    I look back now and realize that a lot of red flags had gone unnoticed or ignored just for the sake of keeping the big feelings alive. She manipulated me and told me we couldn’t be girlfriends until I officially classified myself as a lesbian as being bisexual wasn’t good enough. She would force communication from me even if I wasn’t ready to talk. She held my past against me and sometimes downright bullied me for personal details. She loved to make me jealous with talk of her ex-girlfriend and all the things they’d do together – while that ex fed into it and was most definitely still in love with her. She played us both.


    I haven’t had that electric feelings about anyone until very recently meeting a man on Hinge who was searching for a poly add-on per say. That’s probably not the healthiest way to describe it, but it feels that way a little – not intentionally. He gets his cup filled mostly by his wife, I would be the a-la-carte option of a ‘fun, outgoing emotional connection’. He’s looking for an emotional connection that can go deep and of course the physical.


    When I started getting back into the dating apps I was purely looking for sex and found that putting out that energy attracted dirt bags and all of them ended up hurting my feelings for different reasons. Then he came along and spoke of emotional support, consistency, romance and safe boundaries. All things the men prior would have probably run away from should I have brought it up as part of the arrangement.


    This man texts me daily and gives me positive affirmations when he senses I need a little reassurance or even unprompted. He can read a room very well and picks up on shifts in energy- It helps that he is a therapist. He talks deep and asks me deep questions. On top of all that he is incredibly sexy and our desires and libido align beautifully.


    He’s fucking trouble is what he is.


    I am starting to feel those feelings that I had with Meredith back 9 years ago; electricity that I can’t ignore or subdue. Though this time I’m not concerned about an exorbitant amount of red flags, but the fact that he is poly and moving next year.


    First off, I feel shame around the fact that I just exited a five-and-a-half-year long relationship just this past December, though it was dead in the water for a while, lacking any romantic connections for most of the last year, I feel guilty for even considering any level of relationship with anyone. I feel like a child that can’t be alone, but I also can’t ignore these feelings and stick to my boundary of staying completely single until I move next April. That’s right I am moving too!


    It’s a little contradictory pre-grieving over a relationship that is doomed to end when I knew that getting into it. I came into this with boundaries and voiced them from the start, as did he – but now I feel I’m setting myself up to get my feelings hurt in 11 months because I know these feelings have a strong potential to get deeper.


    I wonder how he would feel if I had another partner on the side – I know obviously supportive, but how would he feel about it? Maybe having another partner on the side will help me distance a bit, split my emotional ties so it doesn’t feel too strong with him especially since he has an entire other person involved. Part of me hopes he’d feel sad about it and not want to share me with anyone – a hybrid of my monogamous conditioning and the feelings that are developing too quickly for comfort. Maybe I’m thinking about that additional partner because of my avoidant attachment style from an emotionless upbringing; not getting too connected as to not be let down.

    It’s hard not to develop these feelings when he is so freely being vulnerable with me about his. He tells me how he won’t go anywhere as long as I want him to stay. He’s telling me that he has the best of intentions and wants to offer me all of these things, “Romance, Fun, Containment [whatever that means], Connection, Curiosity, Exploration, Adventure.” And then, “There’s more. You’ll see.”

    You says the sweetest things that I honestly have never heard before in my relationships (bitter fucking sweet note there).

    “I got lucky finding you. You meet so many needs already. I appreciate that so much.”


    “I’m protective of you.” And the “Please, let me know when you get home”s.

    And what takes the cake:


    “I feel really lucky that you gave me a chance. I have lots of love and lots of fun to give and I genuinely want you to have it. I want you to know that I came into this relationship with so much intention even before we met. So, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere, ok? So as far and long as you want to hold me – sound good? Just stay being honest and authentic and I promise you the same.”

    Uhm okay, so accept me for exactly how I am and you won’t leave me? Motherfuck-How do I not get connected deeply to this?

    Here are some of his sexy messages that put me in an upward dopamine spiral for days:

    “Good because if you didn’t notice, I also like kissing your neck. We can do things like just touch, no penetration and try to get you to come that way is totally something I am up for when you want. I certainly don’y have to cum every time. I’d rather you climax first anyways.
    I can do all those things [of which I listed in my prior text]. I love all of it. What gets me going is eye contact. If you are moaning while looking in my eyes I melt. You’re also going to have to call me papi [yes you’re reading that right] when you are cuming while I’m inside of you, ok?”

    And:

    “I really like the build up. I’m really big on foreplan but before that I really want to make sure to be slow and intentional. I’m talking like ASMR slow. Gives me time to figure out your sweet spots and where you like being kissed and touched. I’m excited for when we see each other naked for the first time. I’m excited to go down on you (my personal fave). I really like the initial slow and gently approach to understand each other better, then getting freakier and progressing into being less gentle as time goes on.”

    So now you see what I have going on. Unfortunately, this is the healthiest of approaches I’ve ever received coming from my family background and perpetuating the patterns I learned from that – including my last relationship. With that being said all of these romantic and comforting affirmations, consistency and follow-through feel like crack. I’m getting a dopamine high off them and it’s making the connection deeper, and faster.

    My therapist says that’s it is okay to let my inner child have this, to learn and grow from it for as long as I can. To experience true and genuine emotional connection. My heart is scared to see where it will be next year. I’m by no means ‘doing this for the plot’ as kids say, more so hoping that it will give me the opportunity to revise some of the beliefs I learned from my past.


    Relating it back to my first girlfriend and pulling this altogether – the depth of the connection that I established in that relationship was based off of being heard and learning crucial foundational elements of strong communication. Even with how toxic that relationship was, I developed my first skills into establishing emotional grounding within myself. I was able to experience feelings and talk about them in complexity, break them down and have them be really heard and validated – even if sometimes she brutally forced it. Being in a woman loving woman relationship as well created even deeper understanding of my ‘mommy problems’. I let her teach me about my body and embrace my femininity.


    I know these two relationships are very different, though they share some very big elements. We’ve got the learning and growth of course, but the knowing that this relationship will break my heart just like she did just in a different way. I’m okay with it. I believe that sacrificing a whole heart for a while when this is done will be worth the experience of having a grounded, real and accepting relationship. Feeling wholly accepted for who I am and how I show up, being truly heard and validated, encouraged to share and experience depth below the surface…I can’t pass that up for anything.

    My heart has been sad for so long taking in cheap connection, both emotionally and physical. I want to breathe in my own skin and have another person be there to witness and support it. I want to experience emotional safety and feel easy to hold. I want all these things more than not wanting the heartbreak that will come from it. I’m willing to take the leap, and I guess we’ll just see how it goes from here.

  • Emotional Deprivation: Finding Balance in Connection

    The relationship started off very strong and it lasted a total of five and a half years. It was the most healing of relationships coming from growing up with a lot of emotionally avoidant and one-sided relationships, including those of family and friends. It healed parts of my heart and broke others in a way I didn’t know could be.

    It was safe from expectations and common gender norms of getting married, having babies and any pressures that went along with how we’re conditioned to be in heterosexual relationships. Being with a woman meant I didn’t need to worry about birth control or explaining my body and hormones. This woman in particular didn’t want to have kids or get married; she only talked about buying a condo downtown someday. I knew this about her from day one, and it felt freeing to live that way – not looking for the traditional commitments especially at 24 years old.

    When we initially discussed dating she had a list of non-negotiables, with those points listed. The list kept growing as our relationship continued on and instead of it having that free feeling, I felt trapped into a life that someone only factored themselves into.

    After a long time of ‘going with the flow’ and leaning into most of all her preferences, I started to become angry. When I’d speak up about how I felt, it was a debate. Getting her to go to couples therapy was disheartening, and she tried to use her schedule to de-prioritize that and many other things that mattered to me and I wanted her to be there for.

    The romance dwindled and she joked once that it was because she had me now. The last year of our relationship I started to have even more conversations about how I felt and her solution was to throw money toward ‘date nights’ where we would go out for a fun activity and either not talk, or talk about her work or her family drama. Watching her eyes glaze over after asking me about my day made me both enraged and frozen in disappointment.

    Growing up in an emotionally avoidant household where my family did not talk about feelings and invalidated mental health, I had become very used to swallowing my words. There wasn’t one conversation where my parents apologized for anything, and speaking up for myself was followed with a ‘watch your mouth.’ My dad’s military background enforcing a ‘suck it up’ mentality that only perpetuated the repression of the traumas I began to experience moving around frequently, experiencing loss, and the harm I inflicted upon myself cutting, burning and having unsafe partners. I didn’t feel like a whole person, like I lacked personality, and I wasn’t allowed to ask for what I wanted or needed.

    I realized after quite some time that I was letting her do the same thing to me. She didn’t hear me and instead manipulated situations to her preference. If I didn’t want to do something or changed my mind because my heart wasn’t in it, I would become an inconvenience to her. The times I had brought up my feelings around our intimacy, she would gaslight me into saying that nothing was wrong. Out of the times we’ve been together we had a strong intimate interaction a mere handful of times. The rest of the time she was on a different plane of existence, leaving me alone to figure out how to feel good. I would ask for things in the moment and out of it, and they never would come. I would try to dive deep to understand but was met with surface level responses.

    I was dating my parents and didn’t realize it until it was too late.


    It wasn’t until we had broken up that I moved out that I realized I have been living in a state of deprivation. Deprivation of core needs that the coping mechanisms/firefighters from my nervous system covered up for comfort and familiarity.

    Here I am 4 months later reflecting on everything I have done exclusively for myself since. I stopped wearing sweatpants, smoking pot, watching TV as much, and staying home on the weekends. I began to go out and make connections with new people. I began dancing 2-3 times per week, something I had always wanted to do but didn’t have the motivation or self-esteem to take the leap. I got Lasik and started taking care of my body again. I got back on antidepressants and saw all my doctors to make sure everything was okay – something if I hadn’t done could have led to cervical cancer down the road.

    Then I took a major leap and decided to get to know men again. I had boundaries in place that would make my ‘adventures’ with these men purely physical. An experiment. It worked out pretty well for a while. I had small situationships with five different men (safely and honestly) and was liberated by the attention, affection, and most of all my voice in all of it. I had started to feel liberated in my feminity, and most of all found the joy in sex again which was a very deep emotional realization for me being in the gay community for so long. It sparked pride in me that I’ve truly come a long way since I was in my very early twenties; holding true to my boundaries, asking for what I wanted, and eventually calling these men out.

    I felt like a strong pillar in those moments, standing up for my younger self ten years later. All of those men ended up letting me down in all sorts of different ways than I imagined they would. It seemed the expectations I provided perhaps made them think they didn’t owe me any respect, which eventually triggered a few things for me that I worked through with ease and the help of therapy and my support system.

    Why I am writing this in the first place is because considering everything I’ve been through and where I’m at exploring, I stumbled into something that has triggered something in me that I’m trying to make more tangible, something I can grab, analyze and hopefully learn from.

    Of all the men I’ve experienced these last four months, I haven’t felt a real threat. I always felt in control, minus those triggers. Now I’ve stepped into something entirely different where it does feel threatening – feelings.

    This man is emotionally intelligent, an excellent listener, romantic, considerate, consistent, and perceptive. We’ve been talking for a few weeks and only met up once so far, and I feel feelings. Feelings I agreed I wouldn’t feel. Feelings that are bringing up more triggers and my anxious/avoidant attachment styles to the surface. Mix that with polyamory and a sprinkle of jealousy and wow am I in trouble.

    Living in a state of deprivation and lack for a long time. It can be something you just get used to and you adjust your standards to it. The men these last 5 months were just that. They were hot and we had fun, but everything else was a complete fucking mess. A mess I was fully expecting. This new man is unfortunately so great, that I remembered how malnourished I’ve been.

    It snapped something inside of me – perhaps the anchor that was keeping me grounded in avoidant comfort. This ‘roster’ mentality in the tone of feminine liberation.

    He’s telling me that he likes me, my feelings are valid, asking deeper questions, asking me what I want and giving it to me, giving me consistency and answering every question I have with transparency.

    What’s happening is I’m reacting to in a way that comes from lack. My anxious attachment wants the reassurance. Then when he texts and says something I can’t interpret as busy or lack of interest, my avoidant side comes out and wants to stop texting him altogether. Prove to myself that I don’t care or that he doesn’t affect me.

    It’s as if both are pushing and pulling me simultaneously and I’m stuck in the middle trying to figure out what to do about it.

    I want him. I want continuous attention and affection. That isn’t something I can ask for from him completely considering our situation. When I don’t get it, I want to pull away to protect myself. I don’t believe the problem is the nature of our situation so much is the healing in my heart from regulating my nervous system around giving and receiving emotional connection. If I was more regulated within myself, then I wouldn’t need someone else to fill anything up that I can’t myself.

    So, how do I create this habitat for my heart to live in independently and lovingly?

    I always thought I was pretty independent when in truth my ‘independent spirit’ is a protective barrier around genuine connection. Because I haven’t had a lot of genuine connection, it feels raw to experience it and know how to hold it with balance. Balance of holding myself up and letting another assist when I need it. When it comes down to one or another, I generally over lean into holding myself up even if done in unhealthy ways.

    How do I find the balance between the affection and attention I ask from him and the affection and attention I supply for myself?

    Do I struggle with giving myself that to the degree that I need?

    If so, what’s holding me back from that?

    Is it that I’m not present and intentional enough to be in my body and experience life?

    Is it that with every text, Instagram reel, snapchat photo that my dopamine reservoir is only filled up with him not leaving enough room for my own?

    Maybe that’s been the case these last four months with all these men – allowing them to fill my tank with compliments, sex and short-lived cuddling.

    What can I do for myself to provide more sustainable dopamine and affection that comes only from me (while also managing my ADHD)?

    Is it eating healthy, exercising, reading, writing, walking, laying in the sun, traveling, dancing, etc;? Is it self-talk, affirmations, mantras, meditation? Is it creating reliable, real, platonic friendships? I suppose those would be the ‘whole foods’ of dopamine, versus the ‘fast food’ type that can be received in other ways like leaning into sex too much, alcohol, drugs, impulsive spending, going out all the time, etc;

    Boys have been my main vice recently – sex and the affirmations I receive from them. Before I was dating this last woman, boys didn’t really look my way. I was quiet, guarded, insecure, and didn’t know how to express myself with my appearance. I never spoke up for myself and asked for what I wanted. This left me with guys who preyed on that and saw it as an opportunity to get what they wanted no questions asked. I was so lost and deprived from genuine connection that I did all I could to lean into it and find it with these men. More than once I walked away with tears in my eyes, but I kept doing it – searching and hoping.

    So, meeting this person who feels secure – it fucks with me. I want it, but don’t know how to hold it. If I do hold it, how do I determine when to let it go or give myself space without it. I feel I know the answer is to hold myself equally if not more, but it feels so hard.