Navigating Attachment Wounds: Signs You Shouldn’t Reunite with Your Ex

Let’s play a little game of am I really missing my ex, or do I just have anxious attachment wounds? I’m Dr. Sarah Henson. I’m a specialized social psychologist, and I’ve been studying the science of attachment and attraction inside romantic relationships for nearly twenty years. These are signs that you have anxious attachment wounding and are probably pretty big signs that you should, in fact, not get back together with your ex. That number one is excessive rumination. So you literally think about this person 24 7. You are replaying conversations that you had with them over and over again. You are having future conversations that you probably never will have with them in your head. You are so distracted by the thoughts about this person that you can’t literally concentrate on anything else. Number two, you’re a social media creeper. You are creeping on their social media. You are going through past photos, past stuff, texts on your phone, rereading things. You are looking at their social media all the time, checking their stories. You are checking to see, you know, who’s commented on their stories or who’s commented on their posts or whatever. You’re just creeping their socials. And lastly, you have intense feelings inside of your body that you cannot process appropriately. So you may be feeling intense anxiety, sadness, you may be crying a lot, you may feel sick to your stomach a lot, and it’s really, really difficult for you to eat and sleep. Here’s what is normal. Securely attached people after a breakup do feel sad. They do cry from time to time. They have those emotions come up. They sit with them, they reflect on them, they try to take the meaning associated from them, and then they allow them to be there without judgment. And then they do pass. They are still able to find joy in everyday life activities even though they are still processing grief, sadness, and loss. They are not thinking about their partner 24 7. They’re thinking about their ex partner some, but it is not interfering, interfering with their daily activities. They may not necessarily feel settled in the decision, but they’re settled in the decision at the moment, and they are willing to say, you know what? I don’t know where life will take me, if life will leave me back to this person or not. Or maybe they’ve had to set firm boundaries and they are okay with it. But either way, they’re sleeping, they’re eating, they’re hanging out with their friends, they’re enjoying daily activities, and they’re processing their emotions as they come. But their emotions are not overtaking them. Just attachment wounds will absolutely lie to you, and they will make you feel like you cannot live without this person. It’s because the excessive rumination and the excessive anxiety and sadness that you’re feeling, you do not know how to cope with and process. Those are your wounds talking to you. Coming. From your subconscious. And there is a magical third route. Some people think, oh, there’s just two routes. Either I can stay in this misery forever, or I can get back together with my ex. And so, in order to make the pain go away, they try to get back with their ex. But there is a third option, which is pouring into your own attachment security, processing this grief and breakup appropriately, and moving on with your life, selecting a better partner in the future. For more info on how to actually do that, you can reach out to me at my website, The Dating decoder dot com. You can also listen to my podcast, The Love DOC Podcast, available on all platforms.