Therapy for dating issues in Brooklyn, NY

Getting Started with Dating and Romantic Relationships

Apps or IRL?

Serial dater or serial monogamist?

Difficulty with trust or intimacy?

Dating and romantic relationships are the forefront of the human experience, taking up huge swaths of time and mental energy. Maybe you love being single and have a hard time deeply connecting with others. Perhaps you can’t be alone and tend to stay in relationships for entirely too long. Therapy can help.

Attachment Styles + Relationship Patterns

How we show up in relationships is related to our attachment style. Each one of us developed a “relational blueprint” early in life (pre-memory) that we unconsciously apply to all of our relationships (friendships too) as an adult.

Attachment styles consist of two broad categories: secure and insecure. Securely attached people were provided with consistency and emotional support in early life, while insecurely attached people fall into three subcategories: anxious, avoidant, and ambivalent/disorganized. These attachment styles tend to result in behavioral patterns. For example:

• If your attachment style is anxious, perhaps you seek validation and rely on constant closeness to feel okay.

• If your attachment style is avoidant, perhaps you want to be perceived as someone who has it all together and never needs support from others.

• If your attachment style is ambivalent or disorganized, perhaps you have a hard time trusting others, or you present as hot-cold in relationships. This is likely because you have been mistreated or neglected by someone you loved.

Most commonly, people have a combination of attachment styles.

Healing from Painful Break-ups

Break-ups are often so painful that they impact our identity and the way we function in the world. They can be destabilizing and make it hard to focus on daily life. Often break-ups can lead to feelings of surprise, shame, guilt, betrayal, or lack of acceptance. It’s normal to become fixated on the “why” and spend excessive amounts of time attempting to understand what happened. And it’s also normal when in pain to behave differently than you might usually.

Often, break-ups become about blame, either blaming yourself or blaming your partner. You might not be ready to give up the relationship. Acceptance leads to an appropriate grieving period, after which break-ups can become a catalyst for self-improvement and can help people feel free and secure in who they are.

Alternative Relationship Practices

Alternative relationship practices, broadly defined as any type of relationship outside of monogamy, are more common than you might think. Alternative relationships include, but are not limited to:

• polyamory

• ethical nonmonogamy

• open relationships

• ‘monogamish’ relationships

• relationship anarchy

• swinging

 You may have always participated in an alternative relationship practice or you might be curious about experimenting, or you may have only become interested during a certain point in life. Your partner may be interested in seeking an alternative relationship practice and you might want resources, information, and/or support before you consent.

How Therapy Can Support You

Regardless of which topic underneath the massive dating umbrella speaks to you, therapy is a place where you can be honest and curious about your experiences and interests.

Often, people believe that they should keep their dating lives out of therapy, worrying that the subject is frivolous or uninteresting. However, your dating habits and relationship experiences are central to who you are and how you operate, and you should talk about it in therapy.

Therapy can help you process and grieve a painful break-up, learn to engage in dating and relationships more mindfully, increase self-awareness of wants and desires, and break old patterns.