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,

and I'm really glad you're here. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment.

In today's episode, I'm going to be talking all about the importance of separateness in relationship.

So, again, for people who tend more towards anxious attachment,

separateness is a big part of the growing that we do on the path to greater security. And

figuring out where that balance lies of togetherness and separateness can be really,

really liberating and can allow you to access much more peace

and internal security in your relationship in a way that allows you to really trust that

you're okay on your own. As I've talked about so many times before on the show, it's really easy

to have the story and the belief that you need

your partner in order to be okay and that anything that threatens the connection or the

relationship feels incredibly distressing and leads to all of those anxious attachment,

you know, typical behaviours of how do I

close the gap? How do I get us back into connection? Because anything other than that sends me

spiraling. And of course, you don't need me to tell you that that's a really challenging way to

live. I know that. You know that. And so I think one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is

to cultivate greater confidence around separateness while in relationships, so being really

comfortable in yourself and having a clearly differentiated sense of self and cultivating more

of a practice around being alone and doing things by

yourself so that you can really stand on your own two feet and feel like you are in your

relationship from a place of choice rather than a place of need and desperation.

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