Coaching practices for How Do I Know If I'm Ready for a New Relationship

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How Do I Know If I'm Ready for a New Relationship, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I keep waiting to feel safe enough in this relationship before I let my guard down, and it never comes
  • With new people I try to fast-forward to being close
  • I’ve been waiting for my partner to change first so I can finally feel safe, and I’m exhausted from outsourcing my whole sense of okay to whether they reach for me
  • We’ve drifted into roommates running on autopilot
  • There’s one thing I’m really trying to become, and I wish my partner would just trust I can

Practices that may help

  1. Build secure-functioning habits
    Practice the behaviors of secure attachment — reliability, responsiveness, repair — on purpose.
    Attachment Theory, Made Usable
  2. Earn the right to deepen the relationship in stages
    Trust compounds over time — start with technical credibility and expand into intimacy as it is earned.
    The Trust Equation, Made Practical
  3. Move toward a secure baseline -- in yourself first
    Security is a state you can practice moving toward, regardless of which partner moves first.
    The Anxious-Avoidant Trap: Why Opposites Attract and Then Struggle
  4. Pro-relationship maintenance behaviors
    Actively do things that maintain and strengthen the relationship, rather than expecting it to run itself.
    The Investment Model of Commitment: Why People Stay (and Why They Leave)
  5. Explicitly asking your partner to treat you as your ideal self
    Name one quality of your ideal self and ask your partner to treat you as if you already have it.
    The Michelangelo Phenomenon: How Partners Sculpt Each Other
  6. Read assertiveness and responsiveness quickly
    Observe whether someone talks more than they listen (assertiveness) and whether they show emotion openly (responsiveness).
    Social Style Matrix: Adapting to How People Communicate
  7. Use the anticipation of interaction to create liking before meeting
    Knowing you will interact with someone in the future makes you evaluate them more positively before it happens.
    The Propinquity Effect (Leon Festinger)
  8. Ask genuine questions about your partner’s inner world
    Keep updating your mental model of who your partner actually is right now.
    The 5-to-1 Positivity Ratio in Relationships
  9. Update your love map after major life changes
    When life shifts, assume your map is outdated and ask new questions.
    Love Maps: Knowing Your Partner's Inner World
  10. Choose and co-create secure relationships
    Move toward partners and dynamics that reward openness, and build security together.
    Attachment Theory, Made Usable

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