Earlier this year I went on a few dates with a guy recently out of a relationship who was focused on handling his anxious attachment style. He was in therapy, had taken up making sourdough bread, and was viciously going through Insecure in Love: How An Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It. These were green flags, by the way. We love a man focused on personal growth.\n<\/p>\n
Therapy Guy asked me about my attachment style on our first date. I wasn\u2019t sure how to define it. It\u2019s never been that much of an issue for me. Thanks to therapy, I\u2019ve determined I mostly have a secure attachment style with some anxious tendencies, which doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t spiral, but it does mean I come back from spiraling quickly. He was used to intensity.\n<\/p>\n
Intensity can feel normal. Expected. An indicator of health. The absence of anxiety and drama sometimes leaves us wondering if the thing we\u2019re pursuing can really be love. Our brain wants to live in extremes. Therapy Guy was doing the hard work of getting to the middle.\n<\/p>\n
It all comes down to core childhood wounds, or so I\u2019m told. We all have those. We want deep emotions. It\u2019s no wonder the middle isn\u2019t a popular place to be. The more I thought about it, the more I realized attachment styles aren\u2019t just romantic. They shape how we move through the world.\n<\/p>\n
The Colombian presidential elections are finally over. A country that\u2019s been fighting between populisms finally arrived at a candidate from the far left, Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, or another from the far right, Abelardo de la Espriella. The far-right candidate, toting support from Trump, and yes, Netanyahu, won with 49.66% of the votes. The far-left candidate lost with 48.70% of the votes.\n<\/p>\n
Neither of them was my candidate, but because of my personal ties to Colombian politics, I voted for the one I felt would persecute my family less.\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard work to be in the middle. I had wanted to vote for a ticket that tried to land in the center and rode on the coattails of a dead populism, Uribismo, believing that would sway others to back them. It didn\u2019t work. As polls closed and counting began to show the far rights slight victory, I was surprised to see streets flooded with supporters wearing Colombian soccer jerseys, claiming our new president as the defender of democracy.\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easier to file things away if they\u2019re clearly black or white. Reality is much more confusing. I told Therapy Guy that I wasn\u2019t sure of my attachment style. I had been through all of them. I think it\u2019s okay to be nervous about someone texting you back but also hold on to your space and independence. Secure attachment isn\u2019t the absence of feeling. It\u2019s the ability to tolerate uncertainty without immediately turning it into a story. Politicians need us to do the opposite.\n<\/p>\n
The center requires us to live with uncertainty. In relationships, that means trusting someone before you have proof. In politics, it means accepting that no candidate is coming to save us. Both require the same thing: faith that reality can be complicated and still be okay. Maybe secure attachment isn\u2019t certainty at all. Maybe it\u2019s learning to sit with the fact that someone can disappoint you without becoming a villain, and someone can help you without becoming a savior. Relationships need that. Democracies do, too.\n<\/p>\n
I was enjoying getting to know Therapy Guy. It didn\u2019t feel particularly exciting, but he was smart, kind, and took me to new restaurants. But we weren\u2019t compatible. He wasn\u2019t as ambitious as I know I need someone to be, and I was too ambitious for him.\n<\/p>\n
Populism and insecure attachment don\u2019t present a long-term solution to real problems, only a brief respite from ambiguity. I wanted a cleaner story. A red flag I had missed. A warning sign. Something that would make the ending make sense. Instead, there was only the truth: he was a good man, I was a good woman, and we weren\u2019t right for each other.\n\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tJessica Ghitis is a Jewish-Colombian writer and educator based in Los Angeles. An alum of the American Film Institute Conservatory, she swapped the traditional entertainment track for something far less scripted after the October 7 attacks, blending storytelling and advocacy to push for sharper and more nuanced coverage of Israel in Latin American media. She collaborated with networks like NTN24, Telemundo, and Univision\u00a0to amplify the voices of hostages and their families during the war, including organizing delegations of hostage families to meet with American politicians and press.
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\nJessica has worked with organizations such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Fuente Latina to combat antisemitism, and has taught Hebrew school while serving on the Executive Committee for ANU: A New Union in the World Zionist Congress.
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\nShe is an IPF Atid Charles Bronfman 2025 Convener and currently works with Hayes Brothers Films and First-Look, a platform helping screenwriters get discovered. On her Times of Israel blog, she writes about geopolitics and modern dating with equal obsession\u2014unofficially calling herself \u201cCarrie Bradshaw of the Middle East.\u201d
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\nA historical fiction writer, Jessica believes stories don\u2019t just reflect reality\u2014they shape it. Still, she\u2019d often prefer fictional drama to the real kind.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year I went on a few dates with a guy recently out of a relationship who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[41,39437,38,37,2980,4056],"class_list":["post-173095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-dating","tag-donald-trump","tag-israel","tag-latin-america","tag-us-politics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116797362125752229","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}