Socially Anxious? Safe Strategies to Spark Relationships

We all know people who are naturally outgoing and charismatic in any circumstance. We watch them effortlessly flitting about at social events, charming everyone they meet. Newsflash: these social butterflies are the exception to the rule. Most people have some level of social anxiety, especially when it comes to forming romantic relationships. If you believe you might be one of them, you are in for some good news. Fortunately, there are ways to manage anxiety and strategize social relationship initiation and ice-breaking.

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Flirting With Attachment Anxiety

Cultivating great first impressions with potential paramours requires a delicate balance of technique and tact, tempered with good manners, and charged with chemistry. Sound impossible? It might be if you are nervous meeting new people, because you get one chance to make a first impression. But not to fear, most relationships are not made or lost in a single meeting, and you will have a second and third chance to promote a positive impression. In addition, research indicates there are ways to strategize your presentation.

M. Joy McClure et al. (2020) explored which communication channels link attachment anxiety and difficultly making good first impressions.[i] The researchers begin by acknowledging that concern about what to say or do in a first meeting can compromise a first impression, and attachment anxiety can compromise relationship initiation. They describe how individuals who are anxiously attached, defined as “desperate to connect but preoccupied with potential rejection,” made first impressions that were colored by manifest anxiety and social disengagement. Yet they wondered which channels of communication were most problematic: visual, content, or sound?

Anxious? Emphasize Content as Your Preferred Communication Channel

Examining what an individual says, how they say it, and how they look saying it, McClure et al. note that each communication channel contributes to poor first impressions for people who are anxiously attached yet seeking to build relationships, noting that even their voice may transmit anxiety and disengagement. The good news is that we can improve first impressions through strategically selecting communication channels.

McClure et al. found that when presented with the opportunity to begin a relationship, people who were more anxiously attached introduced themselves in ways that made them appear manifestly anxious through sound, content, and visual channels, as well as socially disengaged through sound and visual channels. However, the researchers found that the channel of content was a less evident signal of social disengagement, perhaps because it is more controllable.

They recognize that because modern relationships are often initiated through app-based dating, which emphasizes the channel of content, people who are anxiously attached might still exhibit manifest anxiety but may not appear to be as socially disengaged as they would in person. This realization can assist in strategizing an approach to relationship building.

Channeling Change Through Comfortable Content

McClure et al. suggest that combining multichannel interventions, such as improving conversational skills by inducing the feeling of security, might reduce manifest anxiety and socially disengaged impressions. One of the common sense, practical takeaways here is the observation that confidence builds conversational communication skills. Choosing a potential paramour with a similar background, compatible interests, or other areas of common ground may be one of the best ways to reduce social anxiety and promote comfortable, engaging conversation.

Cultivating an atmosphere of contentment, confidence, and common ground is a benefit to any relationship, particularly one where even anxious partners feel comfortable. Combining the empirical with the practical, we have yet another reason to take it slow when building quality connections.