Anxiety and Approval Seeking in Gay Men: How Therapy Helps You Date from a Place of Self-Worth
Read time: 7 minutes
Constantly monitoring whether you're making the right impression is exhausting. It leaves you feeling anxious and on edge, particularly when dating. Did I say the wrong thing? What did that look mean? Why aren't they texting me back?
When we struggle with self-worth and loneliness, we can sometimes rationalise that any connection is better than no connection at all. From that mindset, we find ourselves in situationships with people who are, in one way or another, unavailable — emotionally, circumstantially, or both.
Approval seeking is a survival response that kicks in when our need to belong feels threatened. For the gay men I work with in Melbourne, this can look like hypermonitoring your body to fit an ideal, moulding yourself into what you think your crush finds cool, or hiding your emotional needs while playing it cool when you actually want something serious.
The anxiety that comes with approval seeking is real. On some level, we know we've constructed a version of ourselves that feels false and therefore rickety and vulnerable — one that depends on the actions and reactions of a new romantic interest to hold itself together. Being someone we're not takes enormous energy and constant self-monitoring. Am I texting too much? Will that seem too needy? I've double-texted and been left on read again!.
If any of this sounds familiar, you're not alone — and it didn't come from nowhere.
Where Approval Seeking Comes From in Gay Men
At its core, approval seeking comes from an innate human need to belong. The problem arises when our self-esteem becomes too reliant on acceptance and reassurance from others. When that happens, we become too easily shaped by other people's reactions, and that comes at the cost of a solid sense of our own identity, preferences, and opinions.
For most gay men, this pattern has roots in childhood. When a family's approval is conditional on conforming to expectations, fitting a certain image, hiding certain parts of yourself, performing a version of who you were supposed to be. Approval-seeking becomes the logical response. Perhaps your parents were overtly concerned with appearances or status. Maybe you were ridiculed for gravitating toward interests that didn't fit male gender expectations.
The need to be liked, to fit in, to be cool reaches its peak in adolescence. For gay men, this often looks like hiding effeminate gestures, dressing more like the other boys, and modifying interests to pass. I remember as a teenager following my group of male friends around while they rode BMXs for hours, watching them perfect tricks and jumps I had no real interest in. I went along because belonging felt more important than being honest about what I actually wanted to do.
It's also worth naming that high school is often not a safe place to figure out and express romantic feelings. Unlike heterosexual peers who are navigating early relationships during those years, many gay men don't get that developmental experience. The relational skills that come from adolescent dating, learning to express feelings, navigating rejection, and figuring out what you want are ones we often come to much later. All the while, the need for intimacy builds. So when someone finally shows interest, a younger part of us takes over and reaches for that attention, even when it's not in our best interest.
Approval seeking is also embedded in early attachment. Perhaps your father was emotionally distant and showed little interest in your natural inclinations, but you wanted to feel connected with him, so you went along to watch football and pretended to enjoy it. That becomes an early template: shape yourself to receive connection, rather than expect connection to meet you as you are.
When Survival Strategies Become the Problem
It makes sense to adapt in a high school environment where fitting in kept you safe. The problem is when that survival strategy follows you into dating as an adult.
This can show up in all kinds of ways, not expressing a preference for how you like to connect, what you enjoy sexually, or what relationship structure works for you. You habitually default to your partner's preferences, and as a result, they never really get to know you. Neither of you gets the information you need to figure out whether you're actually a good fit.
In the therapy room, when clients are struggling with dating, I'll often ask: What part of you made that decision, your adult self or your adolescent self? What is that younger part worried will happen if you just be yourself? Almost always, the answer is the same: rejection, more loneliness and a sense of failure. The work is helping that teenager part receive the reassurance it needs to settle, because the wisest part of us already knows that real connection only comes through the vulnerability and courage of being ourselves.
What Approval-Seeking Anxiety Actually Looks Like in Dating
If you tend toward approval seeking, a useful question to ask yourself is: Am I agreeing to this because I actually want to, or because I want to be seen as easygoing, likeable, or cool?
The underlying feeling is usually vulnerability, a fear that expressing what you actually want will result in rejection. So instead, you tolerate a less-than-ideal situation because at least some of your needs are being met. The it's better than nothing approach.
Over time, you might find yourself mistaking intermittent emotional warmth for real intimacy. Someone gives you just enough, a sweet text here, a good night there, and you hold onto it. But this pattern gradually erodes self-esteem and reinforces the belief that this is what you deserve.
A recent client came to me with a repeated pattern of dating emotionally unavailable men. His first romantic interest was someone already in a relationship. His second actively criticised how he dressed and tried to shape him into someone else. Through our work together, we explored his teenage years and uncovered a long history of not belonging, years of playing rugby throughout high school, never feeling like he fit in with the other boys, and realising he'd done it for his father's approval. Through self-compassion and understanding for that younger part of himself, he stopped making dating choices from that place of scarcity. He is now dating someone who is emotionally available and is much happier.
How Therapy Helps Untangle Approval Seeking from Genuine Connection
Therapy helps uncover the inconsistencies between what we want and how we're actually behaving. Through developing greater self-awareness, we come to understand our patterns well enough to step outside of them and make different choices.
Using Internal Family Systems (IFS), we work directly with the approval-seeking part, understanding what it's protecting you from, what it needs, and how to help it trust you enough to step back. We work with the teenager part that never got what it needed during those high school years and give it something more useful than the anxious monitoring it's been doing ever since. You can read more about how IFS and EMDR support this kind of work in How EMDR and IFS Therapy Help Gay Men Process Shame.
EMDR can also help process the specific distressing memories around rejection, disapproval, not belonging, that are still quietly organising your behaviour in the present, even when you don't realise it.
Working with a gay therapist in Melbourne matters here because you don't have to explain the developmental experience of being gay in high school, or sugar-coat the nuances of gay dating culture. You can get on with doing the work you actually need to do.
What Changes When You Stop Needing Everyone's Approval
When you become less driven by the need for approval, a new clarity emerges about what you actually want and what genuinely works for you in a relationship. You develop a keener sense of when someone is emotionally unavailable and a greater capacity to walk away from those connections rather than rationalise staying.
Your self-confidence improves. You start dating from a place of discernment rather than scarcity. That shift opens up the possibility of feeling truly seen and understood by someone you're with.
I've seen the marked change this makes in clients when the shift from approval seeking to authenticity occurs. They feel nourished and excited by their dating life. They have hope for what's to come, while also feeling steady enough in themselves that, if a new relationship doesn't work out, they'll be disappointed but ultimately okay.
That internal steadiness is what we're working toward.
Ready to Make Sense of Your Dating Patterns?
Being honest about approval seeking takes courage. Understanding where the pattern comes from makes it possible to catch yourself in the moment and make choices that are actually aligned with what you want.
If you're ready to explore this, I offer a 30-minute check-in to share what's been going on and get a sense of how therapy can help with your specific situation.
About the Author
Matthew Austin | Counsellor & Psychotherapist, Melbourne
Matthew Austin is a Melbourne-based counsellor and psychotherapist who has worked with LGBTQIA+ individuals for over a decade. He has held roles at both Thorne Harbour Health and Queerspace, where he developed a deep understanding of the external forces that shape how LGBTQIA+ people see themselves. His background working with children and adolescents who have experienced trauma and neglect informs his understanding of how early experiences shape the lens through which we view ourselves, others, and the world.
Matthew holds a Bachelor of Social Work, a Certificate in Developmental Psychiatry, and an Advanced Diploma in Gestalt Psychotherapy, and has completed EMDR Levels 1 and 2. He is a mental health social worker and offers Medicare rebates.
His approach draws on IFS, EMDR, and Gestalt therapy to help LGBTQIA+ clients access the compassion, calm, and clarity that has always been there — beneath the self-criticism and distress.
Matthew works with LGBTQIA+ adults in Melbourne. To book a 30-minute check-in, visit my contact page
