What’s Relationship Attachment Theory and Why Should We Care?
You may have heard the terms "Attachment Theory" or "Attachment Style" being tossed around a lot lately. I know I found myself coming across them repeatedly on podcasts, Instagram, and even among friends. But it was only when my therapist pointed out that I was grappling with the same attachment issue across my most important relationships that I started to seriously wonder what this whole Attachment business was all about.
WHAT IS ATTACHMENT THEORY?
Attachment Theory is the study of how humans bond, especially in long-term, intimate relationships.
The term was first coined by British psychoanalyst John Bowlby, who studied attachment bonds in children and parents. His apprentice Mary Ainsworth, further clarified his ideas. Then researchers Phil Shaver and Cindy Hazan took the theory a step further by asserting that the same bonds we form as children show up in our adult relationships.
The main thing that all of these very smart people realized is that our longing to have a partner and be close to others isn’t just a simple social desire or socioeconomic expectation (though it is these things as well). Our desire for closeness is actually a primal instinct + survival need, as important in our ability to stay alive as food and water.
This makes perfect sense if you think about it: we have a better chance of enduring the harsh realities of staying alive if someone else is as invested in our survival as we are.
Back in the day, humans who didn’t form attachments and faced the world alone were more likely to become prey, and eventually died out. However those with strong Attachment Systems who were biologically dispositioned to form close bonds lived on.
Hence, our collective (and very human) desire for love.
You can read more about our collective desire for love in our blog post Perfect Love Is a Myth — So Here Are 5 Steps to Manifest Real Life Love.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT ATTACHMENT THEORY?
As someone who felt heartbroken after nearly every romantic endeavor, learning about Attachment psychology literally changed my life. It helped me see what was really going on in my love relationships, and that the story I’d been believing about my self-worth was unhelpful + untrue.
The more I learned the ins and outs of my Attachment Style and those of the people I was dating, the more I started to understand the chronic patterns that were getting in the way of my ability to have successful relationships. It suddenly made sense why men would start to get distant as soon as I’d let my guard down, and why I’d be a nervous wreck waiting for them to call me back or set plans.
It was like finally getting glasses after a lifetime of blurry vision. My world was suddenly in sharp focus, as every relationship I ever had became so much clearer. All the painful experiences that felt so unique and personal to me could actually be understood through a lens of predictable patterns that show up in all human beings.
This knowledge was powerful, and helped me identify the secure, wonderful, + committed partner I share my life with today.
In this blog, I’ll explain just how Attachment Theory shows up in our lives, and provide you with some tangible tools to start walking your own path towards clearer + happier relationships.
HINT: The best way to start getting clear is by taking our Attachment Style quiz HERE.
ATTACHMENT + ROMANCE
Although Attachment Theory can be applied to every relationship in our lives (the platonic, the familial, and the romantic) it is particularly useful to study under the gaze of romantic relationships, as they tend to cut straight to the heart of what Attachment theorists call our "core wounds."
Sounds like a big deal, right? Yeah—it is.
You know those pesky little patterns that keep showing up uninvitedly in all your relationships? Like chronically dating unavailable people, or getting stuck in relationships that feel like they’re going nowhere? Or being able to be honest and straightforward with your friends, but feeling like a scared little baby deer when you try to be honest with the person you're dating?
Well these patterns aren’t because you have bad judgement in partners or because you’re inherently flawed in some way.
They come from our deepest + most intimate scars, which are created when our basic needs—from food and affection to acknowledgement and respect—go unmet. And these scars are what determine how comfortable we are with intimacy as we go from being innocent little humans to adults feeling our way through grown-up relationships.
WHAT IS AN ATTACHMENT STYLE?
An Attachment Style is pretty much how it sounds; it’s the style or way in which we attach or bond with other people, and it’s initially created by how available and present our primary caregiver(s) were, both emotionally and physically, in our formative years.
Like I said—kinda a big deal.
Simply put, when a basic need of ours goes unmet, (like when a child cries to be held or fed and gets no response), our Attachment System is triggered and we become physically and emotionally dysregulated. If our needs go continuously unmet or are only met part of the time, we begin to form Insecure Attachments.
Having an Insecure Attachment means that we have a core scar or “wound” around a whole host of emotions such as feeling unworthy, rejection, or fear of abandonment and/or betrayal. These insecurities make it difficult for us to trust others or be comfortable with vulnerability.
While other factors can contribute to our Attachment Style, such as a significant friendship or romantic experience, the core wounds we form as children tend to go on to be points of insecurity in our adult relationships, determining how safe we feel getting close to other people, (especially in highly intimate situations like romance).
And how safe we feel getting close to others is what ultimately determines our Attachment Style.
THE FOUR TYPES OF ATTACHMENT STYLES
SECURE
A Secure Attachment is the paradigm of a healthy Attachment Style. If you are Secure. it means you’re comfortable both giving and receiving in your relationships; it means that you know and value your personal worth as well as your partner’s, and are generally comfortable with vulnerability.
As a Secure, you likely had parents who were consistently available and therefore would not have a formed core wound around feeling unworthy or being abandoned. Rather, you would have learned that people are there when you need them, so it’s okay to get close and depend on them.
Because of this, Secure people look forward to love, but don’t feel the need to be validated by it (like our next style — the Anxious Style).
ANXIOUS
Like Secure people, Anxious types want to be close to others. But where secure people feel safe in their relationships, Anxious types struggle to feel safe because of their core wounds around rejection, abandonment, and self-worth.
An Anxious attachment style can develop if you had a caregiver(s) that was inconsistently available, meaning you never knew if they’d be emotionally or physically present. This lack of consistency creates confusion (aka “anxiety”) when the once available person is no longer available. (Sound at all familiar?)
Not knowing what to believe, the Anxious person will often blame themselves and/or overcompensate in order to win their attachment’s attention back to feel safe and secure again.
(FUN FACT: Those with “people pleasing” tendencies are often Anxious Attachment types).
AVOIDANT
An Avoidant Attachment type is pretty much what it sounds like; someone who avoids intimacy and closeness as much as possible.
If your caregiver(s) were largely absent or possibly abusive during your childhood, you likely received the message that they would not be there in your moments of need or vulnerability. In response, you probably learned to rely on yourself for emotional and/or physical support, developing a bias for independence and a fear of relying on others.
FEARFUL-AVOIDANT
While Secure, Anxious, and Avoidant Attachment Styles are the most common types of Attachment, some researchers refer to a fourth and less common style, often called the Fearful-Avoidant Attachment Style or Disorganized-Disoriented Attachment.
The easiest way to think about this style is as a combination of the Anxious and Avoidant styles, with their hallmark being unpredictability in relationships. Fearful-Avoidants often long for closeness the way an Anxious Attachment type might, but get very scared of intimacy and vulnerability due to a similar wound around low-self worth. However, rather than overcompensating as an Anxious type might, this style tends to flee or isolate—aka, avoid—as soon as they feel uncomfortable.
Often, a Fearful-Avoidant grows up in an environment with one or more parent being available inconsistently, and likely another parent being abusive, either emotionally or physically. This back and forth creates distrust in a Fearful-Avoidant, and they tend to have rollercoaster relationships because of it.