Have you noticed that you act certain ways in romantic relationships? Are you extremely confident and trusting your partner 100%? Or are you easily jealous and fear being alone for too long?
Whatever your thoughts and actions are surrounding romantic relationships, a possible explanation for them can be attachment styles. Attachment theories date back to the 1950s and, generally, pinpoint four primary attachment styles.
What are the four primary attachment styles?
The four attachment styles are as follows:
Secure attachment
Anxious-preoccupied attachment (sometimes referred to as ambivalent attachment)
Avoidant-dismissive attachment
Disorganized attachment
Anchor Therapy is a counseling center in Hoboken, NJ with psychotherapists specialized in helping children, teens, adults, and couples with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, and life transitions. Anchor Therapy is accepting new clients and is now providing in-person sessions and telehealth (video/phone) sessions to residents of New Jersey and New York.
What is attachment?
Attachment, also known as the attachment bond, refers to the emotional connection you had with your main caregiver, most likely your mother. The attachment theory states that the quality of your bonding during this first relationship determines how you relate to people and respond to and experience intimacy throughout your entire life.
If your primary caregiver made you feel secure and understood your thoughts and actions, then it is most likely that you developed a secure attachment style. For instance, your caregiver would have responded to your cries as a child and correctly interpreted your altering physical and emotional needs. As you grow older, this secure attachment style can be seen in adulthood. It can be displayed by being self-confident, optimistic, and trusting. You would also be able to respond to intimacy, manage conflict in a healthy manner, and navigate the hardships of relationships.
On the other hand, if your primary caregiver was baffling, scary, or conflicting, the emotional communication you were receiving during infancy was not ideal. If your caregiver did not consistently comfort you or respond to your needs, it is likely that you developed an insecure or unsuccessful attachment style.
If you were an infant with an insecure attachment style, you likely developed into an adult who has difficulty understanding your own emotions. You may also have a hard time understanding the feelings of others which restricts your ability to build meaningful romantic relationships. It can be difficult to connect with others which may lead you to avoid intimacy or be clingy, scared, or anxious in a relationship.
Are attachment styles only determined during infancy?
There are meaningful experiences that occur between infancy and adulthood that impact the relationships in your life. With that being said, the infant brain is greatly influenced by the initial attachment bond. In other words, understanding your attachment style can provide great clues about why you act certain ways in romantic relationships during adulthood. Whether you have self-destructive tendencies or you struggle to make meaningful connections, many issues can be traced to the attachment bond.
Your brain remains completely capable of change! When you are able to pinpoint your attachment style, you can learn to identify your weaknesses or insecurities to learn how to develop a more secure way of relating to others which leads to stronger, healthier, and more fulfilling relationships.
What is a secure attachment style?
Generally, a secure attachment style is defined by the ability to construct healthy and long-lasting relationships.
A secure attachment style develops when you feel secure with your caregivers, being able to receive reassurance and validation without punishment. You felt safe and understood in this environment. Most likely, your caregivers were emotionally available and cognizant of their own emotions and actions. In this way, you are modeling after your caregivers.
Signs of a secure attachment style include:
Easily trusting others
Being easy to connect with
Having effective communication skills
Being emotionally available
Having high self-esteem
Being able to manage conflict in a healthy manner
Having the ability to get emotional support if needed
Having the ability to regulate your emotions
Being comfortable with being alone
Being comfortable in close relationships
Having the ability to self-reflect in relationships
Since you grew up feeling secure emotionally and physically, you are able to engage with others in a healthy way. You tend to navigate relationships well since you generally trust and love others while maintaining a positive outlook on life.
With adults who have secure attachment styles, jealousy tends not to be an issue in relationships. Securely attached people feel that they deserve love and do not seek external validation.
2. What is an anxious attachment style?
An anxious attachment style may also be referred to as an anxious-ambivalent or anxious-preoccupied attachment style.
People who have anxious attachment styles:
Fear rejection
Fear abandonment
Depend on their partner for reassurance and emotional regulation
Have codependent tendencies
Inconsistent parenting can often be attributed to an anxious attachment style. In these scenarios, children cannot understand their caregivers and, therefore, have no security since they do not know what to expect in the future. This confusion leads to instability.
When caregivers leave, anxiously attached children become emotionally distressed. Sometimes, the caregivers will be attuned to the child’s needs while other times the needs are ignored.
An anxious attachment style can also be produced if your parents:
Were often easily overwhelmed
Made you responsible for their feelings
Were sometimes attentive then abruptly pushed you away
Often switched from being overly-loving to detached
When anxiously attached children grow up, they believe that their relationships should look like this which often leads to them becoming codependent.
Some signs of an anxious attachment style include:
Highly sensitive to criticism (this assessment can be real or perceived)
Jealous tendencies
Having a hard time being alone
Feeling undeserving of love
Large fear of abandonment
Hard time trusting others
Low self-esteem
Constantly seeking the approval of others
Clingy tendencies
Significant fear of rejection
People with an anxious attachment style feel undeserving of love so they seek constant validation from their partners. If you identify with this attachment style, you may blame yourself for any obstacles in the relationship. You may showcase intense jealousy and you may not trust your partner due to low self-esteem. The deep-seated fear of being rejected, abandoned, and alone can keep you feeling this way.
3. What is an avoidant attachment style?
An avoidant attachment style, also known as dismissive-avoidant and anxious-avoidant, is defined by the failure to construct long-term relationships with others. This is caused by an inability to engage in emotional and physical intimacy.
During childhood, people with avoidant attachment styles may have had strict or emotionally distant and absent caregivers.
Your caregivers may have:
Not responded to your needs in a timely manner
Rejected the expressing of your emotions or needs
Criticized you when you relied on them
Expected you to be self-sufficient from a young age
Left you to provide or care for yourself
While some parents of avoidant children are neglectful, others are busy, not interested, or concerned with other matters, like grades over fun hobbies you love to engage in. Hence, people with an avoidant attachment style avoid relying on anyone else and become extremely independent.
You may have an anxious-avoidant style if you experience the following:
Feel threatened when someone tries to get close to you
Believe you do not need close relationships in your life
Avoid emotional or physical intimacy
Strongly identify as being completely self-sufficient
Feel uncomfortable when you express your feelings
Dismiss others
Experience difficulty trusting people
Spend most of your time alone instead of interacting with others
Anxious-avoidant people try to keep relationships at bay. Relationships cannot gain any depth because you lack the need for emotional intimacy. When you engage with others in a romantic way, you avoid getting emotionally close. Your partner may feel like you have a wall up.
4. What is a disorganized attachment style?
Anxious-disorganized attachment is when you have inconsistent behavior and a general difficulty trusting others. This most likely stems from childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse. You may also fear your parents which affects your outlook on safety.
Children who are anxiously-disorganized may seem perplexed. Your caregivers were inconsistent so it may produce disorganized behaviors.
Some signs of a disorganized attachment style encompass:
Fearing rejection
Unable to control emotions
Expresses contradictory behavior
Experiences high levels of anxiety
Unable to trust others
Showcases signs of avoidant and anxious attachment styles
Your behavior may be unpredictable and confusing in romantic relationships. You may go from being cold to being clingy and emotional. You may really want love, but you push it away at the same time since you have a fear of love. This may make it difficult to move forward in your relationship, such as an engagement, marriage, having a child, and so on.
You may believe that you will always be rejected, yet you do not avoid emotional intimacy. Instead, you seek it out and reject it yourself, creating a dangerous cycle. Although you are acting unpredictable, you may view your partner as the unpredictable one since you have trouble with security.
Hopefully, this article allowed you to find an attachment style that you identify with the most. In the case that you have an insecure attachment style, you can always change it! Working closely with a licensed mental health professional can help you change your anxious, avoidant, or disorganized behavior so that you can have healthy and fulfilling relationships!
Victoria Scala
is the Social Media Manager and Intake Coordinator at Anchor Therapy in Hoboken, New Jersey. She is a graduate of the Honors College of Rutgers University-Newark, planning to study Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the graduate level. As a Social Media Manager at Anchor Therapy, Victoria is committed to producing content for and managing the office’s social media presence and blog.
