Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep – love

by Amir Levine

the attachment system, consists of emotions and behaviors that ensure that we remain safe and protected by staying close to our loved ones.

a child parted from his or her mother becomes frantic, searches wildly, or cries uncontrollably until he or she reestablishes contact with her. These reactions are coined protest behavior,

Humans are a very heterogeneous species, varying greatly in appearance, attitudes, and behaviors.

Our variability improves the chances that a segment of the population that is unique in some way might survive when others wouldn’t.

Although we all have a basic need to form close bonds, the way we create them varies.

People with a secure attachment style know how to communicate their own expectations and respond to their partner’s needs effectively without having to resort to protest behavior.

Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet needs. When their emotional needs are met, and the earlier the better, they usually turn their attention outward. This is sometimes referred to in attachment literature as the “dependency paradox”: The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.

Not too long ago in Western society people believed that children would be happier if they were left to their own devices and taught to soothe themselves.

In the 1940s experts warned that “coddling” would result in needy and insecure children who would become emotionally unhealthy and maladjusted adults.

The common belief was that a proper distance should be maintained between parents and their children, and that physical affection should be doled out sparingly.

Before the groundbreaking work of Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby, the founders of attachment theory in the fifties and sixties, psychologists had no appreciation of the importance of the bond between parent and child.

Bowlby always claimed that attachment is an integral part of human behavior throughout the entire lifespan.

Mary Main discovered that adults, too, can be divided into attachment categories according to the way in which they recall their early relationship with their caregivers,

as Bowlby speculated, attachment continues to play a major role throughout our entire lifespan. The difference is that adults are capable of a higher level of abstraction, so our need for the other person’s continuous physical presence can at times be temporarily replaced by the knowledge that the person is available to us psychologically and emotionally.

the need for intimate connection and the reassurance of our partner’s availability continues to play an important role throughout our lives.

once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one physiological unit. Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood.

Dependency is a fact; it is not a choice or a preference.

when two people form an intimate relationship, they regulate each other’s psychological and emotional well-being.

the ability to step into the world on our own often stems from the knowledge that there is someone beside us whom we can count on—this is the “dependency paradox.”

If we had to describe the basic premise of adult attachment in one sentence, it would be: If you want to take the road to independence and happiness, find the right person to depend on and travel down it with that person.

She found that having an attachment figure in the room was enough to allow a child to go out into a previously unknown environment and explore with confidence. This presence is known as a secure base.

when our partners are thoroughly dependable and make us feel safe, and especially if they know how to reassure us during the hard times, we can turn our attention to all the other aspects of life that make our existence meaningful.

When our partner is unable to meet our basic attachment needs, we experience a chronic sense of disquiet and tension that leaves us more exposed to various ailments. Not only is our emotional well-being sacrificed when we are in a romantic partnership with someone who doesn’t provide a secure base, but so is our physical health.

These findings suggest that people with an anxious attachment style are indeed more vigilant to changes in others’ emotional expression and can have a higher degree of accuracy and sensitivity to other people’s cues. However, this finding comes with a caveat. The study showed that people with an anxious attachment style tend to jump to conclusions very quickly, and when they do, they tend to misinterpret people’s emotional state.

Activating strategies are any thoughts or feelings that compel you to get close, physically or emotionally, to your partner. Once he or she responds to you in a way that reestablishes security, you can revert back to your calm, normal self.

Two researchers in the field of adult attachment,

found that avoidant individuals actually prefer anxiously attached people.

Is it possible, then, that people who guard their independence with ferocity would seek the partners most likely to impinge on their autonomy? Or that people who seek closeness are attracted to people who want to push them away? And if so, why?

Each reaffirms the other’s beliefs about themselves and about relationships.

The avoidants’ defensive self-perception that they are strong and independent is confirmed, as is the belief that others want to pull them into more closeness than they are comfortable with.

The anxious types find that their perception of wanting more intimacy than their partner can provide is confirmed, as is their anticipation of ultima...

THE EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER But there’s another reason you might be attracted to an avoidant partner if you are anxious.

Every time you get mixed messages, your attachment system is activated and you become preoccupied with the relationship.

You start to equate the anxiety, the preoccupation, the obsession, and those ever-so-short bursts of joy with love. What you’re really doing is equating an activated attachment system with passion.

True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind. “Still waters run deep” is a good way of characterizing it.

SOMEONE AVOIDANT Sends mixed messages

Longs for an ideal relationship

Desperately wants to meet “the one”

Disregards your emotional well-being

Suggests that you are “too needy,” “sensitive,” or “overreacting”

Ignores things you say that inconvenience him or her

Addresses your concerns as “in a court of law”

Your messages don’t get across

an emotional stance—an ambiguity about the relationship that goes hand in hand with a strong message that your emotional needs are not so important to him or her.

effective communication is an excellent tool for disarming these smoking guns.

studies have found that faced with a stressful life event, such as divorce, the birth of a severely disabled child, or military trauma, avoidants’ defenses are quick to break down and they then appear and behave just like people with an anxious attachment style.

If you’re avoidant, you connect with romantic partners but always maintain some mental distance and an escape route. Feeling close and complete with someone else—the emotional equivalent of finding a home—is a condition that you find difficult to accept.

A deactivating strategy is any behavior or thought that is used to squelch intimacy.

avoidants have the need for closeness in a relationship but make a concerted effort to repress it?

Deactivating strategies are the tools employed to suppress these needs on a day-to-day basis.