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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Amir Levine
secure people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving;
anxious people crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationships, and tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back;
avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly tr...
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Having a partner who is inconsistently available or supportive can be a truly demoralizing and debilitating experience that can literally stunt our growth and stymie our health.
You tend not to open up to your partners and they often complain that you are emotionally distant. In relationships, you are often on high alert for any signs of control or impingement on your territory by your partner.
He or she will consider your needs on a certain matter only to disregard them again very soon after.
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.
Protest behavior and activating strategies can cause you to act in ways that are harmful to the relationship. It is very important to learn to recognize them when they happen.
Even if your rational mind knows you shouldn’t be with this person, your attachment system doesn’t always comply. The process of attachment follows its own course and its own schedule.
the brains of people with an anxious attachment style react more strongly to thoughts of loss and at the same time under-recruit regions normally used to down-regulate negative emotions. This means that once your attachment system is activated, you will find it much harder to “turn it off” if you have an anxious attachment style.
Every time you get mixed messages, your attachment system is activated and you become preoccupied with the relationship. But then he compliments you or makes a romantic gesture that gets your heart racing, and you tell yourself he’s interested after all; you’re elated. Unfortunately, the bliss is very short-lived. Quickly the positive messages become mixed once again with ambiguous ones and again you find yourself plunging down that roller coaster. You now live in suspense, anticipating that next small remark or gesture that will reassure you. After living like this for a while, you start to
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They also suppress loving emotions and therefore “get over” partners very quickly so they can start dating again almost immediately.
In hindsight, we do understand: If you are anxious, the reverse of what happens when you meet someone avoidant happens when you meet someone secure. The messages that come across from someone secure are very honest, straightforward, and consistent. Secures are not afraid of intimacy and know they are worthy of love. They don’t have to beat around the bush or play hard to get. Ambiguous messages are out of the mix, as are tension and suspense. As a result, your attachment system remains relatively calm. Because you are used to equating an activated attachment system with love, you conclude that
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The trick is not to get hooked on the highs and lows and mistake an activated attachment system for passion or love. Don’t let emotional unavailability turn you on.
Instead of thinking how you can change yourself in order to please your partner, as so many relationship books advise, think: Can this person provide what I need in order to be happy?
If you have an anxious attachment style, you tend to get attached very quickly, even just on the basis of physical attraction. One night of sex or even just a passionate kiss and, boom, you already can’t get that person out of your mind. As you know, once your attachment system is activated, you begin to crave the other person’s closeness and will do anything in your power to make it work even before you really get to know him/her and decide whether you like that person or not! If you are seeing only him/her, the result is that at a very early stage you lose your ability to judge whether he or
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There is no one for whom attachment theory has more to offer than men and women with an anxious attachment style. Although you suffer the consequences of a bad match and an activated attachment system more intensely, you also stand to gain the most from understanding how the attachment system works, which relationships have the capacity to make you happy, and which situations can make you a nervous wreck.
Whether you are single or involved in a relationship, even a committed one, you are always maneuvering to keep people at a distance.
Avoidant attachment
Avoidants, it appears, are quick to think negatively about their partners, seeing them as needy and overly dependent—a major element in their view of relationships—but ignore their own needs and fears about relationships. They seemingly despise others for being needy and are themselves immune to those needs.
A deactivating strategy is any behavior or thought that is used to squelch intimacy. These strategies suppress our attachment system, the biological mechanism in our brains responsible for our desire to seek closeness with a preferred partner.
“Checking out mentally” when your partner is talking to you. Keeping secrets and leaving things foggy—to maintain your feeling of independence.
They tend to see the glass half-empty instead of half-full when it comes to their partner.
Although she was aware of her boyfriend’s strengths, she couldn’t keep her mind off what she perceived to be his countless flaws. Only after they broke up, and she no longer felt threatened by the high level of intimacy, did her defense strategies lift. She was then able to get in touch with the underlying feelings of attachment that were there all along and to accurately assess Bob’s pluses.
The problem is that, along with your self-reliant attitude, you also train yourself not to care about how the person closest to you is feeling. You figure that this is not your task; that they need to take care of their own emotional well-being. This lack of understanding leads partners of avoidants to complain about not receiving enough emotional support. It also leads to less connectedness, warmth, and satisfaction in the relationship.
Embracing the notion of the “perfect” partner is one of the most powerful tools an avoidant can use to keep someone else at bay. It allows you to believe that everything is fine with you and that the person you’re with now is the problem—he or she is just not good enough.
The feelings of love and admiration return! Once at a safe distance, the threat of intimacy is gone and you no longer feel the need to suppress your true feelings. You can then recall all of your ex’s great qualities,
