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by
Amir Levine
Started reading
September 24, 2025
IS LOVE ENOUGH?
Why was such a successful woman acting in such a helpless way?
anxious people crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationships, and tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back;
We’ve been bred to be dependent on a significant other. The need starts in the womb and ends when we die.
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.” The logic of this paradox is hard to follow at first.
Dependency paradox
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.
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. It is the knowledge that you are backed by someone who is supportive and whom you can rely on with 100 percent certainty and turn to in times of need.
Secure base
protest behavior
You often fear, however, that your partner does not wish to be as close as you would like them to be. Relationships tend to consume a large part of your emotional energy. You tend to be very sensitive to small fluctuations in your partner’s moods and actions, and although your senses are often accurate, you take your partner’s behaviors too personally.
you tend to act out and say things you later regret. If the other person provides a lot of security and reassurance, however, you are able to shed much of your preoccupation and feel contented.
The attitudes that people display toward intimacy and closeness and the degree to which they are preoccupied with their relationships determine their attachment style.
your thinking will shift from “Do they like me?” to “Is this someone I should invest in emotionally? Are they capable of giving me what I need?”
You’ll start asking yourself questions like: “How much is this person capable of intimacy? Is he sending mixed messages or is he genuinely interested in being close?”
Keep in mind that when you’re excited about someone, your objectivity is compromised and you tend to create a rosy picture of them. Anything that doesn’t fit into this picture fades into the background. In the initial stages of dating, however, it’s important to pay equal attention to all messages coming through
if you’re sensitive and nurturing enough to calm their fears—which is very doable—you will win a greatly loving and devoted partner.
Once you are receptive to their basic needs for warmth and security, their sensitivity can become an asset; they’ll be very much in tune with your wants and will be helpful and dedicated.
CRACKING OTHERS’ ATTACHMENT STYLE CHEAT SHEET Avoidant Secure Anxious Sends mixed signals. Reliable and consistent. Wants a lot of closeness in the relationship. Values their independence greatly. Makes decisions with you. Expresses insecurities—worries about rejection. Devalues you (or previous partners). Flexible view of relationships. Unhappy when not in a relationship. Uses distancing strategies—emotional or physical. Communicates relationship issues well. Plays games to keep your attention/interest. Emphasizes boundaries in the relationship. Can reach compromise during arguments. Has
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Attachment style chart
Consider the first Golden Rule: Determine if they seek intimacy and closeness.
People who are anxious often feel that there is something wrong with them; secures will have a more realistic view of things, and avoidants often sound like Paul—they attribute their single status to external circumstances, such as not having met the right girl.
Devaluing your partner when things become too close is very typical of people with an avoidant attachment style
“All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.”
the attachment system is the mechanism in our brain responsible for tracking and monitoring the safety and availability of our attachment figures.
Only when the experiment was designed in such a way that anxious participants had to wait a little longer—they couldn’t react immediately when they spotted a change, but had to wait a little longer—and get more information before making a judgment did they have an advantage over other participants.
Take time before jumping to conclusions
If you just wait a little longer before reacting and jumping to conclusions, you will have an uncanny ability to decipher the world around you and use it to your advantage. But shoot from the hip, and you’re all over the place making misjudgments and hurting yourself.
Once activated, they are often consumed with thoughts that have a single purpose: to reestablish closeness with their partner.
"activating strategies"
If only she had met a good guy sooner—one who didn’t continually activate her attachment system—she
she went through endless cycles of activation, with only rare, brief respites of feeling secure
Notice that if you feel unsettled in a relationship situation, all that is required is a minimal reassurance from your partner—one
Protest behavior is any action that tries to reestablish contact with your partner and get their attention.
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”
being anxious means that she thrives on intimate, supportive relationships that are stable and long-lasting, and that uncertainty and emotional unavailability get her activated and preoccupied, or in a word, miserable.
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.
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.
Love does not equate preoccupation
You: are very sensitive to any signs of rejection (vigilant attachment system). They: send mixed signals that often come across as rejecting.
You: find it hard to tell them directly what you need and what’s bothering you (effective communication), and use protest behavior instead. They: are bad at reading your verbal and nonverbal cues and don’t think it’s their responsibility to do so.
what you really want is to reach a high degree of intimacy, to spend a lot of quality time together, to be able to let down your guard.
Don’t let people make you feel guilty for acting “needy” or “dependent.” Don’t be ashamed of feeling incomplete when you’re not in a relationship, or for wanting to be close to your partner and to depend on them.
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?
What do I want? Not what do they want?
an ambiguity about the relationship that goes hand in hand with a strong message that your emotional needs are not so important to them. they may say the right things at times, but their actions tell a different story.
They feel that they are too demanding and needy and so they try to accommodate their partner’s need for distance and boundaries (if they’re involved with someone avoidant). It’s simply more socially acceptable to maintain a cool, self-sufficient façade. So they hide their wishes and mask their discontent.
by expressing those needs you achieve two goals. First, you are being your authentic self, which has been found to contribute to our general feelings of happiness and fulfillment, and being happy and fulfilled is probably one of the most attractive traits you can offer a partner. Second and no less important, once you are your authentic self, if your partner is incapable of meeting your genuine needs, you can determine that early on.
Let them find someone else who wants to be kept at arm’s length, and you can go about finding som...
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I need to know that you are there for me all the time. I want to know I can talk to you every day and not just when it’s convenient for you. I don’t want to have to cover up my wish to spend time with you for fear of driving you away.”
Try giving several people a chance, without settling on one person very early on,
The only way to make sure that you meet potential soul mates is to go out with a lot of people.
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 them and decide whether you like that person or not!
By using the abundance philosophy, you maintain your ability to evaluate potential partners more objectively. What you are actually doing is desensitizing your attachment system and tricking it into being easier on you. Your system will no longer get so easily activated by one person because it will be busy evaluating the availability of a lot of different people, and you won’t be as likely to obsess about anyone in particular. You can quickly rule out people if they make you feel insecure or inadequate, because you haven’t built all your hopes on them.
She saw hard evidence that many people found her attractive,
When dating multiple people
When someone she was interested in started to disengage or act avoidant, she found it much easier to simply move on without losing precious time.
When dating multiple people
Chances are, if you are anxious, you will automatically interpret calmness in the relationship as a lack of attraction.
