Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

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 try to minimize closeness.

accurate down to the last detail. It summarized how he thought, behaved, and reacted to the world. It predicted his distancing, his finding fault in Tamara, his initiating fights that set back any progress in their relationship, and his enormous difficulty in saying “I love you.” Intriguingly, the research findings explained that though he wanted to be close to her, he felt compelled to push her away—not because he wasn’t “into her” or because he thought “she’s not good enough” (as Tamara had concluded). On the contrary, he pushed her away because he felt the closeness and intimacy increasing.

She assumed the problem was that she is too needy. Research findings support the exact opposite. Getting attached means that our brain becomes wired to seek the support of our partner by ensuring the partner’s psychological and physical proximity. If our partner fails to reassure us, we are programmed to continue our attempts to achieve closeness until the partner does.

Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet needs.

we live in a culture that seems to scorn basic needs for intimacy, closeness, and especially dependency, while exalting independence. We tend to accept this attitude as truth—to our detriment.

Numerous studies show that 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. We are no longer separate entities. The emphasis on differentiation that is held by most of today’s popular psychology approaches to adult relationships does not hold water from a biological perspective. Dependency is a fact; it is not a choice or a preference.

It turns out that 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.”

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.

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 and address them securely.

it is important to know that 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. What’s more, they will also gradually learn how to communicate their fears and emotions better and you will need to second-guess them less and less.

Determine whether they seek intimacy and closeness. This is the number-one question to ask yourself about your partner. All other attachment traits and behaviors stem from this one overriding issue.

expressing your needs and true feelings can be a useful litmus test of the other person’s capacity to meet your needs.

If they’re secure—they’ll understand and do what’s best to accommodate your needs. If they’re anxious—you’ll serve as a useful role model. They will welcome the opportunity for greater intimacy and start to become more direct and open. If they’re avoidant—they will feel very uncomfortable with the increased intimacy that your emotional disclosure brings

The famous seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza said: “All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.” So choose wisely when you are getting involved with someone,

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.

This is an important lesson for someone with an anxious attachment style: 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.

This is a very important insight for anyone in a relationship. The more attuned you are to your partner’s needs at the early stages—and they to yours—the less energy you will need to expend attending to them later.

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.

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.

The key to finding a mate who can fulfill those needs is to first fully acknowledge your need for intimacy, availability, and security in a relationship—and to believe that they are legitimate. They aren’t good or bad, they are simply your needs. Don’t let people make you feel guilty for acting “needy” or “dependent.”

“Happiness only real when shared.”

Other 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, these small everyday deactivating strategies are tools you unconsciously use to make sure the person that you love (or will love) won’t get in the way of your autonomy. But at the end of the day, these tools are standing in the way of you being happy in a relationship.

Even though it’s important for each of us to be able to stand on our own two feet, if we overrate self-reliance, we diminish the importance of getting support from other people, thus cutting ourselves off from an important lifeline.

Another problem with self-reliance is the “self” part. It forces you to ignore the needs of your partner and concentrate only on your own needs, shortchanging you of one of the most rewarding human experiences: It prevents you (and the person you love) from the joy of feeling part of something bigger than yourself.

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.

Have you ever gone out with someone who you think is amazing, but as you start to get closer, you become overwhelmed with the feeling that they aren’t actually so hot after all? This can even happen after you’ve gone out with someone for a considerable amount of time or very intensively, all the while believing that they are the one, when all of a sudden you experience a chilling effect. You start to notice that they have a weird way of eating, or that their nose blowing infuriates you. You end up discovering that after the initial exhilaration, you feel suffocated and need to take a step back. What you don’t realize is that this surge of negativity could in fact be a deactivating strategy, unconsciously triggered to turn off your attachment needs.

Not wanting to look inward—and believing that we all have the same capacity for intimacy—you conclude that you’re just not in love enough and so pull away. Your partner is crushed and protests, but this only strengthens your conviction that they are not “the one.”

Quick to forgive—They assume their partners’ intentions are good and are therefore likely to forgive them when they do something hurtful.

the secure party engulfs their partner in an emotionally protective shield that makes facing the outside world an easier task.

one of the most important roles we play in our partners’ lives is providing a secure base: creating the conditions that enable our partners to pursue their interests and explore the world in confidence.

You too can provide a secure base by adopting the following secure behaviors: Be available: Respond sensitively to their distress, allow them to be dependent on you when they feel the need, check in with them from time to time, and provide comfort when things go wrong. Don’t interfere: Provide behind-the-scenes support for their endeavors. Help in a way that leaves them with the initiative and the feeling of power. Allow them to do their own thing without trying to take over the situation, micromanage, or undermine their confidence and abilities. Encourage: Provide encouragement and be accepting of their learning and personal growth goals. Boost their self-esteem.

Expecting to be treated with respect, dignity, and love.

If you find yourself becoming less secure, not only do you lose a priceless gift, but you also experience less happiness and satisfaction in your relationships.

Sometimes secure people, despite their innate talent for warding off potentially unsuitable matches and making their partners more secure, can find themselves in bad relationships. This can happen not only when they’re inexperienced but also when they respond to their long-term partner’s unacceptable behavior, by continuing to give them the benefit of the doubt and tolerate their actions.

If you’re secure but start to feel agitated, worried, or jealous (anxious traits), or if you find yourself thinking twice before expressing your feelings, or are becoming less trusting of or starting to play games with your partner (avoidant traits), it is a huge warning sign and very likely that you’re with the wrong person or that you’ve been through a difficult experience that has shaken the core of your secure foundation.

If you’re still in the relationship, remember that just because you can get along with anyone doesn’t mean you have to. If you’re unhappy after having tried every way to make things work, chances are that you should move on.

People with an anxious attachment style (lower circle on the right) cope with threats to the relationship by activating their attachment system—trying to get close to their partner. People who are avoidant (lower circle on the left) have the opposite reaction. They cope with threats by deactivating—taking measures to distance themselves from their partners and “turn off” their attachment system. Thus the closer the anxious tries to get, the more distant the avoidant acts.

The roller-coaster effect. In the relationship you never sail along on an even keel. Instead, every once in a while, when the avoidant partner makes themself available to the anxious partner, the latter’s attachment system is temporarily quieted and you achieve extreme closeness—leading to the feeling of a “high.” This closeness, however, is perceived as a threat by the avoidant partner and is quickly followed by withdrawal on their part—only to create renewed dissatisfaction for the anxious partner.

Are we really fighting about this? You may feel that you’re constantly fighting about things you shouldn’t be fighting about at all. In fact, your fights aren’t about these minor problems but about something else altogether—the amount of intimacy between you.

you are anxious, you find that you’re getting treated worse instead of better once you become the person closest to the avoidant partner.

despite differing intimacy needs, the anxious partner is usually the one who has to make concessions and accept the rules imposed by the avoidant partner.

In her writing, she points out that we tend to perceive our pets as selfless and loving despite their many misdemeanors: They wake us up at night, destroy our valuables, and demand our undivided attention, yet we tend to overlook these behaviors and feel positively toward them. In fact, our connection with our pets is an excellent example of a secure presence in our lives. We can tap into our attitudes toward our pets as a secure resource within us—we don’t assume our pets are doing things purposely to hurt us, we don’t hold grudges even when they eat something they shouldn’t or make a mess, we still greet them warmly when we come home (even after a rough day at the office), and we stick by them no matter what.

creating true security in the relationship and recognizing that you are emotionally dependent on your partner on every level is the best way to improve your romantic bond.

Understanding that your continual arguments actually have a hidden subtext to them—that they genuinely are irresolvable—changes your perception of your own role dramatically. Once you understand that your partner will always find areas of contention as a way of maintaining distance and that they will always need to withdraw, no matter whom they are with—you will no longer blame yourself for the relationship problems.

Chances are that if you’re getting the cold shoulder, if your partner is much nicer to strangers and usually “pleads the fifth”—choosing not to talk to you—you’ve become the enemy. Your only crime has been to become too close to someone who can’t tolerate it.

Anxious people may take a very long time to get over a bad attachment, and they don’t get to decide how long it will take. Only when every single cell in their body is completely convinced that there is no chance that their partner will change or that they will ever reunite will they be able to deactivate and let go.

If the other person shows a sincere wish to understand your needs and put your well-being first, your future together has promise. If they brush your concerns aside as insignificant, or makes you feel inadequate, foolish, or self-indulgent, you can conclude that this person doesn’t sincerely have your best interests in mind and you are probably incompatible.

By spelling out your needs, you are making it a lot easier for your partner to meet them.