Attached Quotes

“From then on I was always anxious. I was preoccupied with his whereabouts and became hypersensitive to anything that could possibly imply that he wanted to break up.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“If you want to take the road to independence and happiness, first find the right person to depend on and travel down it with them. Once you
understand this, you’ve grasped the essence of attachment theory.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“If they’re avoidant—they will feel very uncomfortable with the increased intimacy that your emotional disclosure brings and will respond in one of the following ways: “You’re too sensitive/demanding/needy.” “I don’t want to talk about it.” “Stop analyzing everything!”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“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.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Our memories are not like old books in the library, lying there dusty and unchanged; they are rather like a living, breathing entity. What we remember today of our past is in fact a product of editing and reshaping that occurs over the years whenever we recall that particular memory. In other words, our current experiences shape our view of our past ones. By creating your own attachment inventory, you reexamine your recollections of past relationship experiences from a fresh new perspective.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“avoidants react differently to a fight. They turn off all attachment-related memories and remember the worst of their partner.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Frequently avoidants feel independent and powerful only to the extent that their partner feels needy and incapable.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Incongruent intimacy needs, on the other hand, usually translate into substantially lower satisfaction. When couples disagree about the degree of closeness and intimacy desired in a relationship, the issue eventually threatens to dominate all of their dialogue. We call this situation the “anxious-avoidant trap,” because like a trap, you fall into it with no awareness, and like a trap, once you’re caught, it’s hard to break free.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“it takes two willing individuals to create intimacy.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“We can interpret her concern as a fundamental need for closeness that is going unmet.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“As more studies become available, there is increasing evidence that a secure attachment style doesn’t originate from a single source. The equation of a caring and sensitive parent producing a secure-for-life child is too one-dimensional; instead it seems that an entire”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“On average, about 70 to 75 percent of adults remain consistently in the same attachment category at different points in their lives, while the remaining 25 to 30 percent of the population report a change in their attachment style.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“specific pattern of the dopamine receptor DRD2 allele is associated with the anxious attachment style, whereas a variant of the serotonin 5-HT1A receptor was linked to avoidance. These two genes are known to play a role in many brain functions, including emotions, reward, attention, and importantly, also in social behavior and pair bonding. The authors conclude that “attachment insecurities are partially explained by particular genes, although there is still a great deal of individual difference variance that remains to be explained by other genes or social experiences.” In other words, genes may play an important role in determining our attachment style.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Secure in their power to improve the relationship—They are confident in their positive beliefs about themselves and others, which makes this assumption logical.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“So it seems that what may come as hard work for some—to keep an even emotional keel in the face of threat—comes effortlessly for someone secure. They simply aren’t as sensitive to the negative cues of the world.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“The studies found that secures have more unconscious access to themes such as love, hugs, and closeness and less access to danger, loss, and separation.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“People with a secure attachment style, like Stan, are characterized by something very real but not outwardly visible—they are programmed to expect their partners to be loving and responsive and don’t worry much about losing their partners’ love. They feel extremely comfortable with intimacy and closeness and have an uncanny ability to communicate their needs and respond to their partners’ needs.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“not only do people with a secure attachment style fare better in relationships, they also create a buffering effect, somehow managing to raise their insecure partner’s relationship satisfaction and functioning to their own high level. This is a very important finding. It means that if you’re with someone secure, they nurture you into a more secure stance.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“But what was more interesting was that there was no observed difference between secure couples and “mixed” couples—those with only one secure partner. They both showed less conflict and were rated as better functioning than were the “insecure” dyads.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“When you find yourself idealizing that one special ex-partner, stop and acknowledge that they are not (and never were) a viable option. By remembering how critical you were of that relationship—and how leery you were of committing—you can stop using them as a deactivating strategy and focus on someone new.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“These are the two trickiest tools that you may be using to shortchange yourself in love. You convince yourself that you have a true longing for someone from your past or that the right person is just around the corner and you can easily undermine yourself in love. Embracing the notion of the “perfect” partner is one of the most powerful tools an avoidant can use to keep someone else at bay.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“In a study conducted together with Steve Rholes from Texas A & M University, they set up an experiment to examine whether people with different attachment styles differed in their abilities to infer their partners’ thoughts. They asked individuals to rate the attractiveness and sexual appeal of opposite-sex images in the presence of their partners. They then asked them to assess their partners’ reactions to this rating process. Avoidant individuals were found to be less accurate than anxious individuals at perceiving their partners’ thoughts and feelings during the experiment. It was common for avoidants to interpret their partner’s reaction as indifferent if they rated someone as highly attractive, when, in fact, their partner had been quite upset by it.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“They found that people with an avoidant attachment style rated their partner less positively than did non-avoidants. What’s more, they found they did so even on days in which their accounts of their partners’ behavior indicated supportiveness, warmth, and caring. Dr. Mikulincer explains that this pattern of behavior is driven by avoidants’ generally dismissive attitude toward connectedness”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“prevents you (and the person you love) from the joy of feeling part of something bigger than yourself.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Studies show that belief in self-reliance is very closely linked with a low degree of comfort with intimacy and closeness. Although avoidant individuals were found to have a great deal of confidence about not needing anyone else, their belief came with a price tag: They scored lowest on every measure of closeness in personal relationships.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“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 maintain.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“being happy and fulfilled is probably one of the most attractive traits you can offer a partner.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“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 this can’t be “the one” because no bells are going off. You associate a calm attachment system with boredom and indifference. Because of this fallacy you might let the perfect partner pass you by.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Studies have found that avoidants are unlikely to be in a relationship with other avoidants, because they lack the emotional glue to stay together. In fact, one study that looked at dating couples didn’t find even one pair that was avoidant-avoidant. Conclusion: Avoidants don’t date each other; they are more likely to date people with different attachment styles.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“People with a secure attachment style usually don’t go through many partners before they find one that they happily settle down with. Once things click, they form a long-lasting, committed relationship. Conclusion: People with a secure attachment style take a very long time to reappear in the dating pool, if at all.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love