Attached Quotes

“People with an avoidant attachment style tend to end their relationships more frequently. One study found that of individuals who entered a new marriage following a divorce, the avoidant ones were more likely to divorce again. They also suppress loving emotions and therefore “get over” partners very quickly so they can start dating again almost immediately. Conclusion: Avoidants are in the dating pool more frequently and for longer periods of time.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“After living like this for a while, you start to do something interesting. 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.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

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

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

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

“Well before brain imaging technology was developed, John Bowlby understood that our need for someone to share our lives with is part of our genetic makeup and has nothing to do with how much we love ourselves or how fulfilled we feel on our own. He discovered that once we choose someone special, powerful and often uncontrollable forces come into play. New patterns of behavior kick in regardless of how independent we are and despite our conscious wills. Once we choose a partner, there is no question about whether dependency exists or not. It always does. An elegant coexistence that does not include uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability and fear of loss sounds good but is not our biology.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Our emotional brain was handed down to us by Homo sapiens who lived in a completely different era, and it is their lifestyle and the dangers they encountered that our emotions were designed to address. Our feelings and behaviors in relationships today are not very different from those of our early ancestors.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

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

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

“Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive. New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2003.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Resulta que la facultad de enfrentarse al mundo desde la autonomía a menudo nace de la seguridad de saber que contamos con alguien que nos apoya; es la «paradoja de la dependencia».”
― Amir Levine, Maneras de amar: La nueva ciencia del apego adulto y cómo puede ayudarte a encontrar el amor y conservarlo (Crecimiento personal)

“Phantom Ex One of the consequences of devaluing your romantic relationship is that you often wake up long after the relationship has gone stale, having forgotten all those negative things that annoyed you about your partner, wondering what went wrong and reminiscing longingly about your long-lost love. We call it the phantom-ex phenomenon. Often, as happened with Carole who “rediscovered” her feelings for Bob only after she’d broken up with him, once the avoidant person has put time and distance between herself and the partner whom she’s lost interest in, something strange happens: 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, convincing yourself that he or she was the best partner you ever had. Of course, you can’t articulate why this person wasn’t right for you, or remember clearly why you ended things in the first place (or perhaps behaved so miserably that he or she had no choice but to leave). In essence, you put your past partner on a pedestal and pay tribute to “the love of your life,” now forever lost. Sometimes you do try to resume the relationship, starting a vicious cycle of getting closer and withdrawing. Other times, even if the other person is available, you don’t make an attempt to get back together but continue all the same to think about him or her incessantly. This fixation with a past partner affects budding new relationships, because it acts as a deactivating strategy, blocking you from getting close to someone else. Even though you’ll probably never get back together with your phantom ex, just the knowledge that they’re out there is enough to make any new partner seem insignificant by comparison. THE POWER OF “THE ONE” 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 s/he isn’t actually so hot after all?”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Seeing the Worm Instead of the Apple Another thought pattern that makes you keep your partner at a distance is “seeing the worm instead of the apple.” Carole had been with Bob for nine months and had been feeling increasingly unhappy. She felt Bob was the wrong guy for her, and gave a multitude of reasons: He wasn’t her intellectual equal, he lacked sophistication, he was too needy, and she didn’t like the way he dressed or interacted with people. Yet, at the same time, there was a tenderness about him that she’d never experienced with another man. He made her feel safe and accepted, he lavished gifts on her, and he had endless patience to deal with her silences, moods, and scorn. Still, Carole was adamant about her need to leave Bob. “It will never work,” she said time and again. Finally, she broke up with him. Months later she was surprised by just how difficult she was finding things without him. Lonely, depressed, and heartbroken, she mourned their lost relationship as the best she’d ever had. Carole’s experience is typical of people with an avoidant attachment style. They tend to see the glass half-empty instead of half-full when it comes to their partner. In fact, in one study, Mario Mikulincer, dean of the New School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and one of the leading researchers in the field of adult attachment, together with colleagues Victor Florian and Gilad Hirschberger, from the department of psychology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, asked couples to recount their daily experiences in a diary. 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. When something occurs that contradicts this perspective—such as their spouse behaving in a genuinely caring and loving manner—they are prone to ignoring the behavior, or at least diminishing its value. When they were together, Carole used many deactivating strategies, tending to focus on Bob’s negative attributes. 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.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“John Bowlby understood that our need for someone to share our lives with is part of
our genetic makeup and has nothing to do with how much we love ourselves or how fulfilled we feel on our own. He discovered that once we choose someone special, powerful and often uncontrollable forces
come into play.

New patterns of behavior kick in regardless of how independent we are and despite our conscious wills.

Once we choose a partner, there is no question about whether dependency exists or not. It always does. An elegant coexistence that does not include uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability and fear of loss sounds good but is not our biology. What proved through evolution to have a strong survival advantage is a human couple becoming one physiological unit, which means that if she’s reacting, then I’m reacting, or if he’s upset, that also makes me unsettled. He or she is part of me, and I will do anything to save him or her; having such a vested interest in the well-being of another person translates into a very important survival advantage for both parties.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“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, because the stakes are high:”
― Amir Levine, Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep – love

“our connection with our pets is an excellent example of a secure presence in our lives.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Finding the Right Partner—the Secure Way The principles we advocate throughout this book for finding the right partner are employed intuitively by people with a secure attachment style. They include: Spotting “smoking guns” very early on and treating them as deal breakers. Effectively communicating your needs from day one. Subscribing to the belief that there are many (yes, many!) potential partners who could make you happy. Never taking blame for a date’s offensive behavior. When a partner acts inconsiderately or hurtfully, secures acknowledge that it says a lot about the other person rather than about themselves. Expecting to be treated with respect, dignity, and love.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Getting attached means that our brain becomes wired to seek the support of our partner by ensuring the partner’s psychological and physical proximity.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“dependency paradox”: The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

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

“Our feelings and behaviors in relationships today are not very different from those of our early ancestors.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“John Bowlby believed that attachment styles are a function of life experience—especially of our interaction with our parents during infancy. A person will develop a secure attachment style if her parents are sensitive and responsive to her needs. Such a child will learn that she can rely on her parents, confident that they’ll be available to her whenever she needs them. But Bowlby maintained that it didn’t end there; he believed a secure child would carry this confidence into adulthood and future relationships with romantic partners.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Notice that if you feel unsettled in a relationship situation, all that is required is a minimal reassurance from your partner”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

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

“found that both anxious people and avoidant people use fewer positive conflict-resolution tactics, express more aggression, and tend more toward withdrawal and escalation of conflict than secure people.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“a specific pattern of the dopamine receptor DRD2 allele is associated with the anxious attachment style,”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“Last, the secure party engulfs his or her partner in an emotionally protective shield that makes facing the outside world an easier task.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

“What they don’t mention, because they are unaware of attachment science, is that they will make you seem more attractive to a very particular kind of partner—an avoidant one. Why? Because, in essence, what they are advocating is that you ignore your needs and let the other person determine the amount of closeness/distance in the relationship.”
― Amir Levine, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

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

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