Understanding Attachment Styles

Where attachment theory comes from, what the four adult styles feel like from the inside, how they show up with partners, friends and at work, and why none of them is fixed.

13 minute read  ·  2,907 words  ·  four styles

Your partner says, “I think I need a quiet weekend on my own.” One person hears a perfectly reasonable request. Another hears the beginning of the end. A third feels a flicker of relief that’s a little hard to admit. If you’ve ever wondered why the same words land so differently, part of the answer may lie in attachment theory, the idea that our earliest relationships teach us what to expect from closeness, and that those expectations follow us into the relationships we have now.

Bowlby, Ainsworth, and the Strange Situation

Attachment theory began with the British psychiatrist John BowlbyJohn Bowlby 1907 to 1990British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Much of his early work was with children separated from their families, and a 1951 report he wrote for the World Health Organization argued that young children need a warm, continuous relationship with a caregiver. in the middle of the twentieth century. His big idea was that we’re born needing closeness, the same way we’re born needing food. He noticed that how babies were cared for seemed to shape how they coped with being apart, and later how they handled relationships of their own.

Later, Mary AinsworthMary Ainsworth 1913 to 1999Developmental psychologist, born in the United States and raised in Canada. Before the Strange Situation, she spent months watching mothers and babies at home, first in Uganda and later in Baltimore., a developmental psychologist, put Bowlby’s ideas to the test with a short observation called the Strange Situation. A baby and parent spend a few minutes in an unfamiliar playroom, the parent slips out briefly and then comes back, and researchers watch what the baby does at the reunion.

Ainsworth described three patterns: secure, avoidant and anxious-ambivalent. In the 1980s, Mary Main and Judith Solomon added a fourth, disorganized, for babies whose reactions didn’t fit any of the three. It was only years later that researchers started asking whether adults show something similar in their closest relationships. The patterns were first seen in babies, and only later traced into adult love.

Here’s what the Strange Situation looks like in practice. Keep an eye on what the baby does when the parent comes back, because that reunion is the moment researchers watch most closely.

Two dimensions rather than four boxes

The four adult styles are usually presented as a list. They’re better read as a field with two dimensions: how much you worry about closeness, and how much you avoid it. Even Ainsworth’s baby patterns, it turns out, sort along two very similar lines.

In most studies, somewhere between half and three in five adults have a mostly secure attachment style, and secure is the most common style in most of the countries that have been studied. How everyone else divides up depends a lot on who’s asked and how, which is one more reason to think of these as sliding scales rather than four boxes.

What it looks like on an ordinary evening

You send a message that matters to you, and the reply doesn’t come. One person puts the phone down and gets on with the evening. Another checks it every few minutes and starts rereading what they wrote, looking for the mistake. A third is a little relieved by the quiet, and then takes a day to answer the next message. It’s the same silence, and it makes three very different nights.

That’s your attachment style in everyday life. It shows up less in big dramatic moments and more in small, automatic reactions whenever someone you care about feels close, or far away. When you lean anxious, your system tends to turn the volume up: you notice every sign of distance and reach harder for reassurance. When you lean avoidant, it tends to turn the volume down: you play down what you need and reach for space. Neither reaction is a flaw. Each one is a way you learned to stay safe with the people you needed.

Where do you sit?

Now that you’ve met all four attachment styles, here’s a way to think about where you usually land. Move the two sliders to where you tend to be with someone close to you, and see where that puts you on the field.

How attachment styles affect adult relationships

Most research on adult attachment asks about romantic partners, but your attachment style shows up with friends, family and at work too. You have a style with your mother, your father, your closest friend and your partner, and they don’t always match. They’re related, a bit like cousins, but the one that best predicts how a particular relationship goes is the style you have in that relationship. At work, the same patterns turn up in how people handle feedback and colleagues. For example:

And if you’re a parent reading this and running through a checklist, take a breath. Being responsive to your child matters, but it’s one ingredient among many, and no parent gets it right every time. Children need a base that’s reliable enough, not a parent who’s perfect.

When one of you reaches and the other retreats

Plenty of couples will recognize this one. Something feels off, and one of you wants to talk about it right now. The other needs to go quiet first. The more one reaches, the more the other pulls back, and the more the other pulls back, the harder the first one reaches. By the end of the evening, you’re both hurt, and neither of you got what you needed.

Couples researchers call this the demand-withdraw pattern, and it’s one of the best-studied patterns there is. It goes with unhappier relationships, whichever partner is doing the chasing. Attachment seems to play a part. In one study of newlyweds, couples with an anxious wife and an avoidant husband got physically stressed just waiting for a difficult conversation. During it, she found it hard to see when he was upset, and he found it hard to turn to her for support.

The cycle is the problem, not either person in it. Once you can both name it, even just “we’re doing the thing again,” you can step out of it together. The one who chases slows down. The one who retreats says when they’ll come back, and then really does come back. Small moments of turning back toward each other help the rest of the time.

Can you have more than one attachment style?

If an online quiz has ever told you that you’re “an avoidant,” it’s worth knowing how researchers actually see attachment styles. When they’ve tested whether people really fall into separate types, the answer keeps coming back no. Attachment works like a sliding scale, and it can shift from one relationship to the next. It works more like height than like blood type: everyone sits somewhere on the two scales, and most of us sit somewhere in the middle of both.

A style describes how you’ve learned to protect yourself. It isn’t a verdict on who you are, and it isn’t a diagnosis. That’s worth remembering when “avoidant” gets thrown around online like an insult. Someone who needs space isn’t broken, and someone who needs reassurance isn’t too much!

Someone who felt secure growing up can become more guarded, or more anxious, after a betrayal, a loss or a painful breakup. Studies that follow people over many years find that big life events like these are often where change happens.

Recognizing that you can have more than one attachment style can be a relief. The way you are with one person doesn’t decide how you’ll be with the next.

Can your attachment style change?

Attachment styles can change. On average, people become a little less anxious and a little less avoidant as they get older, and being in a relationship seems to help. Relationships don’t only reveal your style. Over time, they can change it. When a partner meets anxiety with steady, specific reassurance, or gives an avoidant person room while staying warm, the insecure reaction tends to calm down. Being loved well, over time, is one of the ways people become more secure.

Therapy can help too. When researchers pulled together studies of people in therapy, security tended to rise and attachment anxiety tended to fall, across many kinds of therapy, CBT included. Avoidance shifted less clearly, so it’s a hopeful picture rather than a finished one. For couples, emotionally focused therapy is built around attachment and has good evidence for easing relationship distress, with signs that partners feel more secure with each other afterward. Mindfulness may help as well: people who are more mindful tend to be less anxious and less avoidant in their relationships, although it isn’t yet clear which comes first.

If you lean one way

Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, Attached (2010)

If you lean anxious, the urge to send one more message is a feeling, not an instruction. Try naming it to yourself first, something like “I’m scared they’re pulling away,” and give it ten minutes before you act on it (the phone will still be there). It helps to tell a partner plainly what reassures you, because a clear ask is so much easier to meet than a test. And build your footing outside the relationship too. Anxiety seems to ease most when you feel surer of your own worth, so friendships, work you’re proud of and time alone that feels good all count.

One caveat: if a partner keeps letting you down, or treats you badly, the worry may be an accurate read of the relationship, and the relationship is what needs looking at.

If you lean avoidant, notice the moment you reach for space, and try staying one minute longer. Avoidance seems to loosen through small, low-stakes experiences of relying on someone and finding that it goes fine. When you do need space, say so, and say when you’ll be back, so it lands as a pause rather than a door closing.

In both cases, the aim is to widen your range, so the old reaction becomes one option rather than the only one.

Earned security

Some people had a hard start and have a secure attachment style anyway. Researchers call this earned security. It means a difficult childhood doesn’t have to decide how you love as an adult. Most of this research uses a long interview about childhood, not the short questionnaires behind online quizzes. The two measure related but different things, so a quiz result and an interview result won’t always agree.

There’s a catch, though. When adults are asked to look back, some who describe a rough childhood turn out to have had more support than they remember. But when children have been followed from infancy, some who started out insecure really did grow into secure adults with good relationships, and whether people changed often tracked what happened to them along the way. Where you started shapes you, but it doesn’t get the last word.

Where therapy fits

If you’re curious about your own attachment style and how it might be shaping your relationships, exploring it with a therapist can be a good first step. You don’t need to know your style to start. Noticing the pattern is enough.

In therapy, you can look at where the pattern started, what keeps it going now, and what you’d like to do differently.