Types of attachment are quite important factors that are not always seen and felt, but they have a noticeable effect on your life and relationships. If you’ve ever noticed that you don’t understand your behavior in a relationship, your type of attachment may be the answer. Why are you pushing away the people you love? Why are you thinking about women online who don’t reply to you? Why do you feel the need to periodically take a pause in a relationship? The type of attachment affects everything from the choice of a partner to how well your relationship develops and why it ends. So, what is your relationship attachment style? And can you change your attachment style?
Attachment style in relationships definition and basic facts
Have you ever wondered why you act the way you do in a relationship and where does this behavior come from? It’s a scientific fact: your past relationships and how you were attached to the people you cared about earlier in your life have a huge impact on your romantic relationships. Your past actually determines your attachment style. Could one psychological theory predict the future connections we create and the relationships we build?
The type of attachment in a relationship is something that many don’t think about. And this is important in order to understand why a person acts this way and continues to make the same mistakes, for example, has a one-sided relationship and suffers from it all the time. Attachment style is a model of relationships that each of us, as a child, forms in relationships with our parents. Attachment develops gradually during our first year of life and is usually already formed at the age of eight months.
As it was said, a certain type of attachment is often formed in childhood. And in adulthood, it can affect the relationship with a partner. Alas, it is impossible to recognize this type in advance. It is revealed only in the process of relationships.
What influences the relationship attachment style?
Attachment style is a bond that attracts and holds people close to someone or something when neither a feeling of love nor interest or benefit connects them. We give a part of ourselves, we invest our energy. It turns out that we love someone not for what a person does for us but for what we do for him or her! This is psychology. Thinking about someone is also considered an investment of energy in a relationship when we endlessly replay in our heads what a loved one said, thought, or how they looked at you. Attachments also arise with our emotional responses if a person hurts us a lot, positively or negatively.
After sex, women and some men also become attached. That is why it is not recommended to have sex on the first date.
If people don’t fill themselves with a feeling of self-love, then no external substitutes will help. If we don’t develop a feeling of love for ourselves, then various attachments will arise.
What is your relationship attachment style?
There are four main styles of attachment. In fact, they are all part of our subconscious. They tell us about how a person forms personal relationships, deals with intimacy, conflicts, and everything related to romantic relationships. So, what is your attachment style?
Secure attachment style
People whose relationships are built on a secure attachment style are less emotional and get more out of relationships. But why is this so? What is the secret? The answer is simple – people just trust each other. A morally mature, smart, and self-sufficient person is not afraid of responsibility and builds the future with a loved one. In such a relationship, there is no place for jealousy or suspicion. People don’t try to control each other because relationships are built on full trust. Yes, we all need personal space, but we also should give it to our partners. You respect the other person’s need for space and, at the same time, you acknowledge the importance of teamwork. You can enter into dialogue and relate to your partner’s arguments with respect. Manipulation or self-love is not about such a relationship. You don’t lose trust and love but show concern for your loved one every day. You are able to objectively appreciate relationships.
Fearful-avoidant attachment style
When you get closer in a relationship, fear suddenly appears and you run away or close out emotionally. It looks like an insecure attachment style. You know situations when a bride escaped before the wedding. This is it. She is afraid, sometimes unconsciously, that as soon as she decides to be together, gets married, etc., something terrible will happen. This happens to victims of violence, both physical and mental. In extreme cases, it may indicate a paranoid or anxious personality disorder. It can also occur in people with borderline disorder, which manifests itself as an avoidance type. It is difficult for such people to be loving and open, despite the desire for closeness. In this case, the desire to move away is dictated by the fear of rejection, as well as the discomfort of emotional closeness. They don’t trust their partners and see them in from a negative side, but they also don’t consider themselves worthy of their partner’s love.
Anxious attachment style
If you have an anxious attachment style, then you have mixed feelings – both love and anxiety. You want to be together, but you don’t trust your partner: you are jealous, you suspect, constantly checking, calling, and sending messages 100 times a day because you are very afraid that they stopped loving you or found someone else. People with anxious attachment often push their partners to break up with their obsession. After all, not everyone can stand it. Such people usually show a high level of anxiety and never leave their chosen ones. Of all the four types of attachment, this is the most intrusive behavior model since a person is afraid that he/she will be rejected and left alone. Such people can fantasize and this illusion suppresses the sense of reality. They are capable of overdoing their relationship work, over-expressing their emotions, and openly expressing anger or anxiety when they feel their relationships are under threat.
Dismissive-avoidant
The anxious-avoidant attachment style is extremely independent. These people regularly complain that they feel “out of breath” when others try to approach them. People of this type of attachment are characterized by distrust. It is difficult for them to ask for help from others. They treat relationships differently than others. They don’t require intimacy, and their needs for personal space and other emotional demands are not expressed. This doesn’t mean at all that they don’t like their partners, but their way of being and expressing themselves doesn’t coincide with theirs. Lack of expressions of love and affection can cause a lot of suffering in a couple. They don’t know what to do with their partner’s emotions. They lack empathy, they always need space both physical and personal. These people understand that they need to work on relationships, but at the same time, they fear being hurt.
How your attachment style impacts your relationship
Relations between parents and a child in childhood determine our future life. We reproduce this model as adults. It influences the choice of a partner and how our relationships with others will be built.
1. If your parents were kind, considerate, and helpful, responding to your needs, taking good care of you, and a family was a safe place for you, you should have no trouble maintaining close relationships. You are sincere and open about your emotions and desires. You are comfortable living in a couple, you are ready to compromise and know how to look at the situation through the eyes of your partner. As a result, your love life is stable and predictable.
2. If your parents were cold, unresponsive, emotionally detached, you probably became self-reliant early and resembled a “little adult.” You don’t want to depend on anyone even now. Close relationships scare you, you are afraid that you will be “strangled” with love, put in a golden cage (usually women) or lose your freedom (usually men). The more persistent your partner, the more you try to hide. You can’t be with someone for a long time, you need to be alone in order to calm down and reboot. You don’t want to marry because you don’t want to take on obligations.
3. Many people wonder how to be in a relationship with an avoidant attachment style. Well, it is difficult. If your parents were inconsistent, for example, today they pampered you, and tomorrow they were cruel, today they were indifferent, and the next day they kissed you, showering you with gifts, you begin to cling to people important to you, reminding them of yourself. You never have enough love and attention, you are emotionally hungry and want more communication, care, tenderness, participation. You pester your partner asking if he/she loves you, and you are constantly looking for “proof”. They call you too demanding, clingy, or intrusive. Such an attitude reinforces the anxious people’s idea of themselves that they are rejected by everyone and no one needs them.
Can you change your attachment style? How?
Scientists from the University of Kansas suggest that genetic factors may play a role in the formation of attachment: some variations in genes encoding dopamine and serotonin receptors can contribute to the formation of anxiety and anxiety-avoidant types of attachment. But at the moment this is just a guess.
As shown by long-term American studies, in 70-80% of the population taking the relationship attachment style test, the type of attachment doesn’t change much over time. This means that the patterns of relationships that were embedded in us in childhood are indeed very stable.
On the other hand, a certain percentage of people can still change their approach to relationships, which means that the type of attachment is only a persistent habit, but not an integral part of the personality and something can be done with it. How to change your attachment style? You can change it by going to psychological training, meditating, and trying to make a better version of yourself.
So, now you know how your attachment style impacts your relationship. It greatly affects the quality of the relationship in a couple. Indeed, it is one thing when a relationship is based on confidence and then more experiences of joy, love, and satisfaction are possible. And another thing is when a relationship is based on insecurity where it is held from the experience of fear – fear of losing a partner, fear of abandonment, rejection, fear of loneliness, and despair. Once you understand the reasons for your unsatisfying, you can change everything.
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