What are Attachment Styles and Why do they Matter?

Perhaps you’ve heard of attachment styles before and wondered about if it applies to you and if so, what to do about it.

Attachment styles are ways of relating to yourself and others. When you understand which attachment style you have, you can better identify where relationships are going sideways, and what to do about it. Attachment styles help you to understand what your core needs are in relationship. They can also help you to understand what type of partner you will need in order to feel most satisfied in relationship.

Where Does Attachment Come From?

Everyone has an attachment style. Your attachment style is formed in your childhood, as early as in infancy. When you’re brought into the world, your brain is learning so many things, including about relationships. When you cry and mom picks you up, rocks you, feeds you, or otherwise soothes you, you learn that your needs matter and that the world is generally a safe place where you can trust others. If little infant you cried out with no response in return, you learn otherwise. You might then cope with your distress by suppressing your needs and distancing from your desire for others, or you might cry out even more and have difficulty actually being settled once that soothing comes.

Since you can’t know how your mother attended to your crying, how does one find out what their attachment style is? Dynamics in adult relationships reveal one’s attachment style. While there is no definitive quiz to assess your attachment style, you might find yourself resonating most with one of the descriptions below.

Attachment Styles

Attachment styles are broken into two categories: Secure Attachment and Insecure Attachment. Secure attachment looks like someone who:

• Feels confident in themselves

• Generally knows what they want in relationship and can commit to it

• Is honest and reliable

• Believes that their needs matter to others and generally will be met by others

• Feels comfortable with closeness in relationship

• Feels comfortable with distance in relationships

• Is attentive to the needs of their partner

• Is comforting to their partner’s negative emotions

• Generally is emotionally regulated and can navigate conflict with clear communication

Someone who is insecurely attached and avoidant looks like someone who:

• Feels uncomfortable when their autonomy is challenged

• Struggles to commit in relationships

• Feels uncomfortable with lots of closeness or intimacy

• Struggles to be attentive to their partner’s negative emotions

• Generally finds other people needy

• Can come across cold or guarded in relationships

Someone who is insecurely attached and anxious looks like someone who:

• Feels uncomfortable with distance or separateness in relationship

• Often starts arguments, sometimes over seemingly menial things

• Might struggle significantly with jealousy

• Needs quite a bit of reassurance from their partner

• Prefers a lot of together-time

• Typically finds themselves attracted to avoidant types

There is a fourth type of attachment which is an insecure attachment style that is both avoidant and anxious, called disorganized attachment.

Why Attachment is Important

Attachment styles are subconscious, meaning that you’re not intentionally choosing to be this way in relationship. It is a programming of your nervous system. Your attachment style speaks to your strategy in relationship. If there’s a threat of a relationship ending, an anxiously attached person’s strategy is to hold on tight and get lots of reassurance to make sure they know the relationship is solid. The avoidantly attached person’s strategy for the threat of a relationship ending is to emotionally keep a distance so that it won’t hurt as bad when the relationship inevitably ends.

Unfortunately, both of these strategies make it difficult to have fulfilling and lasting relationships. However, when one knows their attachment style propensities, they can develop self-awareness and coping skills to effectively manage their emotional distress and communicate their needs effectively. For an anxiously attached person, this might look like learning to self-soothe rather than solely relying on a partner, or being able to ask directly for the kind of reassurance they need. For an avoidantly attached person, growth might look like gaining awareness of unhelpful thinking patterns and being able to communicate directly about their needs, such as asking for space when needed.

Once someone grows aware of their attachment style and is able to catch the negative patterns and shift them, they can begin to develop safe and secure connections that last. At first, this shift feels counter-intuitive and unsatisfying, but overtime, one’s nervous system begins to learn a new and healthier way of relating to others that leads to a more satisfying connection.