The 3 Attachment Styles In Relationships + How To Identify Yours
Here's everything you need to know about the three attachment styles. Plus, how to find your own attachment style.
Why are some people very aloof and unattached in their relationships, while others are clingy and need constant validation? According to attachment theory, it's because different people have different attachment styles.
Here's everything you need to know about the three attachment styles, how they're formed in childhood, and how to develop a secure attachment style.
What is an attachment style?
An attachment style is a specific pattern of behavior in and around relationships. There are three adult attachment styles: secure attachment, anxious attachment, and avoidant attachment.
According to attachment theory, first developed by psychologist Mary Ainsworth and psychiatrist John Bowlby in the 1950s, a person's attachment style is shaped and developed in early childhood in response to their relationships with their earliest caregivers. Essentially, our adult attachment style is thought to mirror the dynamics we had with our caregivers as infants and children.
Attachment style includes the way we tend to respond emotionally to others, how we usually interact with partners in relationships, and how we behave when it comes to relationships in general.
The Three Attachment Styles:
Secure Attachment
Secure attachment style refers to the ability to form secure, loving relationships with others. A person with a secure attachment style is able to trust others and be trusted, love and accept love, and become close to others with relative ease.
They're not afraid of intimacy, nor do they feel panicked when their partners need time or space away from them. They're able to depend on others without becoming totally dependent.
About 56% of adults have a secure attachment type. Secure attachment is considered the healthy ideal for relationships. All other attachment styles that are not secure are known as insecure attachment styles.
2.Anxious Attachment
Anxious attachment style is a type of insecure attachment style marked by a deep fear of abandonment. People with an anxious attachment style tend to be very insecure about their relationships, often worrying that their partner will leave them and thus always hungry for validation.
Anxious attachment is associated with "neediness" or clingy behavior in relationships, such as getting very anxious when your partner doesn't text back fast enough and constantly feeling like your partner doesn't care enough about you.
Some 19% of adults have the anxious attachment type, according to Hazan and Shaver's research.
3. Avoidant Attachment
Avoidant attachment style is a type of insecure attachment style marked by a fear of intimacy. People with an avoidant attachment style tend to have trouble getting close to others or trusting others in relationships, because they ultimately don't believe their needs can get met in a relationship.
In relationships, avoidant people typically maintain some distance from their partners or are largely emotionally unavailable. They may even find relationships suffocating and avoid them completely, preferring to be independent and rely on themselves.
Some 25% of adults have the avoidant attachment type, according to Hazan and Shaver.
How To Identify Your Attachment Style
Below are the descriptions of the main attachment types used in Hazan and Shaver's foundational research on attachment theory. Read the statements and pick the one that most resonates with you:
1. I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don't often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.
2. I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or won't want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away.
3. I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being.
Which one sounds most like you?
How Attachment Styles Are Formed
Attachment styles are typically developed in infancy based on our relationships with our earliest caregivers. Researchers believe attachment style is formed within our first year of living, between 7 to 11 months of age. It's determined by how the primary caregiver responds to the child's cues when they are experiencing emotional stress.
Human beings are born helpless, so we are hardwired at birth to search for and attach to a reliable caregiver for protection. The quality of that first bond—loving and stable or inconsistent or even absent—actually shapes the developing brain, influencing us throughout life in how we deal with loss and how we behave in relationships.
Here's a quick primer on what circumstances lead to each of the three attachment types:
Secure attachment: Caregivers are responsive and attuned to their child's needs.
Anxious attachment: Caregivers are inconsistent, unpredictable with affections, sometimes overly involved, and intermittently withdrawn. It's the unpredictable fluctuation between caregivers being emotionally available and then distant that leads children to be anxious about all their future relationships.
Avoidant attachment: Caregivers are not responsive, and they are often dismissive and distant. They're consistently emotionally disconnected from their child resulting in the child believing that their needs won't get met.
Caregivers are not the only ones who shape your attachment style, however.
People's attachment styles may also be influenced by other significant relationships throughout their lives, such as friendships and past romantic relationships.
A person can have had a secure attachment during childhood; however, betrayals and infidelity in adulthood can lead to an insecure attachment.
It's also possible to have a different attachment style in different situations, according to research. While we may have a primary attachment style, depending on our relationships, we may feel more secure with one person than we do with another. For many people, their attachment style is not the same in every relationship they encounter. Things that contribute to this are their counterpart's (romantic or platonic) personality and feelings of safety.
How To Change Your Attachment Style
Identify your relationship patterns.
Start by thinking about your relationship with your parents as a child. Ask yourself questions like:
How were they toward you as a child?
How did you respond to them?
To whom did you go for comfort when you had a problem?
Were they negligent or reliable?
This will help you get more clarity on what may have shaped your attachment style.
Assess your current and past attachment style and identify if there are any patterns in choosing romantic partners. Be aware of your childhood history; the familiarity is comforting, whether it was good or bad. Meaning, your past unhealthy relationship patterns from childhood can recreate in adulthood.
2. Work on your self-esteem.
Low self-esteem is a common characteristic across all insecure attachment styles.
Learn to embrace, value, love, and care for yourself first.
If you cannot fathom what self-love is because you were neglected, abused, and dismissed as a child, you can start with self-tolerance and self-neutrality. This can look like, 'I'm a person, and everyone deserves to be valued' instead of forcing yourself with empty words of, 'I'm beautiful and valuable.'
3.Get in touch with your real needs.
At the end of the day, all insecure attachment styles are people who tend to form insecure relationships because of deeply held fears that their relationships will not work out. So it's important to figure out how to make yourself feel more secure in your relationships. Part of that involves being aware of what your needs and desires are in relationships.
Learn to be assertive and set boundaries. Honor what you feel, and express your needs in words without manipulation and hidden meanings. Securely attached people are often direct and appropriately confrontational to create a healthy and meaningful relationship.
4. Don't be afraid to seek therapy.
Therapy is helpful, both individual and couples. A quality therapist will help you to dive into your attachment style, past wounds, ways to identify, establish appropriate boundaries, and promote a healthy relationship.