Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Attachment Styles
Dear Dr. Darcy,
I recently started dating a woman that I really like. It’s been just under two months and instead of being able to enjoy the early stages of the relationship, I find myself thinking about the holidays that are coming up. Specifically, by Thanksgiving it will be almost 5 months and then by Christmas, it will be 6 months and my head just goes to “Am I expected to bring her home or meet her parents over the holidays?”
I’m fine being in a relationship but the timing of when we met is making me feel pressure I wish I could shake off. Any advice would be appreciated.
There’s nothing like a brand new relationship — unless you’re a straight guy who’s math skills enable him to foresee a pressure point coming down the road…
I don’t know how you managed to pull yourself out of the sex haze to contemplate the future but the fact that you have makes me think that this may not be the first time you’ve felt pressure to advance a relationship.
The good news is that this problem is yours alone, which means the solution is also within your control.
I think it’s all going to boil down to your attachment style, which I’ve taken the liberty of distilling further below, but for those of you who don’t want to read my dissertation, here’s the bottom line:
I’m betting you have an avoidant attachment style, and since I’m a scientist I’m asking you to confirm my hunch by taking this quiz to measure it.
Assuming I’m right, follow these steps when you find your mind anticipating the next relationship milestone, and know that the solve has nothing to do with her, but with tolerating your own discomfort.
-
- Acknowledge the way you feel. Say to yourself, I’m feeling anxiety about today’s proximity to the holidays, and what that’s going to mean for introducing my new girlfriend to my family and / or meeting hers.
- Validate your feelings to yourself. Say to yourself, It makes sense that I feel this way because I have an avoidant attachment style (presuming this proves true) and learned as a child that being attached to others won’t result in getting my needs met.
- Big Brother yourself. Pretend you’re a diplomat or your own big brother and negotiate a compromise. Say, The way I’m feeling is rooted in my history — not in the here-and-now. My body is responding to experiences I had when I wasn’t able to advocate for myself. Today I’m an adult and I can lean into this relationship without fearing pressure to advance it. If it becomes too much, I can set a boundary or end the relationship, because I am an adult who can ensure that my needs get met.
And for those of you who suffer from insomnia, proceed along to the dissertation portion of this lecture…
WTF is an Attachment Style?
We learn how to love and how to get our needs met during childhood through the care we receive by our primary caregivers. The extent to which they fulfill our needs creates a template that informs how we act in our closest adult relationships, and we call that template our attachment style.
For simplicity’s sake, there is 1 ideal attachment style and 3 less-than-ideal attachment styles that we leave childhood with. I’ve broken them down below:
Secure Attachment Style:
People with this attachment style have hit the childhood lottery because it means their caregivers did a good enough job meeting their needs. And it is like hitting the lottery because the odds are against you having this style.
Securely attached people are comfortable expressing love and affection. They’re able to set boundaries, can directly ask for help when they need it, and are able to offer support to others. They tend to be comfortable alone as well as in the company of others. They can accept rejection and move on, despite the pain. They’re also able to end unhappy relationships.
INSECURE ATTACHMENT STYLES
Avoidant / Dismissive Attachment Style:
People with an avoidant attachment style (aka dismissive attachment style) had caregivers who were emotionally unavailable, insensitive, and/or responded with overwhelm to their child’s needs.
The child responded to the parents’ limited ability to meet their needs by shutting their needs down.
Consequently, people with this attachment style tend to be very self-reliant and independent. They can be uncomfortable having others depend on them and are prone to feeling suffocated in relationships.
They are sensitive to pressure to advance relationships to the next level and tend to be unavailable to their partners.
They’re short on words and generally look stoic / devoid of emotion. They also struggle with being emotionally attuned to those closest to them.
Because they tend to be disconnected from their needs, people in relationship with them tend to think they have few needs, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in which their needs do not get met.
Anxious / Preoccupied / Ambivalent Attachment Style:
People with an anxious attachment style had parents who inconsistently met their needs. When their needs were met, it was because as children, they got louder and louder. The love and care they received came in unpredictable ways, but usually because they demanded it.
Anxiously attached people often worry that they feel too much and therefore need too much.
The hallmark of this attachment style is a core fear of abandonment.
People who are anxiously attached struggle with being alone and with giving their partners space. They can struggle with trust, and if they do struggle with it, they are prone to jealousy.
They can read a room like no one else because they learned how to scan their caregivers for clues about how they feel to gauge how likely they were to get their needs met.
Because their caregivers inconsistently met their needs, they are on the lookout for ways in which people don’t meet their needs — family members, romantic partners, friends, service providers — they’re rarely satisfied in relationships.
They tend to idealize romantic relationships and rely too heavily on being in a relationship for their self-esteem. They feel pressure to keep loved ones entertained, which they often do by talking too much, making those around them feel like they’re being hit with a firehose.
People with this attachment style rely heavily on the reactions of those around them, making people who have an avoidant or a disorganized attachment style a very complicated match.
Their behaviors can push people away which in turn reinforces their core fear that they can be easily abandoned.
They have difficulty self-soothing and rely on others to calm them down and to cope with stress.
They tend to be slow to return to their emotional equilibrium.
Disorganized / Fearful:
This results when the primary caregiver, who should have been a source of safety, security, and soothing, was instead a source of fear for the child. People with this attachment style usually had abusive or terribly neglectful childhoods.
Their caregivers created situations that were unsolvable and unwinnable for them. When exposed to these impossible-to-resolve situations over and over again, the child developed a pattern of not solving problems, or if they learned to solve problems, it was without help or guidance from their caregivers. Consequently, people with this attachment style tend to expect others to intuitively know how to do things and / or perform tasks without having to teach them.
The disorganized attachment style is the hybrid of insecure attachment styles because people who have it embody both avoidant and anxious tendencies in relationships. They often lash out at people who try to get close to them and can feel deeply uncomfortable after feeling connected with another.
People with this attachment style tend to have little or no strategy on how to have their needs met, so they are not able to guide partners on how to meet their needs. When they are emotionally escalated, they are prone to dissociative symptoms.
*Earned Secure Attachment Style:
Attachment styles are malleable. They can change over time for better or for worse. They can get worse if you’re in a relationship with someone who has a severely insecure attachment style — and most importantly — they can heal when you put in the work.
To that end, an Earned Secure attachment style results when an adult, who had an insecure attachment style, heals their attachment style and scores in the securely attached category on a valid attachment style assessment.
Writer’s Demographics
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Straight