Founded by psychoanalyst John Bowlby in the 1950s and expanded by Mary Ainsworth, attachment theory outlines how your bond with your primary caregivers sets the foundation for how you navigate relationships throughout life.
“Bowlby believed that because of this evolution, infants and toddlers were monitoring their parents to see what strategies would allow them to stay close,” Jordan says.
The four types of attachment styles:
- secure
- avoidant (aka dismissive, or anxious-avoidant in children)
- anxious (aka preoccupied, or anxious-ambivalent in children)
- disorganized (aka fearful-avoidant in children)
Avoidant, anxious, and disorganized are considered insecure attachment styles.
If a child can consistently rely on their parents to fulfill their needs growing up, they’re likely to develop a secure attachment style. They’ll see relationships as a safe space where they can express their emotions freely.
On the other hand, insecure attachment styles develop if a child has had a strained bond with their caregivers. This happens when the child learns they may not be able to rely on others to fulfill basic needs and comfort.
Enter: Attachment style, adulthood, and romantic relationships
“We unconsciously expect our romantic partners to act as our parents did, and therefore, we act in certain ways due to these expectations,” says Jordan.
Regardless of your primary relationships, you can change attachment styles.
“The most important takeaway is realizing that someone can change from an insecure attachment style and develop healthy and secure bonds in future relationships,” explains Katarzyna Peoples, PhD, a relationship counselor.
What’s a secure attachment style?
Secure attachment is defined by an ability to build healthy, long-lasting relationships, says Peoples.
How it develops
Secure attachment is the result of feeling secure with your caregivers from childhood and being able to ask for reassurance or validation without punishment.
Ultimately, you felt safe, understood, comforted, and valued during your early interactions.
How it manifests in relationships
“Securely attached people grow up feeling secure emotionally and physically and can engage in the world with others in a healthy way,” says Peoples.
As a result, people with secure attachment styles tend to navigate relationships well. They’re generally positive, trusting, and loving to their partners.
“They trust their partners’ intentions and jealousy is often not an issue for them,” adds Peoples. “Securely attached people feel that they’re worthy of love and don’t need external reassurance.”
What’s an avoidant attachment style?
“[It’s] defined by failures to build long-term relationships with others due to an inability to engage in physical and emotional intimacy,” says Peoples.
How it develops
In childhood, you may have had strict or emotionally distant and absent caregivers.
Your caregivers may have:
- left you to fend for yourself
- expected you to be independent
- reprimanded you for depending on them
- rejected you when expressing your needs or emotions
- been slow to respond to your basic needs
How it manifests in relationships
Anxious-avoidant attached adults may tend to navigate relationships at an arm’s length, says Peoples.
“The need for emotional intimacy is simply lacking in this type of individual, so romantic relationships are not able to reach any level of depth,” she adds.
“While they allow romantic partners to engage with them, they avoid getting emotionally close,” Peoples explains. “A partner may feel as if they can never get inside and will inevitably be stone-walledor dismissed when the relationship feels too serious for the anxious-avoidant partner.”
What’s an anxious attachment style?
Anxious attachment style — is another type of insecure attachment characterized by:
- fear of rejection
- fear of abandonment
- depending on a partner for validation and emotional regulation
How it develops
This attachment style stems from inconsistent parenting that isn’t attuned to a child’s needs.
“These children have difficulty understanding their caregivers and have no security for what to expect from them moving forward. [They’re] often confused within their parental relationships and feel unstable,” says Peoples.
“Children with this attachment style experience very high distress when their caregivers leave. Sometimes, the parents will be supportive and responsive to the child’s needs while at other times, they will not be attuned to their children,” she adds.
“Therefore, these children often grow up thinking they are supposed to take care of other people’s feelings and often become codependent,” Peoples says.
How it manifests in relationships
According to Peoples, people with anxious attachment styles usually feel unworthy of love and need constant reassurance from their partners.
“They often blame themselves for challenges in the relationship and can exhibit frequent and intense jealousy or distrust due to poor self-esteem,” she says.
Ultimately, there’s a deep-rooted fear of being abandoned, rejected, or alone. And those fears typically express themselves in these ways.
What’s a disorganized attachment style?
“Anxious-disorganized attachment is defined as having extremely inconsistent behavior and difficulty trusting others,” says Peoples.
How it develops
The most common causes of a disorganized attachment style are childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse. Fear of their parents (their sense of safety) is also present.
Children with this attachment style may seem confused.
How it manifests in relationships
In relationships, people with disorganized attachment styles tend to have unpredictable and confusing behavior. Jordan says they alternate between being aloof and independent and being clingy and emotional.
“While they desperately seek love, they also push partners away because of the fear of love,” says Peoples. “They believe that they’ll always be rejected, but they don’t avoid emotional intimacy. They fear it, and they also consistently seek it out, only to reject it again.”
“They perceive their partners as unpredictable, and they themselves behave in unpredictable ways within their relationships as they continue to wrestle between the need for security and fear,” she adds.