Intimacy in Relationships: Is Your Attachment Style Holding You & Your Relationship Back? + FREE 7 Days of Intentional Intimacy Blueprint
In my last post on why being close is more important than sex, I talked about why we crave a deep emotional connection with our partner.
Like a lot of my clients, you might long for a deeper and more intimate bond with your partner. But you might have a hard time actually cultivating it in your relationship. And you might not know why.
If you’ve ever reflected on your desire for closeness and emotional connection, you might have realized that it isn’t just missing from your current relationship. You’ve struggled to create it in your past relationships too.
For example, maybe you’ve realized that you always end up in relationships where you seem to be more emotionally invested in the relationship than your partner is. Or perhaps you crave connection but any time that a relationship has gotten serious, you’ve panicked and pulled away.
If you notice that you keep running into the same problems with different partners and in different relationships, you might worry that there’s something wrong with you or that you’re incapable of being in a healthy relationship.
There isn’t. I promise.
Because there’s a perfectly normal explanation for why you might continuously struggle to build a close, healthy relationship with a romantic partner: your attachment style.
In this blog post, I’m going to talk all about attachment and how the attachment style you develop as a kid shapes your relationships as an adult.
I’ve got lots to share on this topic, so let’s get to it!
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What Is Attachment Theory?
Attachment theory is a scientific theory that tells us that our relationships with our caregivers as children shape our close relationships in adulthood.
In my previous post, I mentioned that our relationship with our caregivers in childhood is an important one. As young kids, we depend on our caregivers to fulfill our physical and emotional needs for survival.
According to attachment theory, if our caregivers provide a warm and caring environment and reliably satisfy our physical and emotional needs, we develop a healthy form of attachment to them, which is called secure attachment.
However, if our caregivers don’t reliably fulfill our needs in a warm, loving way, we develop what’s called an insecure form of attachment. There are 3 specific types of insecure attachment (which I’ll discuss in more detail below): anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.
Our attachment style in childhood serves as a template for the close relationships we form as adults. So if we were securely attached to our caregivers as kids, we’re more likely to have healthy, emotionally close relationships with romantic partners. But if we were insecurely attached to our caregivers, we’re more likely to struggle to form a close emotional bond with romantic partners.
Let’s talk about each of the four attachment styles in detail.
What are the 4 attachment styles?
1. Secure Attachment
Secure attachment is the most common type of attachment style. Estimates tell us that about 66% of people in the US are securely attached.
In childhood, secure attachment develops when a caregiver is attuned to a child’s needs and responds to them reliably. This teaches the child that they can trust and depend on their caregiver when they need them. It also allows them to feel safe, heard, and valued and tells them that they can expect comfort from their caregiver and support to explore the world.
If you have a secure attachment style, as an adult, you’re able to trust your partner, open up to them, and depend on them (in a healthy way). You thrive in relationships and enjoy intimacy, but you don’t need to constantly be near your partner or receive their approval or validation. And you’re usually successful with regulating your emotions in relationships, communicating your needs, and leaning on your partner for emotional support.
2. Anxious Attachment
Anxious attachment is one of the three types of insecure attachment. Called anxious ambivalent attachment in childhood, it typically develops when caregivers respond inconsistently to a child. For example, caregivers may be warm and responsive on some occasions but unresponsive to the child on other occasions. When caregivers respond inconsistently, it confuses the child and makes them uncertain about what they can expect from the caregivers in the future.
Caregivers of anxiously attached children may be more likely to seek out emotional closeness with the child for the sake of satisfying their own emotional needs (rather than the child’s). They may also engage in behaviors that seem overprotective or intrusive to satisfy their own need for love or present themselves as “good” parents.
If you have an anxious attachment style, as an adult, you might crave attention, care, and support from your partner and feel anxious about the idea of being without them. You might love your partner and strongly value your relationship but worry that your partner isn’t as invested in it as you are. As a result, you might have a fear of being abandoned by your partner and need their constant attention and responsiveness as reassurance.
If your partner doesn’t give you the attention and support you’re craving (even just temporarily), you might immediately worry that they’re going to leave you and become demanding, clingy, and even more desperate for their love as a result.
Why do you worry so much about being abandoned by your partner? As someone with an anxious attachment style, you might think highly of others but have a low self-esteem and question your worth as a partner. As a child, you were taught that you were worthy of love and attention some of the time but not all of the time. So as an adult, you might worry about not being good enough for your partner and what it means if they don’t always immediately respond to your needs.
As you can imagine, having anxious attachment can make it feel like you’re constantly on an emotional rollercoaster. When your partner gives you love and attention, you feel happy and content. But when your partner can’t immediately meet your needs because they’re preoccupied with something else, you might quickly feel overwhelmed by doubt, anxiety, and sadness.
3. Avoidant Attachment
Avoidant attachment is another type of insecure attachment.
Called anxious-avoidant attachment in childhood, it develops when caregivers are physically present but don’t respond to the emotional needs of the child. They might avoid showing emotion, pull away when the child reaches out for support and affection, and fail to accurately identify the child’s needs. This teaches children that they can’t expect to get affection and emotional support from others.
Caregivers may also strongly disapprove when the child expresses emotion, regardless of whether the emotion is positive or negative. They may react with anger, tell the child to toughen up, and expect the child to be independent and reserved.
If you have an avoidant attachment style, as an adult, you might be happy, social, and fun to be around. You might have a lot of friends but not rely on others for emotional closeness or support. As a result, your romantic relationships and other close relationships may lack emotional intimacy.
Specifically, you might avoid expressing your emotions to your partner, telling them how you feel, and being vulnerable with them. In other words, you avoid letting your partner in and allowing them to truly see you. You may even withdraw from your partner or try to end the relationship to avoid emotional closeness with them.
Your reluctance to open up emotionally to your partner stems from your belief that you don’t need to be emotionally close to other people to feel happy and fulfilled. As a child, you learned that you couldn’t rely on other people for emotional support, so you stopped expecting it from other people. As a result, you avoid becoming too close to other people and prefer to be independent and self-sufficient.
4. Disorganized Attachment
Disorganized attachment is the final type of insecure attachment. Called fearful avoidant attachment in childhood, it often develops following childhood trauma or abuse.
Specifically, children with disorganized attachment tend to have interactions with their caregivers that instill fear. This fear may develop when caregivers respond inconsistently and unpredictably, which creates uncertainty for the child about whether their needs will be met. Alternatively, the fear may stem from verbal, physical, or sexual abuse that the caregiver inflicts on the child or on someone else in the presence of the child.
In either case, the child learns that the people who are supposed to be a source of safety for them are actually a source of fear. They can’t count on their caregivers to meet their physical and emotional needs, and can’t even feel confident about knowing what to expect from them. Children with disorganized attachment may want closeness from their caregivers but also distance themselves from them out of fear.
If you have a disorganized attachment style, as an adult, you may crave closeness but struggle to trust people and let them in. You might want to love and be loved but also fear that your partner (and anyone else you get close to) will hurt you. Unlike people with an avoidant attachment style, you don’t dislike the idea of emotional intimacy. Instead, you’re afraid of it and think it will inevitably end in rejection, hurt, and disappointment.
Because you think rejection is inevitable in relationships, you might end relationships prematurely to avoid the hurt you think is unavoidable. You might even seek out partners who induce fear, which only reinforces your belief that other people can’t be trusted to love and support you.
Can You Change Your Attachment Style Now?
If you have an insecure attachment style (i.e., anxious, avoidant, or disorganized), you might be wondering if you can change it so that you can enjoy healthier relationships as an adult.
The short answer is “yes.”
Earlier in this post, I told you that attachment style tends to be stable over time. This means that the attachment style you develop in childhood is usually the one you have as an adult. However, this doesn’t mean that your attachment style can’t change in adulthood or that you can’t take steps to change it.
One way that your attachment style can change is if you’re in a relationship with a partner who has a secure attachment style. If they are attuned and responsive to your needs, it might allow you to trust them, open up to them, and become emotionally close to them. Over time, this can change your underlying beliefs about relationships and the way you approach relationships going forward.
You can also change an insecure attachment style by recognizing the patterns you engage in when interacting with partners or close friends and being mindful of them. Awareness of your current patterns in relationships will make it easier to change them. In addition, when you recognize that what happened in past relationships doesn’t determine what will happen in current or future ones, it becomes easier to break free from your current relationship assumptions and patterns.
When trying to change an insecure attachment style, you might also find it helpful to reflect on your childhood and the experiences that formed the basis of your insecure attachment style. This might enable you to heal past wounds and let go of hurt that reinforces the beliefs linked to your insecure attachment style.
Changing an insecure attachment style isn’t something that will happen overnight. But if you’re willing to reflect on your habits and patterns, examine your past, and try approaching close relationships in a different way, it’s possible to develop a secure attachment style and experience more emotional closeness in the relationships that matter to you.
Of course, as you work on changing your beliefs, habits, and patterns related to relationships, you can also take other steps to deepen the emotional connection in your relationship.
To help you do this, I’ve developed a FREE blueprint for you called 7 Days of Intentional Intimacy.
It helps you weave emotional intimacy into your everyday life in simple ways so that you build a closer emotional bond with your partner.
And if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and courses.
Until next time!
Vera
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