Attachment Theory: How You Show Up In a Relationship
Attachment Theory: How You Show Up In a Relationship
Humans have a basic need for love and connection. How we go about getting that love and connection is different depending on a person’s attachment type. This is something that is developed with caregivers in childhood and shows up in relationships throughout life.
People will act very differently when it comes to conflicts. Some people will ignore the problem and spend time by themselves. Other people will want to fix the problem right away. Some people will avoid it, and then switch to fix it. Our emotional needs really show up in conflicts.
Understanding the 4 attachment styles can help you to understand why people do what they do. This gives you a better view of yourself as well as your partner.
In early childhood, attachment styles are based on how a child and their parents interact. For adults, attachment styles are centered on patterns in romantic relationships. Your style of attachment can affect who you pick for a partner as well as how that relationship plays out. Recognizing your attachment style will help you to understand your strengths and weaknesses in a relationship.
Attachment Theory and The 4 Attachment Types
Attachment is how you react to your needs and what you do to get them met. Conflict usually arises in relationships when needs aren’t being met and unproductive techniques are used in an attempt to get them met. Insecure attachment happens when you don’t have a healthy balance of meeting your own emotional needs and expecting others to meet your needs.
The more you know about yourself and your partner, the easier it will be to get each other’s needs met. Learning about attachment styles will help you understand how to do that for each other. Anybody can make progress and change. The more you learn about attachment styles, the more strategies you will have to push yourself to a secure attachment.
We are going to focus on how the 4 attachment styles show up in conflicts within adult relationships. Everybody can learn much more about each of the attachment types and really work on themselves to become more secure. Hopefully, this overview will give you an idea of where you fall and get you thinking about how you show up in your relationship.
Dismissive Avoidant Attachment Style
The dismissive attachment style presents itself as an independent person. The one who doesn’t need others to meet their needs. They see themselves as not needing other people and are happy to go through challenges alone. They may seem emotionally unavailable to their partners and have a hard time opening up.
When there is a conflict in a relationship, the dismissive avoidant will turn away. They will see the conflict as bad or something that has made them feel bad. They will then try to meet their needs on their own. This may look like a partner working on their car the rest of the day, baking in the kitchen, playing video games, etc. They will come off as uninterested.
A partner seeing this may translate it as not caring about the relationship or even selfishness. They don’t understand the pain that the dismissive avoidant associates with vulnerability. A dismissive avoidant may even verbalize that he doesn’t care due to the pain they have associated with opening up. They need to protect themselves so that they don’t have to experience a situation where they feel like they are broken.
A dismissive avoidant is not familiar or comfortable with others meeting their emotional needs so they don’t return to the conflict quickly to work it out. They value that time with themselves to self-soothe.
The dismissive avoidant doesn’t have a healthy ratio of meeting their own emotional needs and getting needs met by their partner. They have learned to meet their needs on their own and will push away from someone who doesn’t allow them to do that.
Anxious Attachment Style
Also referred to as the anxious preoccupied attachment, the anxious attachment style is the person who runs back to a conflict to fix it right away. They feel immense pain from that detached feeling that couples experience after a conflict. They want to quickly get that pain away by having their partner meet their emotional needs.
A partner seeing this may feel suffocated. They may feel like there is no room for self-soothing. Taking a reasonable amount of time for yourself to evaluate your own feelings to prepare to come back for successful conflict resolution is healthy.
The anxious attachment style relies heavily on other people to meet their emotional needs. They feel unloved when this doesn’t happen. Part of our emotional needs and self-soothing should come from ourselves. The anxious preoccupied can become more secure when they recognize this and work on self-soothing. As a result, putting less emotional weight on their partners.
Fearful Avoidant Attachment Style
A fearful avoidant attachment style desires closeness and wants to have their needs met by their partner but they have learned to fear intimacy. This attachment is sometimes referred to as a disorganized attachment style.
Like the dismissive avoidant, opening up emotionally exposes their insecurities. Those insecurities could be seen as bad or broken. This is why they fear intimacy. However, they will reach out inconsistently and unorganized to try and find a way to get their needs met.
A partner may see this attachment style as moody and unpredictable. They won’t know when their partner will actively pursue emotional closeness or reject closeness.
A fearful avoidant may pursue a relationship and then when it reaches a certain level of intimacy, push away. They want emotional needs met from a relationship but only within the boundaries of what they see as safe.
Changing Your Attachment Style
Insecure attachment is a result of insecurities and unhealthy strategies to protect oneself from emotional pain. There is a lot of evidence that says you can change your attachment style. You can become securely attached.
This requires a lot of work on yourself and digging deep into your insecurities. You will start to see how you’ve put limits on yourself. Learning about what a secure attachment looks like helps you to reject your unhealthy means to protect yourself.
A relationship only works when you’re taking the needs of your partner into account. How you love is not the same as how another person loves. We often make the mistake of believing if someone else doesn’t take away our pain then they don’t love us. This is not a secure attachment.
Secure Attachment Style
So, what does a secure attachment style look like in a relationship? A secure attachment style is someone who is not afraid to open up, but is also comfortable self-soothing for a time. They know it is safe to be close with others. They feel worthy of asking for their needs to be met but are also stable when their needs are not met right away.
They have emotional needs that are met by others as well as emotional needs that they meet themselves. A healthy attachment requires both. They are also comfortable meeting others’ needs and have an easy time communicating and relating to others. This is due to the safety they feel around emotional connection.
Depending on the attachment style of your partner, your attachment style can show up differently. Amazing things happen when both partners are aware of each other’s attachment styles and insecurities and work together to become secure.
