Attachment Styles: How they Impact Dating, Love and Friendships

If you’re interested in the personal growth space, or you’ve been to therapy, or stayed up late googling “Why does my partner say I’m clingy?” or “Why do people ghost other people?”, you might’ve come across the concept of attachment theory and attachment styles.

Simply put, attachment theory is a model used to explain four common ways of relating and emotional bonding that can be observed in both children and adults.

Our attachment styles are the unconscious beliefs we hold as to how safe and consistent we feel in close relationships, and are hypothesised to be formed in infancy and childhood in response to how our primary caregivers routinely interact with us.

These beliefs follow us into adulthood and inform how we view, seek, and respond in relationships and relational conflict.

You might notice that whenever you start dating someone new and they seem to be quite interested in you, you feel a strong urge to pull away.

Conversely, you might be someone who finds themselves compelled to seek reassurance of your partner’s love or friend’s affection any time they seem a little quiet or distant, unable to relax until the bond between you feels re-established.

Or, you might really want a relationship and be dating actively, but then quickly find fault or lose interest in every potential match.

This is your attachment style at work. A person’s attachment style is usually very unconscious to them, unless they have done the personal work to uncover this piece of self-awareness. We often experience the signals of our attachment style as emotions, physical sensations, and behaviour that we often can’t even explain to ourselves.

Alternatively, you might feel very clear in your choices and rationale for experiencing repetitive difficulties in relationships. “There’s no good men left”, “I just can’t find someone who accepts me as I am”, "People always leave me when they get to know me," and so on.

The four attachment styles in adults

The attachment styles are usually referred to by different names for children and adults, and also have multiple names in the literature, which can be confusing.

The four styles are (the names I will be using in this post are the simplest and in bold):

Secure attachment (the one style that has only one name).

Anxious attachment (also called anxious-pre-occupied for adults, or anxious-ambivalent for children).

Avoidant attachment (also called dismissive-avoidant for adults, or anxious-avoidant in children and adults).

Disorganised attachment (also called fearful-avoidant in adults and children).

Secure attachment is as it sounds, more steady and enduring, and the other three are all considered anxiety-based responses, while presenting differently.

Few people had the kind of idyllic childhood that produces a perfectly securely attached adult, given we were all raised by human parents who had their own human parents, and the further back the generations we go the less likely we are to encounter such emotionally aware parenting.

As such, many adults still have an overall secure attachment style with some tendency towards one of the other styles in times of conflict, uncertainty, or in relationship dynamics with less relationally-healthy people.

Getting to know the other attachment styles and how they present can be extremely informative for anyone in relationships with other people – meaning all of us.

Attachment issues can occur in friendships, close working relationships, dating, and long-term partnerships. Secure attachment can also be built or strengthened at any time, so even if you recognise your own relational patterns in the anxious attachment styles below, don't despair.

Secure attachment

Development in children

Secure attachment is formed when a child experiences consistent, emotionally safe and loving care from their primary caregivers. Consistent does not mean perfect. Normal, healthy development includes moments of mis-attunement between caregiver and child. The child experiences a feeling of acceptance and being  valued, and are given appropriate comfort and soothing as well as the chance to explore and develop the ability to self-regulate.

Secure attachment in adult relationships

Adults with a secure attachment style trust that they are able to express their needs and that they will be well received by others, they can express those needs in a way that helps others to hear them, and are comfortable with independence as well as forming close bonds. They exhibit appropriate levels of trust (not naive, nor suspicious), and have faith in their ability to work through relational wobbles with loved ones. Securely attached adults are at ease with a healthy state of interdependence in their relationships.

Anxious attachment

Development in children

Anxious attachment can develop when children experience inconsistent caregiving. Parents might be loving and responsive (even over-coddling) one day or moment, and unavailable or misattuned to the child’s needs the next. While healthy, secure attachment also allows for misattunement, the pattern associated with anxious attachment is more volatile. The child responds to the confusion of the inconsistency by seeking out more attention, soothing, and closeness from the caregiver.

A parent’s preoccupation with the child or over-protectiveness can also create anxious attachment in children, as they learn that all soothing comes from the parent and don't have the opportunity to work out how to appropriately self-soothe. Anxiously attached children become highly distressed when separated from the caregiver especially if they have not had the chance to learn to feel secure with themselves and with other safe adults.

One less-discussed source of anxious attachment can be parenting that from the outside appears to be extremely loving. Parents who go over and above to cater to their child can create an unrealistic model of love — both that which the later adult child feels they should give to a partner, and that they should expect to receive if someone truly loves them.

Anxious attachment in adult relationships

Anxiously attached adults tend to be sensitive and attuned to their needs of their friends and partners, but underneath many feel unworthy of a healthy relationship. They might be extremely thoughtful and giving in their relationships, and feel continually hurt when others seem unable (or uninterested) in reciprocating to the same degree.

This expectation and sensitivity to other people's behaviour can mean that anxiously attached adults are on the constant look-out for signs that their partner or friends are upset with them, pulling away, or no longer interested. This often results in frequent reassurance-seeking, which paradoxically creates frustration and can lead the other person to distance themselves.

Anxiously attached adults find it difficult to establish healthy emotional boundaries and to be able to feel ok when their partner is having their own difficult time, which can be a sign of codependence.

Avoidant attachment

Development in children

Parents who are physically present, and even attentive and supportive of their child’s physical needs, may still resist connecting emotionally with the child. The parent might be unskilled in responding to the child’s emotions, find emotional displays aversive, and struggle to communicate their own emotions with others.

Such caregivers might overly focus on the development of independence in their child, and encourage children to keep emotions of all types under wraps. Heightened displays of emotion might be overtly punished, though this extreme is not necessary for the development of avoidant attachment. The child learns to cope with this environment by suppressing their own feelings and needs, and withdrawing to prevent rejection.

Overly intrusive or demanding parenting can also create avoidant attachment. Parents who resist allowing a child appropriate amounts of privacy or are excessively judgmental or critical can result in children (and adults) who cope by building internal walls.

A caregiver who is inattentive to the child's needs and emotionally volatile or unwell themselves can also mean that a child learns an association between emotionality and impending danger or instability, and/or that there is not enough room for their own feelings and to suppress them.

Avoidant attachment in adult relationships

Avoidantly attached adults find it difficult or less compelling to form close bonds with others. They might enjoy less-deep friendships and relationships, but begin to pull away when the connection becomes more involved. Adults who are more avoidantly attached might also display hyper-independent behaviours in relationships.

Underneath, there is a lack of trust in others and in the ability of others to remain close. This often presents however as finding fault in a partner or friend, or walking away at the earliest signs of conflict. As a result of their early learning (or lack thereof), avoidantly attached adults also lack familiarity and skill with the beliefs and behaviours required to sustain deep connections and repair relational ruptures.

Disorganised attachment

Development in children

Disorganised attachment develops when the child’s source of care is also a source of fear. This creates a conflict in the child as to whether it is safe to approach the caregiver in order to have the child’s fears soothed. This can occur in an abusive home, but also one where a parent’s unresolved trauma creates an environment of high unpredictability and volatility.

Due to the uncertainty, children may alternate between behaviours from both the anxious and avoidant attachment styles. The child’s still experiences a natural drive for closeness to the parent, while also rejecting the parent out of fear.

Disorganised attachment in adult relationships

As with children, disorganised attachment in adult relationships presents as inconsistency in relating to others. Adults may pursue relationships and closeness with others, then pull away out of anxiety. As soon as 'safe' distance is restored, the desire to be close again returns.

Like those with a more classically anxious style adults, those with disorganised attachment find it hard to trust that their partners will love them consistently. Even when faced with a steady, loving partner, they may unconsciously create situations that push the partner away or turn towards avoidance themselves in order to fulfil what they believe to be the inevitable outcome.

The way forward with attachment

Understanding your own attachment style and those of your loved ones can be a key step in making changes to confusing and challenging relational patterns. It can reshape the way you date, cope with conflict, and help with sustaining longer term relationships. As a result, it can positively impact your experience of what it means to be a person in relationship to other people and for other people to be in a relationship with you.

Whatever your tendency towards less-secure behaviours, it is possible to learn to recognise and manage your typical responses to anxiety and stress in relationships, strengthen your sense of security, and allow you to choose more relational responses.

In therapy, the usual approach is to gain familiarity with your own personal signals that your attachment style is being activated, and learn how to manage the anxiety that comes up in a healthier manner so that you are able to make conscious decisions in your relationships. This allows you to experience different outcomes than you may have previously, which in turn helps to break down the expectations you have held about how relationships usually go and how other people will treat you. With time and repetition, this provides the opportunity to instill a more secure view of attachment.

I write about attachment, relationships, and self-compassion, and I'm currently working on a book about healing attachment patterns in relationships — sign up here for updates.