Nine surprising truths about attachment styles
👂Prefer to listen to this content? Tune into the Surprising Truths About Attachment Styles episode of our podcast, I Love You, Too.
Y’all, welcome to the Golden Age of Attachment Theory.
In my 13+ years as a dating coach and therapist, few pop psychology trends have infiltrated my work more than the attachment theory heyday kicked off by Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find-And Keep-Love.
Though not without flaws (yes, I hear you, Dear Avoidants – it wasn’t a particularly generous take on your style, was it? And yes, it makes perfect sense to me, Anxious Ones, if you scoffed at the author’s suggestions to only partner with secures and date multiple people simultaneously, as though that’s are sooooo easy), I’m grateful for the way Attached popularized attachment theory.
Levine and Heller’s book (along with the subsequent avalanche of resources developed by other attachment experts) popularized attachment theory such that it’s now rare for me to come across people who don’t know their attachment style.
In fact, what’s your attachment style? has become a commonplace question on first dates.
This is a beautiful thing – attachment theory is a potent tool for understanding and untangling the baffling and painful dynamics singles often experience when dating.
And yet, the mass popularization of attachment theory has produced simplified takes on attachment styles that are wrong at best and damaging at worst. I see misunderstandings about attachment theory stopping rather than supporting singles in their search for healthy, long-term love.
Let’s debunk nine common myths about attachment styles that might stop you from dating successfully.
Myth #1: Your attachment style developed from early childhood experiences.
While it’s true that your attachment style develops in response to your early childhood experiences with caregivers, your adult relationships also impact your style.
Some attachment experts estimate that up to 90% of what we experience in our present-day relationships is a projection of early childhood experiences. As in, the stuff that happened in our relationships with our primary attachment figures (e.g., parents, grandparents, or other caregivers) before age three heavily colors our responses to our partners in adulthood.
90% is a lot, right? And yet, it’s not 100%
Why is this important?
“Acknowledging adult relationships’ impact on your attachment style means you’re not stuck with an insecure style even if you had emotionally inconsistent, unavailable, or abusive caregivers in childhood. ”
Acknowledging adult relationships' impact on your attachment style means you’re not stuck with an insecure style even if you had emotionally inconsistent, unavailable, or abusive caregivers in childhood. In other words, you can develop secure attachment no matter what you experienced early in life (yay!)—more on that in the next section.
The other reason I’m highlighting the impact of adult relationships on attachment styles is to help you understand why you might struggle to feel confident and secure in your relationships, even if you come from a secure family.
Some insecurely attached adults developed an anxious or avoidant attachment style after a formative adult relationship. For example, if your first boyfriend was extremely jealous and controlling, you might have understandably and adaptively developed an avoidant attachment style.
In other words, if you felt secure early in life and insecure as an adult, there’s likely an excellent reason for that; it just may not go back to childhood.
Myth #2: Your attachment style can’t change.
In Attached, Levine and Heller share research suggesting that 1 in 4 people changes their attachment style once in 4 years. Other data suggests that attachment styles are “moderately stable,” with a shift to secure attachment being “related to increases in…self-esteem…and…perceptions of social support.”
In other words, you can earn secure attachment by building relationships with safe, loving others and improving your self-image. This can be done via therapy, building healthy friendships, and practicing mindful self-compassion.
Remember that the mutability of attachment means you can also shift towards a more insecure style in response to difficult relational experiences. Therefore, I recommend you focus most of your relational energy on connections that bring you a sense of safety and security.
Myth #3: An insecure attachment style is unhealthy or bad.
If you struggle with an anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment style, please know there’s nothing wrong with you.
You’ve done nothing wrong, nor are you doomed to a life of painful relationships and poor health.
“An insecure style means you previously learned to survive insufficient, absent, or chaotic care from others by clinging to or avoiding your attachment figures. That makes you adaptive and resilient, not bad.”
An insecure style means you previously learned to survive insufficient, absent, or chaotic care from others by clinging to or avoiding your attachment figures. That makes you adaptive and resilient, not bad.
And if you’re reading this article, chances are you’ve reached a point in your life where those old patterns of anxiety, avoidance, or chaos in relationships no longer serve you.
Shame fuels insecure attachment, while love fuels secure attachment. Therefore, it’s crucial to stop criticizing yourself for your insecure style. Finding your way towards radical self-acceptance is essential to developing secure attachment.
Myth #4: You can only have one attachment style.
When Attached came out, just about every one of my clients who read it told me they suspected they were part of the supposed 1% of the population with an anxious-avoidant (aka disorganized) attachment style.
Now, granted, as a therapist, I have a biased sample. Yet, I struggled to believe that I was only attracting those with a disorganized style into my practice.
I’ve asked many clients to take Diane Poole Heller’s attachment style assessment in the years since. And you know what? Most show a mixture of all four styles.
This matches what I’ve observed – all individuals have the capacity for all four styles, even if they primarily inhabit or identify with one.
Therefore, I recommend reading all attachment theory information to identify which aspects of each style you notice in yourself and others (rather than trying to pigeonhole yourself into just one type).
Assume that everyone can have all four attachment styles and expect people to express different styles in different contexts.
For example, you may feel relatively secure in friendships yet struggle with anxious attachment in dating. Or you may feel extremely anxious in a relationship with an avoidant partner yet feel largely secure dating someone with a secure style.
Suppose you’re chronically single and identify strongly with the anxious attachment style. In that case, I encourage you to explore whether hidden fears of closeness (i.e., an unconscious avoidant attachment style) are sneakily stopping you from succeeding in dating.
To help my anxiously attached clients break their pattern of pursuing commitment-phobic (typically avoidantly attached) mates, I often challenge them to date people who seem warm, interested, and available. More often than not, they report feeling bored, disinterested, or even a little repulsed by these emotionally available individuals.
Here’s the thing – nitpicking is a classic avoidant attachment tendency. Avoidant folx believe on some level that relying on others for emotional comfort is dangerous, pointless, or painful. Many avoidants learn to deactivate their attachment systems by keeping a running list of their partner’s flaws. If you don’t like the person who’s so eagerly pursuing you, chances are you won’t get close.
In other words, if you’ve primarily dated avoidants, identify as anxiously attached, and fall prey to the myth that you can only have one attachment style, you may assume your negative response to emotionally available mates reflects a lack of chemistry rather than your unconscious avoidance. Sadly, that will likely keep you stuck in chronic singledom.
Myth #5: If you’re insecurely attached, you can only build a happy relationship with a securely attached partner.
Some attachment-oriented advice suggests that insecurely attached folx can’t build a happy relationship *unless* they partner with someone secure.
While having a securely attached partner can make relationship-building easier for insecurely attached individuals, it’s not a requirement.
“Building a secure functioning relationship requires a particular skillset, not a particular attachment style. ”
Building a secure functioning relationship requires a particular skillset, not a particular attachment style.
As we mentioned in our episode, What to Look for in a Long-Term Partner, research shows that those partnered with insecurely attached individuals who have learned the skills of secure functioning relating are just as satisfied with their relationship as those partnered with more secure, “well adjusted” individuals.
Myth #6: To build a healthy relationship, you must develop a secure attachment style first.
Attachment theory and oodles of science that supports it dispel the notion that we can and should “go it alone.” Relationships are critical to your survival, on par with food, water, and shelter.
This is why I take issue with the idea that “you have to love yourself before you can love another human being.” Or put in terms of some attachment advice, you have to develop a secure attachment style on your own before you can build a secure functioning relationship.
On a biological level, newborns are utterly dependent on their caregivers. In that way, our first task when we come into this world is to grow and learn within a secure functioning relationship. We can only thrive if we have the love of secure attachment figures.
Therefore, co-regulation is more critical than autoregulation when healing early attachment wounds.
So, while it may be helpful to develop secure attachment in non-romantic relationships before dating, please don’t expect yourself to develop a secure attachment style alone.
Similarly, I don’t recommend waiting until you have a 100% secure attachment style before dating. No one is perfectly secure. And there are some attachment wounds we can’t heal outside of the container of a healthy relationship – don’t let perfectionism rob you of the opportunity to grow through intimacy.
Remember, the research says that the skills of secure functioning relating are more important than a secure attachment style.
Myth #7: The best way to identify someone’s attachment style is by asking them.
As I mentioned, what’s your attachment style? has become a popular first-date question.
While that question can open up an exciting conversation, I recommend taking a potential mate’s attachment style self-assessment with a grain of salt.
Here’s why:
Some people don’t understand attachment theory and its nuances, so they mistype themselves.
Others understand attachment theory but lack insight. Humans generally struggle to see themselves clearly, and some struggle to self-assess accurately.
In addition, I’ve found that those with an avoidant style sometimes misclassify themselves as securely attached. Avoidant folx tend to dissociate from and dismiss the importance of their early childhood attachments. Therefore, they tend to think they had very happy childhoods even though they generally can’t remember specific memories to confirm a secure upbringing.
Lastly, because most people express all the attachment styles depending on the context, asking someone about their style will generally only tell you which style they’ve experienced most frequently and consciously.
If you take them at their word, you could feel very confused if one of their unconscious attachment styles gets activated in your relationship.
So, if someone tells you they have a particular style, assume that’s the style they are most conscious of, identified with, or pained by.
Which is still good information, right?
Wondering how to determine a potential mate’s attachment style if asking them won’t give you the complete picture? Look for what Levine and Heller termed “smoking guns,” These signals provide hard-to-question data about their style. For example, saying one thing and doing another is common for those who are avoidantly attached. And anxiously attached individuals tend to stay too long in unhealthy or unsatisfying relationships,
In addition to looking for smoking guns, pay close attention to how you feel in your relationship. Which of your attachment styles are activated by your dynamic? For example, if you’re feeling anxious, that may point to your partner having some avoidant attachment tendencies.
Finally, keep your eye on the quality of your relationship. Since healthy intimacy skills mediate the negative impacts of attachment insecurities, your joint capacity to build a secure functioning relationship is ultimately more important than your various attachment styles.
Myth #8: Avoidantly attached people are primarily men; anxiously attached people are mostly women.
According to romantic comedies, men don’t want commitment, and women want it a little too much. Think He’s Just Not That Into You or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Thanks to these and other media messaging, many assume that men make up the lion's share of avoidantly attached individuals while women are more likely to be anxiously attached.
“As many men as women are avoidantly and anxiously attached. Insecure attachment is, at least along gender lines, equal opportunity.”
Nope. Uh uh. Not true.
As many men as women are avoidantly and anxiously attached. Insecure attachment is, at least along gender lines, equal opportunity.
So if you’re an avoidantly attached woman or an anxiously attached man, take heart – you’re normal!
Myth #9: Attachment theory explains *everything.*
For many, discovering attachment theory can feel like stumbling on a cheat code for dating and relationships. Suddenly, the weird things people do in relationships make sense. There are tangible things I can do to build a secure functioning relationship even if my partner or I have an insecure style??! Miracle of miracles!
Yet attachment theory can’t explain everything. And I say this as an attachment-oriented therapist who *loves* assessing most things through the lens of attachment.
When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 🙂
So many things besides attachment impact our relationships — culture, gender, mental health disorders, pheromones, trauma, values misalignment, sexual orientation, etc.
If you fit everything into the attachment styles box, you might miss something crucial.
For example, suppose your partner fails to respond quickly or consistently to texts and calls. This stokes your anxiety. Newly obsessed with attachment theory, you decide they must be avoidantly attached! You read about the anxious-avoidant dance and even get them to join you for attachment-oriented couples therapy.
The therapy is *kinda* helpful, but the communication inconsistencies persist.
In time, your therapist suggests your partner get tested for ADHD. They do, and, lo and behold – they’re diagnosed with ADHD! They start taking medication and work with an executive functioning coach while you learn to reframe your partner’s communication style as part of their neurodivergence. As a result, they’re more responsive and consistent, and your anxiety lowers immensely.
So, consider various factors when attempting to understand your relationships. Attachment styles are just one piece of the complex pie that makes up human relating.
TLDR
Attachment theory is hella popular these days in the dating and relationship advice-o-sphere. This is fabulous – attachment theory is a powerful tool for understanding and improving relationships.
Yet misconceptions about attachment styles abound and can be pretty damaging.
In this article, I disputed nine myths about attachment styles::
Myth #1: Your attachment style developed from early childhood experiences.
Truth: Adult relationships can also impact your attachment style.
Myth #2: Attachment styles can't change.
Truth: Attachment styles are “moderately stable” and can shift alongside your relationships and self-esteem.
Myth #3: Insecure attachment styles are bad or unhealthy.
Truth: An insecure attachment style is a natural, adaptive response to insufficient emotional care, not a moral failing.
Myth #4: People can only have one attachment style.
Truth: All human beings have the wiring for all four styles. While many have a primary style, expressing different styles is expected depending on the context.
Myth #5: Insecurely attached individuals can only build a happy relationship with a securely attached partner.
Truth: Regardless of your and your partner’s attachment style, you can build a happy relationship by developing secure functioning relating skills.
Myth #6: You must develop a secure attachment style before building a healthy relationship.
Truth: You can’t heal attachment wounds on your own. Secure functioning relationships lead to a more secure attachment style, not the other way around.
Myth #7: To figure out someone's attachment style, ask them.
Truth: Take what someone says about their style with a grain of salt. Look instead for “smoking guns” and how you feel when relating to them.
Myth #8: Avoidantly attached individuals are primarily men, and anxiously attached individuals are mostly women.
Truth: Insecure attachment is equal opportunity – as many men as women are anxiously and avoidantly attached.
Myth #9: Attachment theory explains everything.
Truth: While powerful, attachment theory is just one element to consider when unpacking your relationship patterns.
Debunking these myths will give you the best chance of using attachment theory to improve your love life.
Ready for real love? Reach out now to get started with a dating expert who can lead the way.
