SELF-CARE: How Is Your Attachment Style Affecting Your Adult Relationships? + FREE Relationship Conflict Decoder

How much do you think that your early relationship with your primary caregiver (e.g., your mom, dad, grandparent, or foster or adoptive parent) matters today?

If you’re like many people, you might think, “not much” or even “not at all,” especially if this person isn’t a regular part of your life right now.

But if you read my last post on attachment and attachment styles, you discovered that the way that we approach and navigate relationships in our life, even as adults, is heavily shaped by the early relationship that we had with our primary caregiver.

Specifically, if we developed what’s called a secure attachment to our caregiver, then we may trust others easier, form healthy relationships readily, and be resilient in the face of relationship conflict.

However, if we instead developed an insecure attachment to our caregiver, we may be anxious and clingy with our partners, shy away from close relationships, or both crave and intensely fear relationships at the same time.

This tells us that if we want to uncover (and ultimately address) WHY we behave in a certain way in our relationships, respond in a certain way to our partner, or navigate intimacy in a certain way, it’s helpful to understand how our own attachment style influences our relationships in adulthood.

That’s why in this blog post, I’m doing a deep dive into how each of the 4 attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized) shapes romantic relationships.

Let’s get to it!

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Secure Attachment in Adult Relationships

Overall, people with a secure attachment style tend to be trusting, self-confident, and hopeful as adults. For this reason, they don’t mind being on their own. But they also enjoy being in close relationships and form them easily. In addition, people with a secure attachment style are more likely to feel safe, stable, and satisfied in their relationships.

Here are some specific characteristics of how people with a secure attachment style approach close relationships:

Able to be themselves in relationships: Because people with a secure attachment style tend to have greater confidence and self-worth, they are more comfortable with being themselves in relationships and expressing their needs, feelings, and desires.

Enjoy closeness but don’t cling to it: Securely attached adults find close, intimate relationships satisfying and readily turn to loved ones for support and comfort. However, they are also able to be apart from loved ones without feeling anxious or threatened.

Find it easy to support others: People with a secure attachment style are comfortable with the idea of loved ones depending on them and turning to them for emotional support.

Can set healthy boundaries: Securely attached adults are comfortable with closeness and intimacy, but they can also set healthy and appropriate boundaries in relationships when necessary.

Manage relationship conflict in healthy ways: People with a secure attachment style are more likely to navigate conflict in their relationships effectively, share their feelings openly when problems arise, and seek support during relationship challenges.

Take responsibility for mistakes: Securely attached people have an easier time taking responsibility for their mistakes in relationships.

Anxious Attachment in Adult Relationships

Anxiously attached adults are often anxious and uncertain, and they tend to have lower self-esteem. As a result, although they crave closeness and intimacy in their relationships, they often worry that they aren’t “good enough” to be loved and have a hard time fully trusting their loved ones.

The following are some specific characteristics that define how anxiously attached people approach adult relationships:

Worry about being abandoned: Because people with an anxious attachment style often believe that they’re not worthy of being loved, they may worry that as soon as someone gets to know who they really are, that person will end the relationship. As a result, anxiously attached people tend to feel excessively worried and anxious about being rejected or abandoned in their relationships.

Are hypervigilant toward threat: Constantly questioning whether loved ones truly want to maintain a relationship with them, anxiously attached adults are hypervigilant toward signs of threat in relationships. For this reason, they can be more likely to be suspicious of a loved one’s actions or become jealous when a loved one spends time apart from them or with someone else.

Constantly seek reassurance about the relationship: Because anxiously attached people are so worried that their relationships are on the verge of ending, they often seek constant reassurance about the relationship and validation that they are “good enough.”

Have trouble respecting boundaries: Fearing rejection or abandonment, anxiously attached people may try to stay as close to loved ones as possible. This can lead them to encroach on their loved ones’ boundaries and appear needy or clingy. Ironically, this neediness can end up overwhelming loved ones and cause them to withdraw from the relationship, which only makes the anxiously attached person even more fearful of abandonment and desperate to stay close.

Go to great lengths to please loved ones: In an effort to maintain close relationships at all costs, people with an anxious attachment style may highly prioritize the needs of loved ones at the expense of their own.

Avoidant Attachment in Adult Relationships

People with an avoidant attachment style tend to be independent, confident, and self-assured, and they may seem outgoing and social on the surface. However, because they are so fiercely independent, they can feel very uncomfortable about being in close relationships.

Here are some characteristics that define avoidantly attached adults in relationships:

Avoid emotional intimacy: People with an avoidant attachment style tend to be wary of emotional intimacy and avoid getting close to others. They typically prefer to not rely on others emotionally or have people who rely on them for emotional connection and support.

Put up walls: Because avoidantly attached people have trouble trusting and relying on others, they typically “put up walls” in relationships. In other words, they avoid opening up to others and expressing their personal thoughts and feelings. As a result, to others, they can seem distant or closed off.

Withdraw when others get close: Another way that avoidantly attached people avoid emotional intimacy in relationships is by withdrawing when others begin to get close to them. They may even sabotage relationships or try to find petty reasons to end them so that they can avoid getting emotionally involved.

May prefer casual relationships: People who are avoidantly attached may prefer casual, surface-level, or short-term relationships that involve minimal emotional intimacy and connection. As a result, they may prefer to have acquaintances rather than close loved ones, or they may seek out relationships with people who are similarly independent and uninterested in emotional closeness.

Disorganized Attachment in Adult Relationships

People with a disorganized attachment style tend to have negative views of themselves and difficulty regulating their emotions. They also tend to view the world as frightening and unsafe. For this reason, their close relationships can seem unstable and chaotic.

Here are some specific characteristics that people with a disorganized attachment style tend to show in relationships:

Feel unworthy of healthy relationships: Because people with a disorganized attachment style tend to view themselves negatively, they often believe that they don’t deserve to experience love or healthy, fulfilling relationships.

Crave connection but fear getting close: People with a disorganized attachment style long to experience closeness and connection in their relationships. However, at the same time, they also deeply fear getting close in these relationships. Constantly swinging back and forth between approaching and avoiding loved ones or potential partners, they can appear to show confusing, incoherent behaviors in relationships or "give off mixed signals."

Have casual relationships: Because people with a disorganized attachment style are fearful of emotional connection, they may have trouble pursuing relationships to the point where closeness and deep commitment can form. As a result, they may often find themselves in casual relationships or prolonged courtships.

May be explosive or abusive: People with a disorganized attachment style are more likely to be unpredictable and volatile in relationships. Their behavior can be explosive and even abusive toward loved ones.

Is Your Attachment Style Limiting Your Relationships Today?

The relationship that you had with your primary caregiver as an infant may not seem very important today. But as I’ve shared above, it can actually have a profound impact on how you approach and navigate your relationships with partners and other loved ones. Whereas being securely attached can make it easier to form and maintain healthy, fulfilling relationships, being insecurely attached can limit your relationships by setting the stage for clingy, avoidant, or volatile behaviors.

The GOOD NEWS, though, is that even if you have one of the three insecure attachment styles, you aren’t destined to approach close relationships in unhealthy ways for the rest of your life. Because as I’ll dive into in an upcoming blog post, there are steps that you can take to develop a more secure attachment style and change how you show up in relationships.

However, before you work toward developing a more secure attachment style, it’s important to understand your current attachment style more deeply and how it’s affecting your current relationships. Attachment styles are especially likely to influence your relationship behavior during times of relationship conflict, so it can be particularly helpful to gain clarity on the way you respond to relationship conflict.

To help you get a deeper understanding of how you approach conflict in relationships, I encourage you to work through my free Relationship Conflict Decoder. Although I created it with romantic relationships in mind, you can also use it to gain clarity on how you approach conflict in other types of close relationships.

Now, what if you’re looking to get one-on-one guidance and support in uncovering and addressing the early life experiences that are at the root of your current relationship challenges?

I have something special to offer you just for this month: this October, I’m accepting a few new clients into my one-on-one Heal Your Inner Child Program.

Wondering if this personalized journey of deeper healing and growth is the right next step for you? Schedule a FREE strategy session with me.

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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