Which relationship Attachment Style are you?

As infants, we’re highly attuned to our caregivers’ emotions. We monitor their moods, emotional signals and behaviors very carefully and adapt our responses accordingly. We figure out how best to maximize the care we get from them, because we rely on them to ensure our survival. Safety and security or attachment is a life and death matter.

We develop ways of responding–what feelings to express and not express—to get a favorable reaction from our parents or guardians and maintain connection. With repetition, the adaptations we make shape our behavior and establish deeply engrained neural patterns or ‘internal working models’ that stay with us as we grow and develop, and as we interact with the important people in our lives – usually our parents.

If our parents were emotionally attuned and reliably present when we were young, that will be reflected in our perception of others when we’re older. It will impact how we ‘do’ relationships and how we manage and express our emotional experiences. Unfortunately, the same is true if our parents weren’t so adept when it came to managing their emotions and relating with us during our formative years.

These general patterns of relating that we develop through our early experiences with our parents and carry into adulthood are known as Attachment Styles. Researchers have narrowed them down into four categories:

Secure
Avoidant
Anxious
Fearful-Avoidant

Let’s take a look at each in turn, so you can discover which Attachment Style best reflects your approach to relationships and your emotions.

You will likely have a Secure Attachment Style if:

Your Parents & Caregivers: Were sensitively attuned and consistently responsive to your emotional needs when you were younger. They reliably made you feel safe, secure and loved.

You Learned That: Reaching out and connecting is a good thing, and that your loved ones can be trusted to be there when you need them. You learned that feelings are there to be helpful, not feared.

You Likely Grew Up: Being comfortable being close and connected with a loved one. As an adult, you have a healthy self-image, feel worthy of love, and view your partner positively. You’re responsive, emotionally flexible and able to easily adapt to different situations.

A Secure Attachment Style is by far the most common, and largely rings true for just over half of the people in the United States.

You will likely have an Avoidant Attachment Style if:

Your Parents & Caregivers: Responded negatively or unreliably to your emotional needs, and were distant, or overly intrusive. This left you feeling vulnerable, anxious, even distressed.

You Learned That: Your feelings and having an innate need to connect with others was dangerous, as doing so seemed to drive away the people you needed most, leading to rejection, disappointment, pain, and criticism.

You Likely Grew Up: Naturally deactivating your natural need for closeness and connection to avoid pain. As an adult, you perhaps regard emotional intimacy as threatening, and would rather not have anyone depend on you, and prefer to be seen as independent and self-sufficient.

Avoidant is the Attachment Style of about a quarter of the people in the United States.

You will likely have an Anxious Attachment Style if:

Your Parents & Caregivers: Were inconsistent when it came to your feelings. Sometimes they’d be nurturing and responsive, at other times insensitive, intrusive or unavailable.

You Learned That: You had to work harder to get the attention of your caregivers, hiding certain feelings and turning up the volume on others to maintain a sense of connection and security.

You Likely Grew Up: Craving close connections but rarely feeling safe enough to let go of your fear. As an adult, you wonder if your partner feels the same as you, and worry if you can rely on their love and commitment. This fear likely causes you to be highly sensitive to signs of rejection, and frequently needing reassurance and approval from your partner.

The Anxious Attachment Style is relevant to around 20% of the people in the United States.

You will likely have a Fearful-Avoidant Attachment Style if:

Your Parents & Caregivers: Had unresolved traumas of their own and were emotionally unpredictable or even frightening at times.

You Learned That: The very person who you would naturally go to when afraid or distressed was also the cause of your fear. Caught in an unsolvable bind, you felt as though you had nowhereno where to turn. This likely led to you resorting to a mixed bag of coping strategies that alternated between cutting your feelings, checking out, or responding in an emotionally amped-up or aggressive way.

You Likely Grew Up: With very ambivalent and conflicting feelings about emotional closeness. As an adult, you long for and pursue connection, but can get uncomfortable when partners move too close and lash out through fear of being hurt or rejected. Communicating can be difficult, your moods erratic, and your relationships can often feel chaotic.

The Fearful-Avoidant Attachment Style describes about 3% of the people in the United States.

It’s important to note that the above categories are not set in stone. The lines that divide each Attachment Style are porous, and there can be overlap. Remember also that these Attachment Styles have been developed for research purposes to help identify and understand how common factors in one’s early life can impact our relationships later on. In life, we tend to be more of a mixed bag. Also, your Attachment Style can be impacted – either positively or negatively – by the person with whom you’re in a relationship.

Hopefully, you are able to use the above to get a sense of which Attachment Style you mostly closely identify with. In next month’s article, we’ll look at why it’s really useful to be aware of your Attachment Style and how you can update and shift the way you relate to your partner, enabling you to enjoy a happier, more fulfilling relationship.