How Attachment Styles Secretly Sabotage Your Relationships
And what you can do about it.
Your partner isn’t the main cause of relationship issues.
And if you churn through partners, who’s the greatest common denominator?
It’s not your partner(s).
I’m not trying to make you feel bad, because even I’ve had to acknowledge that at the end of the day, I’m the biggest cause of my shitty relationships.
But in today’s culture, we’re quick to blame someone else.
Oh, he was just a narcissist.
She always tried to control me.
It’s their fault I felt this way.
If you want to continue to blame someone else for your relationship problems, that’s okay.
You just won’t learn anything. Nor will you heal or grow into healthier dynamics.
But I don’t think most people willingly choose unhealthy relationships. I know I attract and am attracted to emotionally unavailable women who mirror my early female relationships.
It’s not my first choice, but that’s where I found myself. With emotionally stunted women.
Attachment isn’t gender specific. Even though the trope of “emotionally unavailable men” and “clingy, desperate women” exists, women can be just as emotionally unavailable as men can be desperate for relationships.
In short, it’s a conditioned pattern. Gender is less important compared to what happened growing up.
This is why attachment theory was developed. It’s a scientific — or rather psychological explanation for “why people behave the ways they do in relationships.”
Attachment Theory In Psychology Explained
Attachment can be defined as a deep and enduring emotional bond between two people in which each seeks closeness and…www.simplypsychology.org
Attachment theory hypothesizes that early caregiver relationships establish social–emotional developmental foundations, but change remains possible across the lifespan due to interpersonal relationships during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
The main premise is: that it’s not always them. Often you have a role to play too.
Because when you boil it all down, a relationship doesn’t exist without two people playing their part in it.
Whether you realize it or not, attachment runs you
Attachment theory classifies people into these “neat little boxes.” But it’s not always so black and white.
To make it simple, there are three classifications:
Anxious-preoccupied
Dismissive-avoidant
Fearful-avoidant (a hybrid—AKA disorganized attachment)
Everyone exhibits a lot of overlap in all three categories. But everyone skews towards a certain one.
And this is the interesting part:
People unconsciously seek partners with an opposite attachment style.
But it’s not always like this. A relationship can include a homogeneous pairing. Like two fearful avoidants together. This can happen, but to maintain a sense of equilibrium, the more “avoidant” of the two usually takes on the avoidant role while the other becomes more “anxious.”
Anxious people pair up with avoidants.
It’s a natural push-pull dynamic.
Anxious-Preoccupied
Characteristics: They can seem desperate for a relationship. Or a partner. The relationship is their main obsession and they usually mold or bend themselves just to avoid loneliness.
Pitfalls: Self-abandonment is the symptom of their obsession. They neglect their boundaries just for validation or security.
Warning signs you (or your partner) are anxious: Constant contact (texting, calling, showing up at a residence, etc..), anxiety, extreme need for closeness, and people-pleasing tendencies like the inability to say no.
The anxious-preoccupied individual finds “avoidant” partners alluring, seductive, and attractive.
But what makes a person “avoidant?”
Signs of avoidant attachment:
Showing feelings or emotions is a struggle for them. Often even frightening.
They can be reluctant to reciprocate closeness or physical touch. Maybe even visibly uncomfortable.
An avoidant may seem hyper-independent, secure, “stoic”, but on the inside, they’re deeply insecure.
In general, they avoid things. Feelings, emotions, “uncomfortable” situations. Anything that they may THINK is too overwhelming.
About Fearful avoidants — and to an extent dismissives.
One minute they love you, and the next you’re public enemy number one to them. Their behavior is hot and cold. If they feel — often without any real cause — that you encroach on their independence or feel you’ve betrayed them, they shut down, avoid, and distance themselves from you or the relationship.
Why Your Fearful Avoidant Partner “Trauma Dumps” and Rushes You in the Dating Process
How to take back ownership of your relationship or dating experience with an overly assertive partner.medium.com
This is the reason why your partner is not the only one to be blamed.
The anxious partner demands attention or validation. Then the avoidant person, feeling like their independence is threatened withdraws. Neither person is satisfied.
And it only perpetuates a terrible, unfulfilling cycle.
As a result, both people act in ways that are detrimental to the relationship’s longevity.
The avoidant may feel “suffocated” — suffocated was an exact word my ex-fiance used to describe how she felt after she abruptly ended the relationship.
Even though we lived like roommates who had sex once in a while.
The relationship was pretty much dried up and devoid of intimacy. And she had the freedom to do whatever she wanted.
I never controlled who she talked to, where she went, or what she did. I rarely voiced my displeasure and chose to (in classic anxious fashion) abandon how I felt to maintain an unsatisfying dynamic.
Only for resentment to build up.
Neither person feels good about the relationship, or this dynamic only makes a breakup even worse.
I have a perfect example. I dated a girl a while ago. I often write about this girl, “Julie” in many of my stories. That’s what I’ve decided to call her.
It was a classic Fearful-avoidant and Anxious-preoccupied dynamic.
Julie was deathly afraid of intimacy. As a result, she pushed away her other partners in whatever way she could, and without knowing the full gravity of her avoidance, I expected commitment from her.
And I poured a lot of myself into that “relationship.” Too soon and too fast. Weeks after our “relationship discussion”, one in which we agreed to date exclusively and be “boyfriend and girlfriend”, Julie pulled away.
Came over one day. Left after 45 minutes or so. And never texted me that she made it home. That was a standard practice we had with each other.
Worried. I texted her, and she responded to me. But something seemed “off” about her. It’s hard to describe, but I started to feel “activated” or triggered.
As the days went by we continued to communicate, but the warmth and the consistency we once had was gone. I felt so anxious that I actually had to call out of work the day after I saw Julie.
My texting patterns increased in “clinginess.” I apologized for things I wouldn’t apologize for, and in short, my vibe pushed her away. As she increasingly became more distant and avoided me, my anxiety increased.
It was a vicious cycle. Unfortunately the “relationship” ended.
It wasn’t all my fault. I later realized that Julie had all the hallmark symptoms of an extremely fearful avoidant attachment style. We both contributed to a shitty situation, but she directly avoided any of my attempts to “resolve” what was going on.
I finally learned that day that anxiety was getting in the way of healthy relationships. But the problem is, the world is full of “avoidant” people. And even if you grow out of your anxious tendencies, you’ll have to navigate dating and relationships with a sea of people who would rather idealize themselves to their own detriment.
Because avoidants AVOID.
They struggle to acknowledge their emotions. And without this acknowledgment, it’s a mountain of a task to grow or learn from one’s mistakes.
And the shitty part is, if the avoidant ends the relationship — at least from experience, they always make it about them.
Sounds like I’m playing the blame game, but it’s straight up just how I’ve experienced it.
They want to have a relationship or have the final say in its future without the consequences of how it may affect someone else.
There are a few ways to be more emotionally secure
Knowing where your relationship patterns stem from is the first step.
This may not be the same for you, but my relationship patterns are a result of chasing after women who resemble my mother.
Yes… it’s the classic “mommy issues” trope.
But it makes sense.
My mother’s current behavior is very similar to the women I date. She never calls, she’ll occasionally text, but she is emotionally stunted and her range of emotions is rather limited.
She wants a relationship with her children, but no different from an avoidant, she does not put in the effort to make it possible. She wants but does not intend.
When I was a kid, she was often away at work. To add to that, she left my brother and me with my father on the weekends (for visitation).
While it’s not her fault, the mind of a child doesn’t care about this. The child NEEDS the proper emotional guidance of a mother and father who work together.
And my father wasn’t any better. He did drugs and left us to the wolves most of the time. As a result, I tried to get the attention of whoever I could. Whether it was my mom or dad, I tried to get that validation and that feeling of safety in the external confines of an adult.
That pattern never went away. Instead, I chased women.
So I’ve had to work on self-actualization, independence, and emotional regulation. Because NO ONE else can do that for me.
While my goal is to be more “secure” in myself, I, like every other human is not perfect. I’m not concerned with being a “perfectly secure individual.” We’re all human and there’s still a fundamental “need” for human connection.
But let’s shoot for letting go of unnecessary suffering and dysfunctional relationships.
It’s not worth it.
And if you’re still not sure of where to start, “reverse engineer” your current circumstances.
Are you single? Always feeling lonely and anxious without a partner?
Or have you never taken the time to be single, but in every relationship you feel a desire to pull away? Does it feel suffocating to be intimate with someone?
Whatever you feel RIGHT NOW is a symptom of something “deeper” inside of you.
And I suggest you take this initial quiz to get a general idea of where you sit on the attachment spectrum, but I would guess you have a good idea from this story already.
I found this book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson to be incredibly helpful in understanding the crucial role parents play in shaping our relationships with other adults.
I’ve used it as a reference for a lot of my Medium and Substack stories.
And it’s crucial to see a professional. A random dude on the internet writing about attachment theory might help, but I can’t offer the same individual help that a licensed therapist can.
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