In this article, you will learn about the theory of attachment as well as what it means for your relationships.
Theory of Attachment
Attachment theory fundamentally explains how a person forms, and maintains, a connection with another person. This understanding first emerged in the 1950s with research conducted by John Bowlby with mothers and infants. He believed, contrary to popular psychological theory at the time, that family interactions contributed to emotional and behavioral concerns in children.
Prior to this, many psychologists held the Freudian belief that disruptions in a child were related to internal issues such as their own fantasies of power or sexual desire. At this time, many believed it was actually risky for babies to be too close to their mother.
Bowlby’s research, in contrast, was revolutionary as it established attachment is a natural part of human development. Close relationships are not a sign of pathology or immaturity as previously believed Bowlby showed.
Attachment Research by John Bowlby
Bowlby studied how babies (typically aged 9-18 months) responded to separations and reunions with their mother to test his belief that family interactions impact a child’s behavior. He discovered some babies had distinct phases of distress when they were separated from their mother:
First, they would appear anxious over this separation and act in protest to being apart from their mother. Next they may appear to experience grief and despair over this separation. Finally, they would then detach from the connection and appear to deny its importance. A baby here may look away or become silent.
Bowlby also noted that some babies didn’t appear too distressed or anxious by this separation. He theorized that perhaps these were babies who felt well loved. On the other hand, he also theorized that negative family experiences such as feeling rejected or abandoned by parents would lead to the baby appearing more distressed by the separation.
The Importance of Feeling Loved
These observations were expanded upon by research conducted by Mary Ainsworth. She conducted “strange situation” tests in which a mother and infant are first introduced to a playroom in a lab together. Then a stranger enters and plays with the baby and here the mom leaves. Next the baby is left alone and finally the stranger and mom return to the playroom together. She became intrigued by the baby’s responses to the mom returning.
Some babies were happy to reunite with their mother. However, a few babies were surprisingly angry with their mom while others outright ignored their mother. She looked at the home data and realized that those babies who were ambivalent or avoidant with the mom upon her return had less harmonious family lives than those who were happy to return to being close to the mom.
The Importance of Trust and Safety
These responses to being reunited led Mary Ainsworth to discover the importance of a “secure base” for human development. In other words, all human beings need at least one safe, reliable, trusting relationship with another human being to feel healthy and happy.
She also formulated the basis of attachment styles. Other researchers have studied how these attachment styles impact how we form and maintain relationship not only in infancy and childhood but also throughout our entire lives including in romantic relationships.
Attachment Styles
When analyzing the reactions of infants to their mother’s return, Mary Ainsworth noticed three distinct styles of attachment. These attachment styles have now been translated into adult relationships as well.
The three main attachment styles are secure, anxious, or avoidant. Some people have a combination of insecure attachment behaviors and are both anxious and avoidant in their relationships.
In Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find – And Keep – Love, authors Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller explain that just over 50% of people are securely attached. This means about half of people have an anxious, avoidant, or anxious-avoidant attachment style. They explain 20% of people are anxiously attached while 25% are avoidant. Finally, about 3-5% of people have an anxious-avoidant style.
To assess your own attachment style, you may choose to complete the clinical assessment available in my book, The Toxic Relationship Recovery Workbook.
Secure Attachment
If you have a secure attachment style, it is natural for you to attract, and maintain, relationships that feel safe and equitable. You naturally believe that you have a lot to offer in your relationships.
Therefore, secure attachment, allows for setting and maintaining healthy relationship boundaries with ease. Secure attachment allows a person to feel safe and comfortable both in their solitude and in being known by others.
Secure attachment is the foundation of healthy, balanced relationships where you feel respected to be yourself and your partner has a sense of personal freedom together while you also prioritize your commitment to the relationship together. This state of balance is also called interdependency.
Anxious Attachment
If you’re anxiously attached however you fear abandonment and rejection greatly. This can make you act in ways that are clingy or obsessive at times i.e., texting someone non-stop until they respond or obsessing about someone who ghosted you. You naturally have less sense of safety or trust in others as well as yourself when you’re anxious attached.
An anxiously attached person, deep down, greatly fears being being all alone out of a fear that they are less lovable or worthy than others. This fear of rejection often leads to people pleasing and masking who you really are. You may find that you change who you are based on who you spend time with if you’re anxiously attached for example. This fear of being alone also leads people to settle for much less than they deserve out of the belief crumbs of attention are better than nothing.
Anxious attachment is codependency enacted where you will focus the vast majority of your energy to keeping others happy just to keep connections.
Avoidant Attachment
People with an avoidant attachment style still naturally desire connection with other human beings yet they greatly fear being suffocated by others. They fear intimacy, vulnerability and commitment due to this. Therefore, they develop strategies to keep others’ at arm’s length. For example, they may work 80 hours a week, cheat, or be obsessed with video games to create distance in a relationship.
People with an avoidant attachment style have a hard time opening up about their feelings, needs, and wants because they feel this is weakness. They like to imagine that they don’t need others and are fully independent. Therefore, natural needs such as a desire to feel close to another human, feel like “weakness” to them.
Of course, though, they are still human and deep down want connection. This internal conflict can lead to them giving mixed messages to their partner i.e., promising more quality time but then being unavailable due to “work.”
Anxious-Avoidant Attachment
Finally, some people have a combination of anxious-avoidant attachment. They crave intimacy with others and yet they are also terrified of intimacy. They may swing to extremes in relationships and run hot and cold. They may seem preoccupied with getting someone to commit to that is already in a relationship for instance. But if this person leaves their partner for them, they may suddenly lose interest.
Anxious-avoidant attachment behaviors most clearly look like self-sabotage in relationships. This may be the person who tells all their friends how much they want a relationship but then quickly cheats on their partner if they do enter a committed relationship.
What the Theory of Attachment Means for Your Relationships
Attachment theory is the single best theory to explain why you attract, and maintain, certain relationships.
While a lot of relationship advice explores the psychology of relationships i.e., if a partner is a narcissist or if you’re codependent, to explain certain patterns attachment theory simplifies this.
You simply need to identify what your personal attachment style is and if it’s not secure, focus on becoming securely attached to heal relationship patterns that are stressful or conflictual.
When you heal your attachment style, you permanently change the factors within you that led to conflict, relationship stress, and ultimately relationship endings. Many people believe that they simply need to pick a “better partner” after a relationship ends to avoid the same mistake. However, if you have an insecure attachment style, you will replicate unhealthy relationship patterns in the future because these patterns originate within you. This helps explain why first marriages end in divorce about 50% of the time but this number increases to over 60% divorce rate for second marriages. For third marriages, this number is closer to 3 out of 4 third marriages will end in divorce (70-74%).
Rather than just finding a new partner, or “fixing” the one you have, healing your attachment style is the single most effective thing you may focus on to have safe, equitable, rewarding relationships.
Its Human to Need Connection
At its core, attachment theory reveals that it is a core human need to seek, develop, and maintain connections with other human beings. It is not codependent or weak to want to be close to another human being. And it’s also not healthy to be too independent regardless of cultural narratives.
Our mental and physical health depends on human connection. For example, Holt-Lundstad found that being disconnected from other human beings is as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Attachment theory explains exactly why it makes sense how much a stressful relationship consumes your mental focus or energy. You need connections with others yet some of us didn’t develop the early blueprint to do this in balanced, nourishing ways.
Becoming Securely Attached
If you don’t yet have a secure attachment style, here are the next steps to develop this security:
- Take the Relationship Safety Assessment: If you haven’t identified your specific score, start here. This data will allow you to better understand your personalized next steps.
- The DIY Path: If you are ready to begin incrementally make progress on your own to resolve your attachment style, The Toxic Relationship Recovery Workbook: Understand and Heal Attachment Wounds, Reclaim Your Confidence, and Build the Healthy Relationships You Deserve, provides clinical exercises to become securely attached.
- The Comprehensive Library: Access the Confidently Authentic Resource Library for practical and clinical skills to implement healthy boundaries, reduce negative inner dialogue, and communicate more effectively.
- The Strategic Private Partnership: For individuals ready to move beyond self-help into a permanent systemic solution to reclaim their mental focus, applications are open for the Secure Attachment System. This is a 6-month private partnership limited to 10 clients. You may apply here:
To your secure self,
Krystal Mazzola Wood, LMFT
Relational Consultant | Creator of the Secure Attachment System
At Confidently Authentic, we believe relationship transformation is a human lived experience requiring a human expert approach. All these articles are written from a human being with 15 years of clinical experience.
