Arguments and Attachment Styles
How Your Childhood Impacts Your Adult Relationships
Fighting with a partner is absolutely no fun. (Obviously.)
What’s worse are fights that seem to go nowhere:
One person wants to hash it out right this minute, and the other walks away.
One person risks vulnerability, and the other gets defensive.
One person has all the big feelings, and the other stays stoic.
Sound familiar? If so, there’s a chance you and your partner have different attachment styles.
What are Attachment Styles?
In the 1950s, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby and psychologist Mary Ainsworth began developing Attachment Theory, which suggests that our relationships with our primary caregivers in childhood create overarching influences on our relationships later in life.
More specifically, those early influences result in an attachment style—how we relate to other people through patterns of behavior and communication.
As children, we depend on our caregivers for everything–comfort, soothing, and support. If our needs are satisfied, we develop a strong, positive, secure attachment to our caregivers. This tells our brains, “We can generally rely on people. There’s no need to be fearful, anxious, or jealous in our relationships.”
But when our caregivers aren’t attuned to our needs–when they’re inconsistent, distant, or abusive–we develop an insecure attachment. As we grow, our brains continue to say, “Be wary of people. They might not meet your emotional or physical needs. If your caregivers couldn’t do it, nobody else can either.”
According to Attachment Theory, early interactions lead to one of four attachment styles later in life: anxious, avoidant, disorganized, and secure.
The Four Attachment Styles
As you learn about each of the attachment styles, I want you to keep a few things in mind:
Most people don’t fit cleanly into just one of the four attachment styles, so don’t be surprised if you see a little bit of yourself in each description below.
Your attachment style can change with significant events throughout your life. For example, you may have a secure attachment until you experience infidelity in a romantic relationship, causing you to develop a more anxious attachment from there on out.
Your attachment style isn’t your “fault,” and it’s nothing to blame yourself for. Rather, it’s a result of how your caregivers treated you–something you had no control over. If you judge or criticize yourself while reading, pause and come back. If you’re still struggling with this information after a break, maybe now’s not the right time to dive into your attachment style. And that’s OK!
#1 Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment Style
The #1 concern for folks with an anxious attachment style is safety in the relationship. The thought of living without their “better half”--especially if they feel abandoned–causes those anxious feelings to rise to the surface.
People with an anxious attachment style may also:
Develop a negative self-image.
Hold others in a more positive light than themselves.
Seek intense approval, support, and responsiveness from their partner.
Experience emotional dependence.
Struggle with jealousy or suspiciousness of their partner.
When people with an anxious attachment style encounter conflict with their partner, they’re likely to become more clingy and demanding because they’re worried about their partner leaving them.
#2 Avoidant-Dismissive Attachment Style
Folks with an avoidant attachment style are often emotional “lone wolves.” Because their needs weren’t met as kids, they learned to soothe and regulate themselves without help from others. A partner with an avoidant-dismissive attachment will often shy away from emotional closeness for fear of being let down or hurt.
People with an avoidant-dismissive attachment style may:
Describe themselves as strong, independent, and self-sufficient.
Be described by their partners as “emotionally unavailable.”
Have generally high self-esteem.
Fear having to depend on other people.
Dislike having others rely on them.
In an argument, partners with an avoidant-dismissive attachment style might hide or suppress their feelings to avoid sharing or becoming emotionally tangled with another person.
#3 Disorganized (Fearful-Avoidant) Attachment Style
People with a disorganized attachment style (also called fearful-avoidant attachment) mirror what they experienced in childhood. As kids, these folks most likely had unstable and unpredictable caregivers, often surviving abuse and neglect. One day, they would have all of their emotional and physical needs met; the next, they’d be totally on their own.
This leads to some ambiguous behaviors in adult relationships. People with a disorganized attachment style may:
Strongly desire intimacy and closeness but struggle to open up.
Have trouble trusting and depending on others.
Struggle to regulate big emotions.
This makes conflict especially difficult. People with a disorganized attachment style might go back and forth between clinging to their relationship and avoiding emotional attachment for fear of being hurt by an unreliable partner.
#4 Secure Attachment Style
Secure attachments happen when there’s a consistent, warm, and loving bond between a child and their caregiver. People with this attachment style can form relationships based on honesty, tolerance, and emotional closeness.
Folks with a secure attachment style are confident in their interactions with others and have little difficulty building long-term relationships with people. They can give and receive love and trust and be trusted by others. They can be simultaneously close and independent.
In arguments, people with a secure attachment style tackle the problem itself instead of assigning any negative feelings toward the other person. They’re open about their feelings and attempt to problem-solve with their partner in a healthy, communicative way.
Why Attachment Styles Matter
Attachment styles affect our relationships big time. These styles can ultimately inform how we:
Perceive and manage emotional closeness and intimacy.
Communicate our needs and feelings.
Respond to conflict.
Develop expectations of our partners.
Learning about your specific attachment style can help you recognize some unhealthy patterns of behavior and communication that you can use as a jumping point for further internal work and healing.
In addition, attachment styles can also be passed down to our children. If we don’t have a secure attachment, it might be difficult to model that secure, positive attachment for our little ones. This is often a contributor to intergenerational trauma, the ongoing impact of a traumatic experience from previous generations that continues to impact the current generation.
How to Change Your Attachment Style
Changing any habit–especially those rooted in our childhood experiences–is hard work. But moving toward a secure attachment with your partner can bring astounding benefits.
Here are four ways to start changing your attachment style:
Identify your relationship patterns.
You can’t change what you can’t see. Start with your relationships in childhood, and ask yourself how they might have shaped you into the person you are today.
Improve your self-esteem.
Low self-esteem is common among all insecure attachment types. Embracing, loving, and valuing yourself first can help you build a stable foundation on which to develop other relationships.
Address your needs.
Ultimately, folks with insecure attachment styles are scared their relationships will fail them. Figuring out what makes you feel most secure in a relationship–what you really need to feel safe with another person–is vital to your journey toward secure attachment.
Seek therapy.
Therapy for both individuals and couples can help you further identify your attachment style and give you concrete tools to establish boundaries and move toward a healthier relationship!
Get the support you deserve.
Relationships are hard enough. Add motherhood to the mix, and you might be really struggling. Take a breath. You deserve support in this process.
That’s why I developed Stay Close Through Conflict, a 90-minute relationship tune-up to help you reconnect and stay that way. Check it out here!
Sources
The Attachment Project. (2022, September 12). Attachment styles and their role in adult relationships. Attachment Project. Retrieved from https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/four-attachment-styles/#:~:text=There%20are%20four%20adult%20attachment,Secure