Secure Attachment

• Many of us look for “chemistry” in romantic relationships. Often times that “chemistry” is actually the activation of our attachment circuits.
• Attachment patterns are initially formed in infancy and become a template for which we base intimate relationships on moving forward in our lives.
• When we think about attachment patterns, we are thinking about how we connect to others, how secure we feel in that connection, how able we are to trust, rely on others / ourselves, and how comfortable we feel with exploration away from (and distance in) our closest relationships.
• We form that “blueprint” attachment to the people we are most dependent on in infancy and in the earliest years of our lives. For most of us, that is our parents.
• So yes, even though you don’t remember it, those early attachment experiences shaped you, and continue to effect you in relationships moving forward.
• If, in those early relationships we consistently felt security (i.e. comforted, taken seriously, and attended to while we were in duress) AND accepted in our needs for distance, exploratory play, and independence we are likely to develop what’s called a “secure base” in our attachment relationships.
• That secure base feels something like, “I know I can count on them to be there if I need them, but I also know the quality of the relationship won’t change if I want to do my own thing, have my own space, and go at my own speed”.
• Only about 50% of the population connects to others with that secure base. The remaining 50% struggle with some combination of these dynamics in relationships.
• Our attachment patterns hugely impact who we are drawn to, what our experience of dating is like, how our relationships go, what types of conflicts we are likely to have, and how comfortable we feel with commitment and distance in relationships.
• Knowing and understanding our attachment patterns can make us more efficient and self-aware daters and partners. This can help us find a good match and take care of ourselves and our partnerships, even if we’re with someone who has a different attachment type.

Our attachment patterns hugely inform who and how we date, what we expect of ourselves and others in intimate relationships, and who ignites a “spark” in us. I’m always a bit hesitant of the whirlwind romance built exclusively on a spark, not because I don’t believe in love, but because I do believe in the power of our attachment circuits.

Our earliest relationships become a roadmap of sorts where we learn how to maintain a sense of connection to others. When we are infants we are in a state of complete dependency on our caregivers, and even though we have no conscious memory of that time, we are highly aware, perceptive, and paying close attention to what works to get us what we need from our caregivers and what doesn’t.

We take the information collected at that time and use it to generalize to other relationships as a blueprint for how relationships work, and how we should work in relationships for them to be successful. Did you often need to really cry and scream to get your parents to drop what they were doing to help you? You probably internalized that you need to be LOUD with your feelings for people to pay attention to you. Did you seek closeness to a caregiver who often struggled with physical affection? Well, perhaps you learned relationships go better when everyone takes space.

While we aren’t going to remember these experiences from infancy, we can look at how we attach, relate, connect, and trust in relational settings as adults to come to understand which roadmaps feel closest to ours. There are four primary attachment types (or roadmaps): Secure, Anxious, Dismissive, and Unresolved.

As unique as we all are as individuals, there are predictable patterns of relating we all fall into and the more we know and understand our patterns the more we can 1) challenge and change patterns that don’t work for us 2) Look for romantic partners who compliment our attachment style 3) Have constructive conversations with our partners about our attachment similarities and differences to strengthen our relationships.

Lots more to come on attachment. For now, consider how securely you attach in different types of relationships. Resources below to help on that journey.

Comments:

1. Coming back to “the spark” I mention throughout the post. That “spark” is most likely to be felt in relationships where there is at least one party who is not operating from a secure base. There will be more on that in a future post, but I want to be clear that a “spark” isn’t “bad” it’s just often confused with “love at first sight” or “true love”, and in my experience it usually has a lot more to do with attachment patterns. Also, to be clear, if there is a spark in your relationship that doesn’t mean it’s a problem, it just may mean you and your partner will feel intense chemistry in some ways, and perhaps intense disconnects in others. That’s ok, and can all be worked through with two willing and committed parties. This will all make more sense once we get further into attachment types.
2. A little more on attachment types: these are general patterns, but they are not hard patterns, meaning we all have a tendency to fit into one of the four categories, but we can slide around depending on the relationship, how we are doing, and the context in our lives. We can also attach securely in some types of relationship, but not in others (friends vs romantic relationships, men vs women, etc). As promised, more to come!
3. If you’re a parent reading this your first thought might be, “oh lord I didn’t feel like picking my kid up this morning and now I’ve scared them forever”. Don’t be so hard on yourself – attachment patterns are formed over many experiences and are much more about the big picture of the relationship than about anomalies. No parent meets their child’s needs all the time, and quite frankly no parent needs to. Part of feeling secure in a relationship is having the confidence that a relationship can endure even with differences between the involved parties. That missed hug this morning can be a opportunity to strengthen the security of a relationship when paired with something like: “Daddy / Momma loves you, but I’m not going to pick you up right now. We can snuggle later.”
4. A strong / secure connection doesn’t always mean “giving in” or never disappointing the other party, but it does often mean validating the other party’s experience. For more on how to validate AND set limits see this post on validation. If you’re a parent and you need help with this, you are not alone! This is not always intuitive, especially if it wasn’t your experience in childhood. For more guidance on incorporating healthy boundaries with validation check out Big Little Feelings, they have a paid course and free content through their instagram account (and as a friendly reminder I do not get any kick backs/ payment for referrals I make to resources, I just tell you about them because I think they are helpful).
5. This post has more details on how our attachment history impacts our dating world.
6. The best book I’ve found for clinicians on attachment based work is David Wallin’s attachment in psychotherapy. Here are some useful excerpts about how secure attachment affects development and relationships: “Secure babies appear to have equal access to their impulses to explore when they feel safe and to see solace in connection when they do not” (page 19). “Children with a history of secure attachment show substantially greater self-esteem, emotional health and ego resilience, positive affect, initiative, social competence, and concentration”. (page 23) “If our early relationships were secure, the result may well be a capacity to respond – that is to think, sense feel, and act – with openness and flexibility” (Page 65). Full Citation: Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in Psychotherapy. Guilford Press.
7. The best book for non-clinicians I have found on attachment theory is calling “Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find – and keep – love”. I have some gripes about this book that I would tell anyone before recommending they read it. 1) I think there is a bit of critical tone towards the dismissive stance in the book, and a bit of a favorable tone towards the anxious stance. The fact is each attachment style has its upsides and downsides and dismissive isn’t “worse” than anxious (or vice versa). They are just different. 2) they do not cover the unresolved attachment type, which I think is a disappointing miss. 3) There is not enough of an emphasis on the fluid nature of attachment types; a person who is usually one attachment type is not ALWAYS that way in all relationships, even if they are that way most of the time. 4) It mentions the ability to move towards secure attachment, but I don’t think enough time is spent on it. 5) There have also been critiques on it being heteronormative and too simplistic which I think are both fair. So, in short (maybe not so short now), It’s a great introduction, the best I’ve found, I’ve recommended it many times – but don’t take it as the whole story.
8. If you’re not up for reading a whole book, this article is a great start – though I don’t love the description of the attachment styles themselves or what forms them.