Amir Levine

Two researchers in the field of adult attachment, Paula Pietromonaco, of the University of Massachusetts, and Katherine Carnelley, of the University of Southampton in the UK, found that avoidant individuals actually prefer anxiously attached people. Another study, by Jeffry Simpson of the University of Minnesota, showed that anxious women are more likely to date avoidant men. Is it possible, then, that people who guard their independence with ferocity would seek the partners most likely to impinge on their autonomy? Or that people who seek closeness are attracted to people who want to push them away? And if so, why? Pietromonaco and Carnelley believe that these attachment styles actually complement each other in a way. Each reaffirms the other’s beliefs about themselves and about relationships. The avoidants’ defensive self-perception that they are strong and independent is confirmed, as is the belief that others want to pull them into more closeness than they are comfortable with. The anxious types find that their perception of wanting more intimacy than their partner can provide is confirmed, as is their anticipation of ultimately being let down by significant others. So, in a way, each style is drawn to reenact a familiar script over and over again.

These findings suggest that people with an anxious attachment style are indeed more vigilant to changes in others’ emotional expression and can have a higher degree of accuracy and sensitivity to other people’s cues. However, this finding comes with a caveat. The study showed that people with an anxious attachment style tend to jump to conclusions very quickly, and when they do, they tend to misinterpret people’s emotional state. Only when the experiment was designed in such a way that anxious participants had to wait a little longer—they couldn’t react immediately when they spotted a change, but had to wait a little longer—and get more information before making a judgment did they have an advantage over other participants. This is an important lesson for someone with an anxious attachment style: If you just wait a little longer before reacting and jumping to conclusions, you will have an uncanny ability to decipher the world around you and use it to your advantage. But shoot from the hip, and you’re all over the place making misjudgments and hurting yourself.

Imagine if you were a parent and couldn’t for the life of you read your infant’s cues. You wouldn’t be able to tell whether your child was hungry or tired, wanting to be held or wanting to be left alone, wet or sick. How difficult life would be for both of you. Your child would have to work so much harder—and cry so much longer—to be understood. Having an avoidant attachment style can often make you feel like that parent. You’re not strong at translating the many verbal and nonverbal signals you receive during everyday interactions into a coherent understanding of your lover’s mental state. The problem is that, along with your self-reliant attitude, you also train yourself not to care about how the person closest to you is feeling. You figure that this is not your task; that they need to take care of their own emotional well-being. This lack of understanding leads partners of avoidants to complain about not receiving enough emotional support. It also leads to less connectedness, warmth, and satisfaction in the relationship.

The first misconception is that everyone has the same capacity for intimacy. We’ve been raised to believe that every person can fall deeply in love (this part might well be true) and that when this happens, he or she will be transformed into a different person (this part is not!). Regardless of what they were like before, when people find “the one,” they supposedly become adoring, faithful, supportive partners—free of qualms about the relationship. It’s tempting to forget that, in fact, people have very different capacities for intimacy. And when one person’s need for closeness is met with another person’s need for independence and distance, a lot of unhappiness ensues. By being cognizant of this fact, both of you can navigate your way better in the dating world to find someone with intimacy needs similar to your own (if you are unattached) or reach an entirely new understanding about your differing needs in an existing relationship—a first and necessary step toward steering it in a more secure direction.

You now live in suspense, anticipating that next small remark or gesture that will reassure you. After living like this for a while, you start to do something interesting. You start to equate the anxiety, the preoccupation, the obsession, and those ever-so-short bursts of joy with love. What you’re really doing is equating an activated attachment system with passion. If you’ve been at it for a while, you become programmed to get attracted to those very individuals who are least likely to make you happy. Having a perpetually activated attachment system is the opposite of what nature had in mind for us in terms of gratifying love.love. As we’ve seen, one of Bowlby and Ainsworth’s most important insights is that in order to thrive and grow as human beings, we need a secure base from which to derive strength and comfort. For that to happen, our attachment system must be calm and secure.

If you are anxious or secure, you genuinely want to work out a relationship problem. However, the resolution itself often brings a couple closer together—this is a scenario that, however unconsciously, the avoidant partner wants to avoid. While people with an anxious or secure attachment style seek to resolve a disagreement to achieve greater emotional closeness, this outcome is uncomfortable for the avoidant who actually seeks to remain distant. In order to dodge the possibility of getting closer, avoidants tend to grow more hostile and distant as arguments progress. Unless there is recognition of the process involved in an anxious-avoidant conflict, the distancing during conflict tends to repeat itself and causes a lot of unhappiness. Without addressing the issue, the situation can go from bad to worse.

Effective communication works on the understanding that we all have very specific needs in relationships, many of which are determined by your attachment style. They aren’t good or bad, they simply are what they are. If you’re anxious, you have a strong need for closeness and have to be reassured at all times that your partner loves and respects you. If you’re avoidant, you need to be able to maintain some distance, either emotional or physical, from your partner and preserve a large degree of separateness. In order to be happy in a relationship, we need to find a way to communicate our attachment needs clearly without resorting to attacks or defensiveness.

The attachment system is the mechanism in our brain responsible for tracking and monitoring the safety and availability of our attachment figures. If you have an anxious attachment style, you possess a unique ability to sense when your relationship is threatened. Even a slight hint that something may be wrong will activate your attachment system, and once it’s activated, you are unable to calm down until you get a clear indication from your partner that he or she is truly there for you and that the relationship is safe. People with other attachment styles also get activated, but they don’t pick up on subtle details.

Be assertive and nonapologetic. Your relationship needs are valid—period. Though people with different attachment styles may not see your concerns as legitimate, they’re essential for your happiness, and expressing them authentically is crucial to effective communication. This point is especially important if you have an anxious attachment style, because our culture encourages you to believe that many of your needs are illegitimate. But whether they are legitimate or not for someone else is beside the point. They are essential for your happiness, and that is what’s important.

It’s always more effective to assume the best in conflict situations. In fact, expecting the worst—which is typical of people with insecure attachment styles—often acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume your partner will act hurtfully or reject you, you automatically respond defensively—thus starting a vicious cycle of negativity. Though you may have to talk yourself into believing the “positive truths” above (even if only halfheartedly at first), it is well worth the effort. In most cases, they will steer the dialogue in the right direction.