Attachment styles are something that many of us are blissfully unaware of, even though they dictate how we go about our relationships.
Ever wondered why you act a certain way in every single relationship? And then keep making the same mistakes? It’s probably down to your attachment style, which can be linked back to your childhood. If you feel insecure in your adult relationships, keep wanting to check in on a partner or starting arguments about where they’ve been, identifying your attachment style could help you change your behaviour.
Why knowing your attachment style is important
Barbara Honey, relationship counsellor at Relate, says, ‘It’s very helpful for people to identify their attachment style, even if they’re not seeing a counsellor. It ought to come up in relationship education at school, because if people did start thinking about it at quite a young age, and recognised they had a bit of a problem, they could do something about it before it all starts going pear-shaped.’
By couples talking to each other about their own experiences of attachment, Barbara says they can make sense of each other’s personal situations and understand their behaviours better.
Identifying your own style will also allow you to figure out if you’re compatible with your partner, long-term. Barbara says, ‘Different attachment styles will fit differently together as well. If you’re both [on the] “anxious” [end of the spectrum], it will cause you a lot of difficulties.’
Unfortunately, we often don’t know another person’s attachment style until we’re in a relationship with them. ‘People who end up being very possessive and controlling often start by being very charming and loving!’ she adds. ‘It’s easy to be fooled by the charm and the love, and then get trapped in a very controlling relationship.’
What is attachment theory?
Psychiatrist John Bowlby developed attachment theory in the 60s and relationship counsellors and therapists have been using his work ever since. Bowlby was the first professional to realise just how importance a child’s relationship with their caregiver (whether that’s a biological parent, foster parent or grandparent for example) was, and how that impacted their ‘social, emotional and cognitive development’.
Bowlby studied many children and their attachments to their caregivers. From their behaviour, he was able to draw different styles of attachment and understand the behaviours that came with each style, once the child entered into adult relationships.
‘Imagine a spectrum where at one end, the child is confident that if the caregiver disappears, they’ll be back any minute,’ Barbara says. ‘At the other end, you’ve got total detachment from a caregiver, where a person grows up and then finds it very difficult to even make relationships, because they have no trust. All these behaviours get played out as we’re making relationships. Quite simply, our history of attachment with our primary caregivers will get played out, and it’s likely to repeat itself as we get older.’
There are three main attachment styles, Barbara explains, but there are huge degrees and variations of each.
Secure attachment
What you’ll act like in a relationship
‘This is someone who doesn’t display any kind of jealous or possessive behaviour,’ Barbara says. ‘That’s the couple where they don’t do everything together, they have their own interests, they go out with friends as well as with each other, they’re not jealous of each other, they’re not possessive, they don’t keep checking in with each other, they don’t need to keep texting or phoning to see where the other is because they’re confident in the relationship.’
What your relationship with your parent/caregiver will have been like
Barbara explains, ‘They’ll have had a secure attachment with their caregiver where they’ve felt safe. It’s what Bowlby called “developing a secure base as a child”. Think about the peek-a-boo game that parents often play. That’s kind of how a child starts to learn that someone can disappear and reappear. The more that happens, as long as the parent keeps reappearing, the more secure the child gets. That enables the child then to go to school or go next door and play with a friend, because they trust the parent will still be there when they come back.’ And that’s the same in relationships when they’re an adult.
Anxious attachment
What you’ll act like in a relationship
‘This person may be bit insecure in their adult relationships,’ Barbara explains. ‘They might be anxious, a bit needy, worried about [a partner] going out with friends, or them having separate interests. Sadly, what happens is, they cause arguments in relationships over these things. In extreme cases, they could end up being very controlling, possessive and jealous.
‘They might start doing a lot of checking, even covert surveillance like putting cameras in [a partner’s] car. That’s the most extreme end and abusive behaviour. If you’re in that kind of relationship, it’s potentially dangerous because that person has no tolerance at all of you being not their total possession.’
What your relationship with your parent/caregiver will have been like
‘Someone who’s not had quite such a secure attachment [to their caregiver]. Where the parents weren’t always quite there when needed,’ Barbara says. ‘And they will not have always paid their child as much attention as they needed.’
Detachment/avoidant
What you’ll act like in a relationship
‘Some people who would fit into this style just don’t make relationships,’ Barbara says. ‘They avoid them all together, and find it incredibly difficult to relate to other people because they can’t trust at all. Or they try and make relationships, but find it very difficult and the relationship only lasts a couple of weeks. They might start off being incredibly needy and that puts the other person off, and it just ends. It’s that fulfilling the script thing because they don’t expect the relationship to work, and lo and behold, it doesn’t. They keep re-convincing themselves of their belief that they’re not worthy of a relationship.They may also display self-sabotaging behaviours.’
What your relationship with your parent/caregiver will have been like
Bowlby noticed children who’d been in hospital for a long time would be very reluctant to reengage with their parents once they were allowed to see them. ‘He noticed stages of protest, and that if a child is separated from a parent it will cry and cry,’ Barbara says. ‘Eventually it will give up. It’s as if the child has made a decision that says, “you’re not going to be there for me, I’m going to give up on you and be independent”. If that happens, that’s the worst case scenario. The child detaches completely from the parent or caregiver. You also see this sometimes with a child whose parent has an addiction. The child ends up not only being independent, but also looking after the parents as well as themselves at a very young age.’
How counselling and therapy can help
Barbara says identifying your attachment style as anxious or avoidant is not necessarily a negative thing. And it certainly doesn’t mean you can never have healthy relationships. ‘If people have therapy or counselling, they can get a lot of help once they start understanding why they have particular difficulties in making relationships,’ she explains. ‘If people can make the link with their childhood experience, they can start to try and behave differently.’
Although counsellors can help people that fit into any style, it becomes harder the more extreme the behaviour (especially with extreme detachment).
‘We might say their brain is almost hard wired into their current behaviour and it’s very difficult to shift them from it,’ Barbara says. ‘Cognitive behavioural techniques can work quite well for people, particularly around anxiety. If someone’s at home and their partner’s gone out and they want to keep ringing or texting them to find out where they are, we give them techniques to cope. We’d also look at how they’re thinking and catastrophising. It can be very successful.’
