How your 'attachment style' is impacting your relationships
Whether your style's 'anxious' or 'secure', it dictates how you behave with a partner.
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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."
The 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."
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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."
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