Knowing Your Attachment Style Will Increase Your Success in Dating

Attachment forms the roots of security or insecurity in close relationships. Our feelings of security and insecurity in close relationships will influence our behavior in those relationships.

Attachment Styles: the way we perceive and respond to intimacy in relationships and the way we experience security and insecurity in relationships.

What does Attachment Theory have to do with my relationships as an adult?

Connection is a human need.

Independence is a human need.

The two distinct processes of developing intimacy and autonomy are synergistic and interdependent in normal development and throughout our lives.

The way individuals perceive closeness and separation, relatedness and self-definition, or intimacy and autonomy is a fundamental aspect of their personality and may also influence their self-definition and feelings and beliefs about self-worth. It also impacts their behavior in relationships. Furthermore, the actual effects of attachment styles on the relationship are the result of the interaction of the partners.

This article is not about changing who you are. It is about mindfulness toward your and your partner's typical thoughts and feelings about relationships so that you can choose behavior that is a thoughtful response to each other's behavior rather than a reaction based upon the fear of closeness or separation.

Knowing your own attachment style and the attachment style of a potential partner will provide you with early clues about whether the relationship will be harder or easier to navigate during stressful or uncertain times.

Mindfulness to attachment behaviors early in dating can give us early insights into a potential mate's personality and can help you predict whether a desired match is likely to lead to compatibility and a satisfying relationship.

Most people have one of 3 attachment styles:

Secure Attachment

Anxious Attachment

Avoidant Attachment

 

Secure Attachment

People with secure attachment feel comfortable with intimacy and more easily balance their needs for intimacy and autonomy. They are able to flow with behavior that is warm and loving toward their partner. They will tend to have an accurate sense of their partner's feelings and desires. They are open to hearing their partner's needs and don't fear being supportive.

Even if only one person in a partnership has a securely attached style, that person can influence the relationship in positive ways with the behaviors that come more naturally to securely attached persons, than they do to anxious or avoidant attached persons.

Behaviors of Securely Attached Individuals:

• Securely attached people tend to believe that if they are distressed or encounter an obstacle they can approach their partner for help.
• Securely attached people tend to believe that their partner will be available and supportive when they request help.
• Securely attached people tend to believe that they will experience relief and comfort as a result of being close to their partner during challenging or unsettling or uncertain times.
• Securely attached people don't consistently look for clues as to their partner's desire to be in the relationship.
• Securely attached people tend to be optimistic about challenging circumstances working out.
•  Securely attached people tend to be more flexible.
• Securely attached people tend not to be as defensive about criticism.
• Securely attached people tend to be more open minded when it comes to change. 
• Securely attached people tend to be responsive to their partner's needs.
• Securely attached people tend not to be afraid to seek support from their partner.
• Securely attached people tend to better understand and rely on effective communication.

 Anxious Attachment

People with anxious attachment crave closeness. They are hyper-vigilant for signs that their partner wants to pull away and will worry about their relationships when they perceive the other person wants more space for individuality. They search for the feeling and display of intimacy.

The efforts by anxiously attached people to keep the other person close are called activating strategies.

Activating Strategies and Behaviors of Anxiously Attached Individuals:

• Anxiously attached people worry that their partner will not be available or adequately responsive to them in times of need.
• Anxiously attached people crave closeness, attention, care, and support from their partner.
• Anxiously attached people tend to monitor their partners closely for signs of deficient or waning physical or emotional proximity.
• Anxiously attached people tend to regularly seek reassurance of their partner's commitment.
• Anxiously attached people may exadgerate the severity of their adversity or needs in a bid for attention.
• Anxiously attached people show great intensity of emotions.
• Anxiously attached people tend to assume there is no other person in the world who would love them but the other.
• Anxiously attached people thinking that there are so few people they could be compatible with that they will never find another partner if their relationship does not work out.
• Anxiously attached people have a hard time letting go of even very unhappy relationships.
• Anxiously attached people may do things to get their partner's immediate attention including acting opposite of what they want or by acting completely disinterested in them.

Activating strategies may continue until their partner acts in a way that causes them to feel secure in the relationship again.  Anxious feelings and activating strategies in excess can lead to a life characterized by frequently alternating highs and lows.

Anxiously  attachment individuals have a greater capacity for intimacy than most.  Hyper-vigilance to the behaviors of those they are close to gives anxiously attached individuals a keen awareness of the feelings and behaviors of people around them, making them insightful. This can be a strong advantage in life. However, if their awareness and sensitivity leads to behaviors in which they take their partner's distance personally or expend excessive energy worrying about and protesting their partner's behaviors, there is likely to be unhealthy levels of conflict and drama in the relationship. They may tend to worry that their partner does not want to be as close to them and are very sensitive to picking up cues that their partner seeks distance from them. For example, they will notice and feel insecure when their partner does not quickly return a text.

If You Have Anxious Attachment:

Acknowledging their needs for intimacy with potential partners will lead anxiously attached people to healthier match ups. Being open about their need for availability, intimacy, and security in a relationship takes courage but is wise. A partner with a secure attachment style will help them to find balance.

Dating someone with an avoidant attachment style will be particularly difficult. Avoidant potential partners alert others to their style by sending mixed messages or suggesting that another person's need for intimacy is needy.

A person with anxious attachment feels most secure when their partner acts consistently and communicates well. If they can postpone reacting and avoid jumping to conclusions, they may be able to enjoy the strengths of this attachment style and minimize the negative energy expenditures.

Avoidant Attachment

People with avoidant attachment are wary of intimacy in relationships, fear too much closeness, and are not very sensitive to their partner's emotional shifts. They believe being close to another comes at the expense of their autonomy or independence and will lead to enmeshment. Avoidantly attached people value independence and autonomy over closeness and intimacy. Too much closeness leaves them feeling uncomfortable or trapped. They worry that the relationship will get in the way of their independent lives.

A person with anxious attachment wants closeness but is worried that the closeness will grow to be too intense and the relationship may swallow them up. They worry losing their independence more than worrying about closeness or rejection. Because of their wariness to intimacy they struggle with opening up to their partners.

When feeling the discomfort of closeness, avoidant attachment people will engage in deactivating strategies in order to decrease intimacy.

Behaviors of Avoidantly Detached Individuals

• Focusing on a partner's small imperfections,
• Idealizing a former partner
• forming relationships with people who are unable to commit.

With mindfulness about deactivating strategies, an avoidant person can come to identify when they are trying to distance from another out of fear of intimacy.

There is a fourth form of attachment style that is far less common and is a combination of anxious and avoidant. These person's will display both anxious and avoidant behaviors.

 What do you look for in a potential mate? Take some time to engage in introspection about your own attachment style. What attachment style should you look for in a potential mate? Take the time at the beginning to look for clues about whether the relationship will be harder or easier to navigate during stressful or uncertain times.

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