Put a finger down if you’ve been villainized (or victimized) by your situation-ship who refuses to commit to you, but clocks you for your “attachment style” in your semi-exclusive, partially-reciprocal relationship. Yep. We’ve all been there. It’s painful, but you have to get through Rory and Dean before you can be Noah and Allie.
There are four official attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. Recognized by researches nationally, these styles backtrack to studies done as early as 1969.
The shocking part is that your attachment style isn’t at all dictated by your past relationships no matter how toxic they were. It all comes from much deeper, shockingly, stemming back to your childhood. Let’s throw it back to the past, and see what style we resonate with most and how to use it to your advantage in a relationship.
1. Secure attachment
The secure attachment style is a cookie-cutter healthy relationship archetype. This is for the girls who are confident and steady in their relationships: empathetic, boundary-setting, and, as the name dictates, secure.
If you’re a communicator and open about anything new arising in your relationship, you probably resonate most with the secure girlies. Statistically, over half of the U.S. identify with the secure attachment style, honing in at a solid 52%. Go off queens! Self worth, positive affirmations, confident resolutions, and trust are key components of this style. It’s so important to maintain clear communication and openness in a relationship to keep up with the highs of a secure attachment style.
2. Anxious attachment
Grab your Lexapro, cause this is for the overthinking girlies who’s exes have said, “I really like you, but what’s with the clinginess?” … then proceeded to cry when you try to break things off for the fourth time. Anxious attachment caters to the lovergirls with a fear of abandonment: the girls who can’t trust, who need reassurance, and who always crawl back to what they know.
Some prospects are going to see an anxiously attached SO as clingy or needy, but that isn’t the case at all. 17% of adults identify with the anxious attachment style, but where does that come from? Truthfully, most people identifying with this style have a past of abandonment, lack of communication, or inconsistency.
How do we deal with this? Well, firm communication is a start. If you have a FOA (fear of abandonment), start with conveying this to your partner. Checking-up texts, nightly phone calls, and words of affirmation can be the key to working alongside your anxious attachment style.
3. Avoidant attachment
You’re a succulent in a world of lilacs. It doesn’t take much nurturing to tend to your needs, because over time, you’ve learned to do it yourself. The avoidant attachment style creates a mold for the girl who’s been left too many times, or maybe for the chronically single girl. Whatever your archetype may be, those with this style are the lone wolves, the self starters, the motivators, or the detached.
Mellowing in around a quarter of adults, 21%, consider themselves avoidant-ly attached. A deeply rooted fear of intimacy, both physical or mental, prohibits those with this style from the inside out. You are your own barrier (and you are so capable of loving and being loved). You have to be the one to acknowledge this about yourself first, and that’s the first baby step in using this attachment style to create a beautiful relationship. Because, yes, there’s one out there for you.
4. Disorganized attachment
This is the rarest attachment style of all, and hardest to identify.
If you’re the type of person who enters a relationship and goes through stages of happiness, excitement, grief, anger, and sadness, I have some news for you. Do you have honeymoon phases and then boughs of despair? Do you find pieces of every person you’ve been with in you?
A mere 10% of adults feel like they have the disorganized attachment style, and those 10% might be the most in tune with what they know about themselves. This fear and eagerness for a relationship typically stems from traumas in childhood or with a SO, manifesting itself into erratic behavior or inconsistency in a relationship. Wow.
But this isn’t the end-all, be-all. As it is with everyone, it is so possible to find a healthy relationship with this attachment style. First, however, you might have to find yourself. Learn what you love and act on those mantras. Discover a solid belief system. Create a home, whatever that might mean. Most importantly, find who you are before you find out who someone else is.
Okay, now let’s debrief.
It’s not black and white. Like your Spotify Wrapped, your attachment style is going to showcase and change based on your biggest life events. One day, it’ll be The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived and Lizzy McAlpine topping your charts, and the next it’s (You) On My Arm and Lover by Taylor Swift. People grow, relationships change, and attachment styles alter.
But it is nice to identify with one and see why your ex-situationship was so wrong about you.