What your attachment style does in an argument

What is an attachment style?

An attachment style is a learned expectation about what happens when you need someone. It works like a reflex. It shows up in the half second before you speak, when your body has already decided whether reaching out is safe.

• It forms from small moments. You were upset, you reached for someone, and they came, or did not, or came sometimes.
• It becomes a working model. Out of those moments you build an expectation of what other people do with your needs.
• It has 2 dimensions. Researchers measure how much you worry about being abandoned and how uncomfortable you are with closeness and dependence.
• It keeps updating. Fraley and Hudson, reviewing how attachment styles develop, put the weight on the whole history of your relationships and not only the first ones.

I see the insecure patterns as adaptations, often to something early that was frightening or unreliable. A difficult early life is a starting position and carries no verdict on what you are capable of in a relationship.

What does each attachment style do under pressure?

Each of the 4 patterns is a different move in the moment a relationship feels uncertain. Nobody is an avoidant. People act avoidantly, with particular people, under particular pressure.

• Secure. You assume that saying what is wrong will go all right, so you say it earlier and more plainly, and you repair faster after a row.
• Anxious, or preoccupied. A shorter reply or a turned back puts you on alert, and you pursue: you ask again and want it resolved now.
• Avoidant, or dismissive. Needing someone became expensive early on, so you go quiet, change the subject, turn reasonable or leave the room.
• Fearful avoidant. You want closeness and expect it to hurt, so you approach and then retreat, sometimes in the same conversation.

Avoidance is easy to read as not caring. In my clinical view the feeling is usually too much, and going flat is how it is managed. Read more about being afraid of getting close.

What happens when 2 attachment styles meet in an argument?

One person feels distance and moves towards it, the other feels pressure and moves away, and each move triggers the next.

• The pursuer reads distance. They are right that contact has broken and wrong that it means they are unloved.
• The withdrawer reads pressure. They are right that they cannot think straight and wrong that leaving the room lands as neutral.
• Pursuit produces withdrawal. The cornered partner pulls back, which confirms the alarm, which increases the pursuit.
• The loop speeds up. 2 sensible moves make each other worse, faster each time round.
• The cost has been measured. A meta-analysis of 132 papers and just over 71.000 people linked attachment anxiety and avoidance to lower relationship satisfaction, with avoidance the stronger of the 2.
• Mostly your own satisfaction. Your pattern predicts your own satisfaction more strongly than your partner’s.

Those are associations across large numbers of people. Plenty of anxious and avoidant people are in good relationships.

Can your attachment style change?

Attachment style changes partly and slowly, and more in adulthood than the popular version suggests.

• Only moderate continuity. Fraley’s meta-analysis of stability from infancy to adulthood estimated the true stability between age one and later ages at a correlation of roughly 0,39.
• Stability rises with age. Fraley and Hudson report test-retest figures over 10 years of roughly 0,30 in childhood against roughly 0,50 in adulthood.
• What moves it. They name new relationships, breakups, becoming a parent, sustained conflict or sustained support, and therapy.
• A moving average. Years of being treated one way tilt it, and years of being treated differently tilt it back.

One good conversation will not do it. A year of a different kind of relationship does more.

What can an attachment style not tell you?

An attachment style describes a tendency, and it gives no verdict on you, your partner or the relationship.

• A quiz is a self-report. It records how you think you behave, which differs from how you behave.
• A style is no diagnosis. It carries no clinical meaning on its own.
• A style excuses nothing. Understanding why someone withdraws explains the behaviour and leaves its cost to the other person standing.
• A style makes a poor label. Used in an argument it becomes a weapon, and people reach for it exactly when they are least able to be fair.
• You cannot assign one from outside. A style you have given your partner is your theory about them.
• The samples are narrow. The research comes overwhelmingly from Western, mostly English-speaking samples.

How do you change what your attachment style does?

Slow the sequence down until each of you can see your own move.

• Watch the first move. For one week, note whether you move towards the other person or away in the seconds before an argument starts.
• Write it down. 3 or 4 entries tell you about you, this relationship and this month, which no category does.
• Describe, never label. Say what just happened between you. Leave the style names out of the argument.
• If you pursue, step back. When the pursuing partner steps back, I tend to see the quieter one catch their breath and open up.
• If you withdraw, speak. Say what is happening in you before you go quiet or leave the room.
• Check the load. Moving country strips out the friends and family who absorbed ordinary strain, and the pattern looks more extreme in Copenhagen.

Read more about why the same kind of partner keeps arriving.

These steps fail when the loop runs faster than either of you can watch it. That is what the session is for.

Questions people ask

How do I find out what my attachment style is?

Notice what you do in the seconds before an argument, over several arguments. A questionnaire gives you a label quickly, and watching your own first move gives you something to work with.

Do 2 insecure people have a chance at a good relationship?

Yes, insecure patterns are linked to lower satisfaction on average and say nothing about failure. What matters more is whether the 2 of you stop a bad loop once it has started.

Is it true that avoidant people do not want closeness?

No, avoidance usually manages feeling that is too strong. The wish for closeness sits underneath the strategy that keeps it at a distance.

Am I stuck with my attachment style?

No, attachment patterns are only moderately stable and they do move. The change is slow.

Is couples therapy or individual therapy better for attachment?

Couples therapy is the more direct route when the pattern shows up mainly between the 2 of you. When it runs through friendships and work as well, individual psychotherapy alongside it is worth the time.

Sources

• Fraley, Attachment stability from infancy to adulthood: meta-analysis and dynamic modeling of developmental mechanisms, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2002
• Fraley and Hudson, The development of attachment styles, in Personality Development Across the Lifespan, 2017
• Candel and Turliuc, Insecure attachment and relationship satisfaction: a meta-analysis of actor and partner associations, Personality and Individual Differences, 2019

How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.