Knowing Your Attachment Style & Spotting Green Flags Of Securely Attached Relationships
Love Better and Love Safer With Psycho-education About Attachment Styles
Have you ever wondered why you react strangely with the people you’re closest to, why you might become irrationally panicky when your loved one takes a little time out space when they’re upset- or why you might just ghost someone or storm out and abandon someone you love with no explanation or warning when you get triggered?
The way we learned to attach to our primary caregivers as children can impact how we show up in relationships for our whole lives. If we grew up capable of secure attachment, it’s a huge gift to others, but if we’re insecurely attached, our behavior can seem strange and confusing to someone with a different attachment style. If we don’t get treatment for insecure attachment styles and learn how to earn secure attachment, we can cause a lot of pain for someone we love and experience a lot of pain as a result of someone else’s often confusing behavior. Learning your own attachment style or the style of your parent, child, or romantic partner can help you become a more empathic intimate.
Depending on how your primary caregivers responded to your physical and emotional needs growing up, you may wind up with one of 4 attachment styles. Depending on the quality of your attachment to the earliest caregivers in your life, you may now approach relationships from one of these four orientations:
Secure attachment style
Anxious/ Ambivalent attachment style
Avoidant attachment style
Disorganized (or fearful avoidant) attachment style
Attachment theory, pioneered by psychologist John Bowlby, is about how humans relate to one another, based upon how your parents related to you as an infant and how you learned to adapt to getting your needs met- or not. In the best of circumstances, babies cry when they have needs and their parents are responsive, so these babies learn to know what they need, express their needs, trust that their needs will mostly get met, and feel safe reaching out when they’re physically or emotionally needy. These babies grow up securely attached.
Some babies aren’t so lucky. When they have needs and cry for help, nobody comes to meet their needs or comfort them when they’re hungry, poopy, gassy, or having overwhelming feelings like terror, anxiety, or loneliness. Over time, those babies shut down, no longer even crying when they’re sitting in a poopy diaper or feeling hungry. They’ve effectively “learned helplessness.” They become little rugged individualists and stop reaching out for comfort, help, or support with getting their needs met, even when they’re around people who want to meet their needs and would help out if they could. These babies grow up avoidantly attached.
Other babies are somewhere in the middle. Sometimes, their parents respond when they cry and need something. Other times they don’t. These babies learn to just cry harder, try more, reach out more desperately- since sometimes their efforts are rewarded and they wind up getting what they need. These babies grow up clingy, learning that crying harder, complaining more, pursuing others relentlessly, and being demanding might help them get their needs met, even if it makes them hard to be with. These babies grow up anxiously attached.
The most severe kind of attachment wound happens when babies are both neglected and abused by terrifying caregivers who intrude upon their boundaries and neglect their core needs. When the people who are supposed to be your safest source of secure attachment are actually frightening, you’ll grow up with disorganized attachment, also called “fearful avoidant.”
Your attachment style will shape how you perceive and respond to your partner or other close intimates. If your partner has the same attachment style you do, it tends to be less triggering, because at least you understand why they’re behaving the way they do. But if you have an insecure attachment style that’s different from someone else’s insecure attachment style, it can be bewildering, triggering, and easy to misunderstand. Understanding your attachment style and someone else’s attachment style can make you kinder to yourself and others. It can also help you understand what would feel kind to someone with a style different than your own.
I love this video made by Chris Rutgers at The Trauma Foundation as a way to understand the neurophysiology of attachment wounding and polyvagal theory.
I also love this video describing the different attachment styles.
1. Secure Attachment Style
If you had “good enough” caregivers who responded to your needs, protected you without overprotecting you, cared about you without smothering you, and made it safe for you to love, consider yourself privileged and blessed. You probably have a privilege people don’t tend to count when we’re listing our identifications and marginalization- nervous system privilege. Your nervous system privilege can make you a wonderful intimate partner. Anyone who gets to partner with you, especially someone with an insecure attachment style, has found the holy grail for their own healing. You can help your partner earn secure attachment by being a place of sanctuary and refuge for them when their insecure parts act out, but that doesn’t mean their behaviors won’t hurt, scare, anger, or disappoint you.
Markers of a secure attachment style:
Securely attached people have a natural attunement to your needs, as well as ease and confidence in expressing their own needs. They tend to be trusting but discerning, optimistic in expecting relationships to go well, and generous with their assumptions about the basic goodness of people. They are physically and verbally affectionate and they like connection, reaching out for it in nourishing ways. They also like space, so they’re not too clingy and can handle being alone without undue distress. They transition easily between alone time and time with others without the need to prepare themselves for either. They don’t distract themselves, intellectualize too much, work too much, or otherwise create walls or distance from people they are close with. They are fully present with loved ones in ways that feel nourishing to others.
Securely attached people tell the truth, behave in trustworthy ways, and don’t get paranoid or act in sabotaging ways when there’s either a lot of closeness or a lot of space. A securely attached partner has no problem with their partner having a life or friendships outside the partnership, and they can handle it if their partner chooses to travel on their own or pursue a passion that doesn’t include their partner. They’re protective of the privacy of others and don’t act out in paranoid, entitled, or intrusive ways that would violate the privacy of their loved ones.
Securely attached people listen deeply without making their partner’s triggers all about themselves. They can attune to their partners, practice perspective taking (putting yourself in their shoes), and demonstrate actions that feel empathic to their partner. They know how to protect themselves with clear boundaries, and they hold others accountable for abusive or boundary violating behavior. They’re also fiercely protective of their loved ones, care about creating safety in their relationships, and have strong Mama/Papa bear instincts that help their loved ones feel safe with them.
Whether they’re introverted or extroverted, they like being social and are happy around the people in their inner circle. They trust unless their partner turns out to be untrustworthy, and they trust themselves, with decently trusting relationships between their Self and their parts. They are present with themselves and their partners, they are autonomous and not overly dependent, and they are capable of healthy interdependence- expressing needs for themselves and helping their partner get needs met. They can relax with their partner and let their guard down, enjoying humor, play, fun, and passion.
A securely attached partner is not perfect, nor do they expect perfection. But they are resilient, flexible, able to hold their boundaries and respect the boundaries of their partner, capable of resolving conflicts efficiently, able to admit mistakes, make sincere apologies and generously offer real amends, find win-win solutions to problems, and change their behavior to be more sensitive to their partner in the future. They are capable of leaving an unhealthy relationship without undue stress or too much guilt, but they are also loyal to those who are safe and healthy enough to get close with.
If you read this and think, “Oh no, I am DEFINITELY not securely attached- or my partner isn’t,” don’t despair. Secure attachment can be earned. I’ll be going in depth into the various other attachment styles for my paid subscribers, so feel free to subscribe if you’re interested in more psycho-education and an IFS-informed depth of understanding about attachment styles.
The Green Flags Of Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships
We talk a lot about the red flags of unhealthy relationships and untrustworthy people. But what are the green flags of two people reasonably securely attached?
YOU ENJOY EACH OTHER MORE THAN YOU DON’T: Securely attached relationships are fun, restorative, nourishing sanctuaries of play, laughter, trust, generosity of heart, safety, and yummy but well boundaried heart connection that you can relax into and enjoy. Sure, healthy relationships also require work and go through rough patches too, and it would be an unrealistic delusion to expect otherwise. But when you look at the balance sheet, the joy outweighs the pain. Trauma bonding tends to weigh towards drama, chaos, intensity, and pain, with only measly scraps of sweetness, tenderness, play time, and giggles. If you spend more time writing in your journal about what hurts or processing with your therapist or your friends or your partner than you spend doing things you enjoy together, you’re probably tipped towards the unhealthy range.
CAPACITY FOR APOLOGY & REPAIR: Securely attached people make mistakes (we are all flawed and imperfect), and when we do, we feel regret and remorse and can confess easily to wrong-doing, opening the door to real, authentic, vulnerable, heart-opening repair. Narcissists can appear shameless, but healthy people feel legitimate shame when they do something that hurts you, and that shame motivates them to make apologies and make amends if possible. Unhealthy people can be “One strike you’re out” types, with no tolerance for mistakes, but healthy people know that we’re all human and we all mess up sometimes. Connection is valued as a higher priority than being right.
HONESTY & TRANSPARENCY (WITH BOUNDARIES): In insecurely attached relationships, lying, withholding, deception, and gaslighting are commonplace and tolerated as if dishonesty is normal. In securely attached relationships where trust and intimacy has been earned, there is zero tolerance for lying or withholding about important things. Neither party is even particularly tempted to lie because neither is willing to risk the hard earned trust and intimacy that bonds the two, even if it means the other might get upset about something if the truth is revealed. Both parties make an effort to behave ethically and uphold the boundaries they’ve agreed upon, not wanting to behave in any way that would even tempt them to lie to the other- because the trust is so precious and so fragile if anyone lies or withholds. This doesn’t mean people have to confess every single thought or feeling or detail of their life to the other as if their partner is a priest. But it does mean that if boundaries are not upheld and someone has made a mistake, they take responsibility for the broken boundary, confess the mistake, and initiate repair and rebuilding of trust right away.
REASONABLE VULNERABILITY WITHOUT OVERSHARING: Trust has to be earned. Insecurely attached people may overshare way too early- or they expect you to overshare, as a way to generate “drop in intimacy” that isn’t safe. Or they withhold information you have a right to know. Securely attached people share and are willing to be vulnerable, but they don’t floodlight you with their entire trauma story the first time you meet them, and they don’t pry or penetrate your boundaries to pressure you to do so. Brene Brown compares trust in relationships to a jar of marbles. In a new relationship, we shouldn’t give a whole jar of marbles to someone we barely know. We also shouldn’t make them earn Every. Single. Marble. In healthy relationships, we can give someone new the benefit of the doubt and offer some marbles as a gift, so we don’t scare off someone who might actually be trustworthy or cause them to give up because of our incessant testing of their trustworthiness in ways that might hurt the reasonably trustworthy person. But we don’t give a stranger a whole jar of marbles without discerning whether they deserve it. Giving your trust to someone untrustworthy is not kindness or health; it’s masochism. Withholding trust from someone who is actually trustworthy and abusively testing them until they give up doesn’t work either. There’s a middle ground.
RECIPROCITY OF GENEROSITY & NEEDINESS: In securely attached relationships, there is mutual give and take, but without transactional score-keeping or hidden agendas. It’s healthy to need one another in an interdependent but not codependent way. And it’s healthy to want to help the people we care about with the resources and gifts and wisdom we have. While the give and take may not be exactly equal (especially if one of you has more nervous system privilege and less of a trauma burden than the other), when you pull back and assess what both parties are getting and giving, it’s generally fair. Both people help out financially. Both people can both give and receive nurture and comfort when life gets distressing. One person isn’t doing all the heavy lifting emotionally or financially or energetically while the other coasts along scot free on Easy Street.
BOTH PEOPLE PLAY GROWN UP: In insecurely attached relationships, one person often plays Big Daddy or Big Mommy and someone else plays Damsel or Dude in Distress who plays the needy little girl or boy. With this dynamic, one person is expected to be the invulnerable stabilizing rock and the other is infantalized and allowed to get away with immature, child-like behavior. In securely attached relationships, both parties will take turns being the adult in Self and co-regulating the other if they blend with child-like parts. Both parties are free to be vulnerable and needy sometimes, and both are capable of “adulting” and carrying the weight of life’s responsibilities.
AFFECTION WITHOUT LOVE BOMBING: When we like someone, it’s healthy to be affectionate, to offer praise, to cherish and validate someone and lift each other up once we’ve gotten to know someone and can genuinely appreciate what’s unique and special about them. That’s very distinct from the premature love bombing of flattery, where someone doesn’t know you at all but starts gushing about you as a way to hook your parts that feel unworthy or unlovable and are starved for affection. Love bombing and incessant flattery are more common with insecurely attached people. It’s a red flag if someone withholds affection and cherishing once they do know you. It’s a green flag and sign of secure attachment if the person you know well, who you’re close to, regularly appreciates and cherishes you and reminds you why they choose you and prioritize you.
MUTUAL WILLINGNESS TO MAKE SACRIFICES: In insecurely attached relationships, it’s usually one person doing all the martyring, but it’s a green flag and sign of secure attachment when both parties are willing to make compromises and adapt to not always getting their way in order to create safety, trust, and a sanctuary for intimacy with someone else, especially if one or both of you have trust issues. Some insecurely attached individuals will insist one getting their way and can’t take no for an answer, but they’ll expect their partner to sacrifice up the wazoo. In healthy, securely attached relationships, both parties get their way some of the time and don’t get their way some of the time.
POWER IS SHARED: Sharing power or “power with” is very different than one person dominating (power over) and the other obeying (power under.) Securely attached relationships negotiate needs, agree upon boundaries together, and make compromises so there’s not just one person doing all the leading and controlling and someone else doing all the following, being controlled. This has nothing to do with gender stereotypes and everything to do with social justice and equality. In healthy relationships, patriarchal norms have no place, regardless of gender and both parties are free to express both stereotypically masculine and feminine qualities.
HEALTHY BOUNDARIES: In securely attached relationships, flexible, negotiable, two-sided boundaries keep two people separate and free from enmeshment, without using abusive, intimacy avoidant walls. Both people know what they need and have the courage and capacity to ask for what they need and to say no when they mean no. Both take responsibility for any resentment, avoidance, or passive aggressive parts that might pop up, recognizing that resentment means you’re crossing your own boundaries and then blaming the other person for your failure to uphold your own boundaries. In securely attached relationships, both know better than to point the finger at someone else if they’re not standing up for their own needs and communicating those needs clearly. Insecurely attached people may use boundaries rigidly as a way to control the other person or they may have no boundaries and say yes when they mean no and then get resentful and passive aggressive. Healthy boundaries requires both parties to know what’s okay and not okay and have the courage and nervous system regulation capacity to communicate freely what’s okay and not okay- so that their yes is a real yes and their no is acceptable to the other person. Both feel equally free to both make requests for boundaries and receive boundary requests from the other generously.
YOU CENTER EACH OTHER EQUALLY: In unhealthy relationships, one person tends to take up all the space and the other accommodates. In healthy relationships, space is shared. You take turns being centered and being the listener, and neither of you is triggered if you center someone else sometimes and turn your attention away from the other in a reasonable, non-neglectful, well-boundaried way. You’re both allowed to have other friends of either gender and you trust each other to uphold any boundaries that need to be in place if you’re going to center other people safely and respectfully.
PRIVACY IS RESPECTED: Securely attached people don’t read each other’s emails or texts or diaries without permission. They don’t disclose vulnerable information about the other person without their consent or publicly humiliate or shame them. They don’t write things about the other willy nilly on social media or exercise liberties to overexpose someone without the other’s expressed permission. While securely attached people might process vulnerable material with a therapist or trusted friend, both parties feel safe to be vulnerable without worrying that their vulnerability will be weaponized or overexposed.
THE SLOW BURN: Insecurely attached relationships with a lot of spellbound attraction and erotic energy (which often get spiritualized as “twin flames”) tend to burn bright and fast, burning each other out. Securely attached relationships may not have as much ecstatic chemistry at the beginning, but as intimacy and trust and safety build, so does the flame.
BOTH SAY YES TO THERAPY IF THE OTHER ASKS: All relationships have friction if you get close enough, no matter how securely attached you are. Healthy relationships acknowledge this and are willing to submit to getting professional help if the relationship gets strained and the issues can’t get resolved without intervention.
MUTUAL PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY: In securely attached relationships, both people do their work and own their shadow parts, without accepting responsibility for someone else’s bad behavior or letting the other off the hook of accountability and without blaming the other in a unilateral way without acknowledging their own part in it when they’ve done something to cause harm to the other.
LOVE & INTIMACY ARE AN OPTION: In insecurely attached relationships, real love and real intimacy are not even on the menu. Enmeshment, insecure attachment, trauma bonding, or chemistry might get mistaken for love or intimacy, but it’s not the same thing. In securely attached relationships, there’s a reasonable tolerance for both giving and receiving love that is not transactional and for tolerating intimacy without sabotaging it.
YOU BOTH HAVE SKIN IN THE GAME: In insecurely attached relationships, one person tends to be WAY more invested (emotionally, financially, energetically, time invested) than the other. In securely attached relationships, you both have something to gain and something to lose, sharing risk reasonably equally. This “skin in the game” includes that both of you make time for nurturing the intimacy you share, enjoying each other, and repairing rifts when they happen swiftly, prioritizing the health of your relationship as much or more as you might prioritize other things, like work, money, working out, or achieving some goal.
ALL EMOTIONS ARE WELCOME: In insecurely attached relationships, emotions may be valenced into “good” or “spiritual” emotions and “bad” or “unspiritual” emotions. In securely attached relationships, all emotions are welcomed and honored as important intimacy-nourishing information that may need actions or boundaries to back them up or may just need to be expressed. Insecurely attached relationships may demand toxic positivity as a form of conflict avoidance and shut down emotions like anger, jealousy, or fear. Securely attached relationships honor them all, without eliciting reactive defensiveness, stonewalling, avoidance, attack, or withdrawal.
BOTH PARTIES KNOW HOW TO SELF-REGULATE AND CO-REGULATE: Sure, we need other humans (therapists, good friends) to help co-regulate us when we get upset. But when two people are upset with each other, one person isn’t always the one self-regulating and co-regulating for both. Securely attached relationships, both can self-regulate and both can co-regulate.
YOU BOTH INFLUENCE EACH OTHER WITHOUT UNDUE INFLUENCE: You can’t have a Securely attached relationship without being both influential and able to be influenced. If we don’t let our partner influence us, we’re likely to be narcissistic and self-absorbed. If we let our partner control us, we’re likely to be codependent and coercively controlled. In securely attached relationships, there is a balance of influences. We care what our partner feels and thinks but we’re not controlled by someone else’s feelings or appeasing to the degree that we’re crossing our own boundaries.
CAPACITY FOR EARNED SECURE ATTACHMENT: Regardless of attachment styles, secure attachment can be earned if two people are trustworthy. But this takes time if one or both parties defaults to an insecure attachment style. It helps to build secure attachment if anxious types are given reassurance under stress that “Nobody’s leaving” or if avoidant types are given permission to take space if they need it to self-regulate. With insecurely attached people, consistency is key. Over time, if you can keep showing up and keep showing up and keep showing up- but without spiritual bypassing or martyring or tolerating unacceptable levels of boundary-violating abuse- secure attachment and the neuroplasticity of earned nervous system privilege can be developed.
No relationship is ever all good or all bad, all secure or all insecure. Our relationships are always on spectrums of health and unhealth, security and insecurity. So it’s important not to have unrealistic expectations (or no expectations of health at all.) But when you look at the Gestalt of a relationship, how does it balance out? Nobody will be securely attached and trustworthy all of the time (because we’re all trustworthy when we’re in Self and we can all be untrustworthy when we blend with parts.) But how much are two people Self-led together or at least one of you is in Self when the other is blended? If it’s more than 50% of the time, that’s pretty good! If when you get off track you can come back into connection with reasonable ease, without one person doing all the emotional labor unilaterally, you’ve got something worth cherishing.
I’ll be posting about the other three attachment styles- anxious/ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized/ fearful avoidant soon, so make sure you subscribe if you don’t want to miss the next few installments.