Understanding Attachment Styles: A Key to Trauma-Informed Dating & Relating

Considering what a risky, potentially activating, possibly fun experience dating can be, I wanted to take some time to discuss how understanding attachment styles might make dating easier, more fruitful, less consuming of time spent on the wrong compatibilities, and less painful, because you’ll take certain behaviors less personally. Sometimes, it’s really not that “he’s just not that into you.” It’s someone’s attachment trauma.

If you’re thinking about dating or you’re already dating or you’re just wanting to prepare your heart to love again, I’m teaching an trauma-informed, attachment style-informed online Zoom weekend workshop July 20-21 PREPARE YOUR HEART TO LOVE AGAIN with my partner and Harvard psychiatrist Jeffrey Rediger. Today is the last day to save $100. You can learn more and register here.

My 2021 Online Dating Experiment

In December of 2020, when I read for the second time Jeffrey Rediger’s book Cured, written by a Harvard psychiatrist and radical remission researcher, I had an “aha” moment. Similarly to how I experienced the stage 4 cancer diagnosis and quick death of my father when I was 36 with a newborn baby, reading about all these individuals Jeff studied who were diagnosed with serious, life-threatening diseases gave me a bit of a near death experience by proxy. The pandemic was raging, people were dying, and I found myself wondering if I’d have any regrets if I got sick and died in 2020. The only regret I could think of was that I wasn’t trying very hard to find my hopefully last romantic partner.

So I decided to experiment with online dating for New Years of 2021. I signed up for eHarmony and Match.com and went on about twenty first dates- and a handful of second, third, and fourth dates. It was the first time in my life I’d actually dated, and I found it simultaneously demoralizing and fascinating. From an IFS perspective, I was surprised to observe how different new people brought out different parts in me- some that I easily liked in myself and some that I found hard to face. Each new date was a constellation of new trailheads.

With one guy, I instantly felt my mothering parts jump forward. As a young tech bro living in a small studio apartment in San Francisco, he’d been isolated, alone, and working on Zoom for the whole pandemic. I felt sorry for him and found myself tempted to indulge my caregiving parts, until I remembered how badly that had gone in the past. With another guy, it was pre-vaccination and he was crossing my physical boundaries right and left right off the bat- and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I found myself getting fiercely assertive to the point of bitchy. And when he insulted for me for my clear boundaries, I found my feminist activist parts rising up. Another guy, an art professor with good boundaries and a slow pace was kind and respectful, so I felt my parts relax and get curious about him. We went on five all day dates, laughed a lot, made art together, enjoyed hiking and beaching, and made each other meals at our homes. I thought things were going well until I started getting attached on about date five, after he’d invited me to take a bath with him in the Japanese bath house he’s built. When I told him so- boom. He was outa there. I’ll never know if he just didn’t like what he saw of me in a bathtub, if that amount of intimacy was just too much for him, or if my desire to stop seeing others while I focused on getting to know him better was just too much pressure for him.

Because I can tend towards anxious/ ambivalent attachment when under stress, I wondered if I’d somehow come on too strong, been too needy, asked for too much reassurance, or otherwise scared him off. Or maybe he was just too avoidant in his attachment style, and any flickerings of real intimacy might have caused him to flee, even if I’d happened to look more like stereotypical Barbie than weird Barbie when naked. 

Regardless, I found myself viewing the dating experiment not only through the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS) but also through the lens of attachment styles. That’s when I realized that getting to know my own attachment style, while being on the lookout for how someone else’s attachment system might operate, could offer early clues that might somewhat predict certain long term behaviors. I recommend Diane Poole Heller’s The Power of Attachment and Amir Levine and Rachel Heller’s Attached for more specific information, along with quizzes to learn your attachment styles. (Take the online quiz here.) But  I thought I’d also share a few thoughts about attachment styles and dating, in case any of you are exploring the dating process and want to get to know yourself in relationship to someone new through a trauma-informed lens.

Attachment & Dating

Navigating the complex world of dating can be challenging, filled with emotional highs and lows, misunderstandings, and varying expectations. It may feel like an unpredictable crap shoot, but you can debunk some of the mystery of dating by understanding your own attachment style, getting to know the attachment style of someone new, and observing how your attachment styles ping off each other as a trauma bond or begin to attach as a healthy or reasonably secure one.

Originating from John Bowlby's attachment theory and expanded by Mary Ainsworth's research, attachment styles—secure, anxious/ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized—describe the patterns of how individuals form emotional bonds and interact in relationships. Recognizing and understanding these attachment styles can help you make sense of your dating life by fostering healthier relationships, improving communication, making sense of why we might activate each other’s old attachment wounds, and practicing good discernment so we can set ourselves up for connections with more ease and fewer triggers..

Secure Attachment: The Foundation of Healthy Relationships

If you have the secure attachment style, you hit the attachment jackpot! Individuals with a secure attachment style tend to have healthier, more stable relationships, they’re comfortable with intimacy and autonomy, they do a decent enough job balancing their own needs with the needs of others, and they might have an easier time dating (at least with other securely attached individuals) than those who are insecurely attached. If you came from a relatively insecure family of origin, understanding secure attachment and observing how others who are securely attached relate can serve as a model for what healthy relationships can be like, since insecurely attached people can be confused about what a healthy relationship might be like and might not even be attracted to someone securely attached and reasonably healthy.

If you’re engaging in the bizarre experience of shopping for humans via dating, learning to recognize secure attachment traits can help you identify potential partners who are likely to contribute positively to a relationship, without staying too long with someone who runs for the hills the minute they really like someone, and without you chasing dating partners so furiously that you scare good prospects away. When you understand and are on the lookout for the green flags of secure relationships, you’ll also find it easier to recognize when you’re guilty of red flag behaviors yourself, which might understandably cause someone more securely attached to think twice before a second or third date.

If you’re one of the lucky ones with the secure attachment style, finding someone else with secure attachment will be relative easy street. But if you are securely attached, that also means you might be an angel from heaven for someone with an insecurely attached style, such as anxious/ ambivalent, avoidant, or disorganized. While trying to date someone with an insecure style might create some challenges, if you’re securely attached enough, you might be able to offer an incredible gift to someone insecurely attached, helping them heal core wounds enough to be a great partner for you after the initial friction and distrust heals. Getting into couple’s therapy early on might be able to help you determine whether your attachment style will be compatible with someone with a more insecure style, or whether you should cut your losses while it’s still early and keep on looking. If someone insecurely attached has no interest in therapy, that might be an early red flag to be on the lookout for.

Anxious/Ambivalent Attachment: When Your Signal Cry Gets Left On

Next, let’s dive into the styles of insecure attachment- anxious/ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized. As you read these, try to put judgment aside. I know it’s painful to interface with some of these attachment styles, and it’s hard to face our own insecure attachment issues without feeling bad about ourselves or blaming and judging others. But remember- attachment wounding is not your fault. It may not even be your caregivers’ fault. But it is your responsibility to get help for the traumas that cause you to behave in ways that can make dating and relationships difficult for everyone involved.

The key is self-compassion- and compassion for those you might date. You can have discernment and compassion at the same time. See with clear seeing instead of rose-colored glasses, but still extend a kind heart to those who might fear connection, intimacy, and closeness or get anxious if there’s too much distance.

To examine how anxious/ ambivalent attachment tends to play out in dating situations, I’ll tell you a personal story. When I was first getting close to my current partner Jeff, I was aware that when my attachment system gets flipped to the “on” position, I have a tendency to swing towards the anxious/ ambivalent attachment style. Because I know this about myself, and because he’s a psychiatrist, I confided in him about this. And because we’d been close friends for 2 ½ years before we started dating, I trusted that it was safe to share this with him.

Because we were living 3000 miles apart at the time, I would start experiencing the classic “departure stress” as we got close to the time for one of us to get on a plane. I’d get clingy and teary in anticipation of the pain I would start to feel about 48 hours before separating from him. And then I’d need a lot of reassurance during the periods of separation.

I tried speaking on behalf of my anxiously attached parts and making requests on behalf of them. I told him it would help if he texted me photos to show me he was thinking of me. My parts would feel comforted and reassured if we set up virtual date nights on Zoom or talked on the phone frequently. He’d initially agreed to try to meet these requests, but the part of him that agreed wasn’t very connected to the part that usually wound up doing just the opposite.

He behaved this way because he has a disorganized attachment style (which we’ll talk about in a future post). Disorganized attachment, which develops when kiddos are dependent on caregivers that terrify them, is a mix of anxious/ ambivalent and avoidant behaviors. So his style and my style were pretty incompatible in the beginning. What I needed was frequent reassurance and moments of comforting connection, to ease my sadness, loneliness, and fear of abandonment when we were separated for sometimes months at a time. 

What he typically needed once we separated was space. He needed digestion time, time to feel into himself, time to sort out what just happened, time to catch up on work and other relationships that might have gotten neglected while we were together, and time to discern how he actually felt about me when I wasn’t all up in his grill.

His needs were totally valid and understandable. But because he’d promise to stay closely connected in order to accommodate my more anxious style- and then his more avoidant parts would do just the opposite- we had a lot of trouble early on and wound up in couple’s therapy before we were technically even a couple.

Couples therapy did help us, as did understanding our attachment styles and learning how to be more sensitive to our very different needs. We tried IFIO (intimacy From The Inside Out) first, which is the IFS version of couple’s therapy. We were able to speak on behalf of our attachment style-related parts, which helped us understand our different needs better. Later on- and still to this day- we work with a couples therapist who trained in Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy, mixed with some of Esther Perel’s work. It’s helped us a lot to move more towards secure attachment for us both.

But even without couple’s therapy, you can learn a lot about how you show up in a new attachment relationship. And you can learn to be more sensitive to others who might attach differently, by understanding how attachment styles work and how it can impact dating relationships or even close friendships. 

What Is The Anxious/ Ambivalent Attachment Style?

If you or your dating partner have an anxious/ambivalent attachment style, you may crave closeness and validation, which is a beautiful quality! It means you got enough love and connection growing up to want connection, rather than categorically resisting or avoiding real intimacy. While this craving of connection makes someone with the anxious/ ambivalent attachment style want to be close to others- and that’s a good thing- if you cling too hard too quickly because of this deep desire to connect to someone new, it can put you at risk of scaring off new dating partners who might be worth keeping. 

We’re not talking about “The Rules” or playing hard to get or asking anyone to be inauthentic. It’s just fine if you like someone and feel compelled to let them know! Most securely attached or anxiously attached people like that, when you express real interest when you’re genuinely interested. But if you chase too hard too quickly, you might wind up playing games with someone who likes to play hard to get- and enjoy the cat and mouse game of the chase. And that can be a set up for pain.

If you have the anxious attachment style and you find someone compelling, it’s common that your attachment system might flip on prematurely, causing you to be a bit..mmm…obsessive. Even before really getting to know someone, you might experience intense fear of rejection or abandonment, leading to behaviors that can strain new dating relationships, such as needing a lot of reassurance, excessive neediness, or clinginess. 

Because I can tend towards the anxious/ ambivalent attachment style myself, I’m usually pretty comfortable with others with this style once the relationship is pretty solid. I can be insecure and need a lot of reassurance. The other person might need a lot of reassurance. We reassure each other, and attend to each other’s sensitivities and anxieties, and everyone’s fine. 

But beginnings are hard. If I meet someone with an anxious/ ambivalent style, and I’m not sure I like someone, I need time to figure out whether I’m a yes or a no. I’m not capable of reassuring someone right away. But for people high on the anxious/ ambivalent spectrum, my need to have a window of discernment before I do a lot of reassuring may trigger anxiety in the other person. I don’t want to be inauthentic or provide false reassurance before I feel like I can really back it up with action. When I don’t have enough information and I haven’t really discerned whether someone is compatible with me, their anxiety can feel like unwanted pressure.

Of course, the same can happen when the tables are turned. Maybe I’m moving faster than someone else, and I’m totally into someone or really wanting to be closer to a new friend. But they’re not so sure about me- and I can feel their hesitancy. That hesitation can trigger my own anxiety, and then I have to attend to my own anxious parts, to reassure myself, in order to avoid getting too pressurized or too clingy, in a way that might turn off someone who might actually wind up liking me a lot if I can reassure myself enough to keep my obvious anxiety at bay.

A guy I once dated during my online dating experiment had a severe case of anxious/ ambivalent attachment. I kind of liked him, but I wasn’t 100% sure. We’d had a few good dates, but I also had spotted some worrisome issues that I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on. So while it might have felt good to him if I’d been more certain about him, I didn’t want to lead him on when I wasn’t sure. He literally texted me from the walkway out of my house to say “I miss you already and am counting the hours until we see each other again.”Iit was kind of a turn off. His text was sweet, but we’d already spent the entire day together. I could still see him outside and was frankly looking forward to some digestion time to myself, to figure out how I felt about him. But I felt pressured to respond, to say I missed him too, when I actually didn’t. It felt like too much intimacy too fast- since I honestly wasn’t sure whether I liked him or not. A few hours later, after I’d had a chance to think about him and feel into our date, the same sentiment might have felt reassuring. But when he was still at my front door, it felt a bit…stalker like.

The sad thing is that the behaviors that can accompany anxious attachment can create a painful self-fulfilling prophecy, since you’re more likely to scare someone off if you’re overly attached before you’ve even had a chance to get to know someone. And that can make you even more anxious- and then the cycle continues.

How Does Anxious/ Ambivalent Attachment Develop? 

It’s often the result of inconsistent and unpredictable caregiving during childhood, so it makes sense that you might cling, protest, or fear detaching. This attachment style develops when a child's needs for security and emotional support are met erratically by the primary caregivers. When these kiddos cry, sometimes their caregivers responded and met their needs, while other times, they might have been neglected, left to cry it out, or emotionally abandoned. 

When caregivers are inconsistent in their responsiveness, children receive mixed signals about the reliability of their caregivers. Sometimes the child's needs are met with warmth and attentiveness, but other times they are ignored or responded to in a detached or even unkind manner. This unpredictability makes it difficult for the child to develop a sense of security and trust. As a result, when they feel anxious or insecure, they tend to turn their signal cry on- and it stays on, even if someone else is responding to their need. This can scare off dating partners because it can feel like a vast black hole of need and insecurity when someone is difficult to satisfy. 

If you have this style, you may be at risk of constantly seeking reassurance from a new dating partner, needing frequent affirmations of love and commitment, and feeling insecure about the stability of the relationship. Over time, you may become overly dependent on your partner for emotional support and validation, exhibit clingy behavior, feel anxious or distressed when apart, and struggle with separation, even for short periods.

If you have this attachment style, you may also experience intense emotional reactions. Small issues or conflicts may trigger disproportionate levels of anxiety or distress, leading to dramatic emotional responses that can strain the new dating relationship. Due to your insecurity, you might struggle with jealousy and possessiveness, frequently worrying about your dating partner's fidelity, and becoming suspicious or controlling in an attempt to secure the relationship. Trust issues are common, stemming from early experiences of inconsistent caregiving. Even in the face of evidence that your dating partner is actually reliable, you may still struggle to fully trust and may constantly seek reassurance.

Anxiously attached folks tend to overanalyze their partner's actions and words, often interpreting neutral or ambiguous behaviors as signs of potential rejection or abandonment, which can lead to a cycle of anxiety and miscommunication in the relationship. You may have a strong desire for constant contact and communication, such as frequent texting or calling, and if your date is not immediately responsive, you may become anxious and interpret the lack of response as a sign of disinterest or rejection- which might be completely inaccurate, or you could be right. It’s hard to know unless you give someone some space to figure out for themselves how they feel about you.

All of this is understandable, given the attachment issues in childhood. But it’s good to be aware of your attachment style- and to understand if you spot these behaviors in someone you might be dating. Individuals with this style can work on developing self-soothing and self-reliance techniques, spreading out who you seek support from,and building self-esteem to reduce insecurity and dependency on their partner for emotional stability. 

If you’re early on in dating someone who you think might be anxiously attached, you can reassure them to the degree that it’s honest and authentic, but don’t feel pressured to offer false reassurance just to relieve their anxiety (this will backfire if you wind up not being that interested.)  It’s also okay to take the space you need in order to figure out whether this is a relationship you want to pursue more deeply- or not. If the relationship deepens and you move forward, partners of anxiously attached individuals can benefit from providing reassurance and clear communication to alleviate their partner's fears and insecurities, fostering a more balanced relationship.

Understanding Avoidant Attachment: Balancing Independence and Intimacy

Next. let’s talk about the second insecure attachment style- the avoidant attachment style, which, when matched with the anxious/ ambivalent attachment style, can make for a confusing game of cat and mouse.

When I briefly tried dating an old friend, someone I was very comfortable with, someone who I genuinely loved and who I knew genuinely loved me, I realized right away that our platonic friendship created just enough distance to avoid his avoidance. Very quickly after our first kiss, he started pulling away in a way he’d never done before. When I leaned in, he leaned waaaay out. When I pursued more connection in the relationship, excited about the shift in our relationship and curious to explore more, he bolted.

His avoidance took on many forms. He’d make Zoom dates he wouldn’t show up for. He’d show up (I’m not joking) about five hours late for our dates, such that I’d be super triggered by the time he got there, and then when he realized I was angry, he’d retreat. Every time our relationship took another step forward, I’d wake up the next day to find him even more distant, which was especially confusing because we’d been such good friends to begin with and I felt so safe and comfortable with him.

As soon as we’d have a sweet, intimate bonding moment of honeymoon chemistry, he’d do something to sabotage the connection and leave me feeling hurt and triggered. He even vocalized how he felt in those moments of sweetness. He’d look at me with wide eyes and say, “I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Which didn’t make sense to me. Why didn’t he trust me? I was one of his best friends! We’d known each other for many years. Why did he assume I’d break the connection any moment now, when we’d been through thick and thin together and demonstrated our mutual loyalty? I’d even promised him after our first kiss that, no matter what happened, our friendship would always come first and I was committed to making sure we were allies first.

We never did make it to becoming lovers, but I suspect that if he did, it would have been a “When Harry Met Sally” moment- me snuggling into him the next morning and him wide-eyed, trying to figure out how to get out of dodge.

Once I realized “he’s just not that into you” (hat tip to Sex & The City), I pulled away, to give him what I thought he wanted and to protect my own fragile heart from death by a thousand cuts. And of course, once I started withdrawing, he couldn’t have run faster towards me.

Tres confusing…

Unless you understand attachment styles and the “parts” and wounding that underlie avoidant attachment. I realized (quickly enough that he and I could discuss it) that our attachment styles were clashing. Our attachment mismatch made us pretty incompatible as romantic partners, even though we were quite easy friends. Because I tend towards the anxious/ ambivalent style when I feel someone I’m attached to pulling away, and because he tended towards the avoidant attachment style, we were a set up for a lot of hurt tussling for intimacy and avoidance. 

I didn’t think of it until afterwards, but I realized that almost all of his relatively brief partnerships had been with women who lived long distance, sometimes even overseas. He hadn’t been married, lived with anyone, had kids, or ever really become an “us.” For him, his independence was worth more than the compromises and sacrifices becoming an “us” requires, even though he really does crave intimacy and connection. Becoming an “us” triggered existential fears in him, fear of loss of autonomy and agency, fear of losing himself in someone else, fear of being engulfed. For me, I was willing to sacrifice some of my own autonomy and independence to enjoy some of the benefits of closer connection and interdependence. But that kind of interdependence wasn’t in the cards for us romantically.

Once we realized that our attempted romance really wasn’t working out, we quickly pivoted back to a friendship and mutual allyship, which restored the necessary distance for him to feel safe being affectionate and emotionally close with me, once the added pressure of a romance was removed. With that out of the way and with me safely attached to another romantic partner, one who supported our close connection, we were able to repair the hurt we caused each other and grow into an even deeper friendship- safely, with more distance.

If you’ve ever tried to get close to someone who you initially felt chemistry with, but who seemed to sabotage the relationship before it even got started, it’s likely you’re drawn to someone with at least some elements of avoidant attachment. If you’re the kind of person who starts to pull away as soon as you feel someone else becoming too attached, you may be the avoidantly attached one.

How does this style develop?

The Childhood Set Up For Avoidant Attachment

If you have an avoidant attachment style, chances are that your childhood needs for emotional connection and comfort were consistently unmet or discouraged. Unlike an anxious/ ambivalent style, where the signal cry might sometimes result in connection and getting your needs met, chronically unmet needs and lack of response to the signal cry tends to lead to kiddos who just give up even trying to depend on others. Avoidant attachment emerges when caregivers are emotionally distant, unresponsive, neglectful, checked out, or dismissive, leading the child to adopt self-reliant behaviors and avoid seeking support from others- to the point that they even fear becoming at all dependent on someone else.

If you have an avoidant attachment style, you’re probably a lone wolf who values independence and self-sufficiency, sometimes at the expense of intimacy and emotional connection. You might find it hard to be vulnerable, keeping others at arm’s length in ways that can confuse your dating partner. Recognizing avoidant attachment patterns in yourself (or in someone you might date) can help you understand why you might engage in a push/pull dynamic that can feel very confusing to others. 

If you’re avoidantly attached, you’ve probably learned to suppress your desire for closeness and comfort, which means you’re also likely to dismiss the healthy needs for connection and emotional support of those you might feel drawn to. When children are discouraged from expressing their emotions or when emotions are minimized or dismissed, children learn that their feelings are unimportant or burdensome, and they grow up somewhat emotionally unavailable and emotionally unresponsive. When caregivers expect children to handle problems and emotions on their own from an early age, as with the “parentified child,” this can lead children to internalize the belief that seeking help or expressing vulnerability is unacceptable- and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in adulthood.

If you avoidantly attach, you’ve likely given up on relying on others or leaning into others when you feel vulnerable or need comfort. With some of your younger parts believing that your needs will never be met by others, you’re likely to rely solely on yourself and resist healthy interdependency, keeping yourself aloof and above all that messy emotion. You most likely value your independence and autonomy highly and avoid situations where you might have to rely on others, leading to reluctance in fully committing to a relationship or really opening up to a new dating partner, for fear of being trapped or losing your independence. An extreme emphasis on self-reliance can prevent you from seeking or accepting support from your dating partner, even when it is needed, which can create an imbalance in the relationship, such that the object of your affection might feel excluded, rejected, or unimportant- because you rarely reach out in times of need, especially if you’re really needy, as when a parent dies or some other tragedy befalls you.

For avoidantly attached individuals, learning to gradually open up and share emotions can enhance relationship closeness. Those attempting to get close to someone with avoidant attachment can support this attachment style by respecting your need for space while encouraging moments of genuine connection. Those with avoidant attachment really do long for connection- and they can sometimes find it with someone more securely attached, who can be patient and compassionate with their need for a lot of space and independence, comforting themselves when their avoidantly attached partner pulls away. But this style can be oil and water with someone more anxiously/ ambivalently attached, who may need someone else who is either securely or anxiously attached and can provide a lot of reassurance, especially in times of separation.

The great news about attachment styles, from an IFS lens, is that IFS encourages “earned secure attachment,” by attaching your hurt parts to your wise, mature Self- healing the heart from the inside out.

If you’re curious to learn more about earned secure attachment, creating a sanctuary for healing the broken heart, and making it more likely that you can welcome more love into your own heart, please join me and my partner Jeffrey Rediger for our upcoming Zoom workshop- PREPARING THE HEART TO LOVE AGAIN.

We’d love to have you and all your parts with us! Today is the last day to save $100.

Save $100 if you sign up for PREPARING THE HEART TO LOVE AGAIN.

We’ll talk about disorganized attachment in our next post. Disorganized attachment is a combination of anxious and avoidant styles, so stay tuned for more on that style.

And don’t forget to stay in self-compassion. Talking about attachment styles can help foster compassion, not only for ourselves, but for each other. Remember, your attachment style isn’t your fault. But understanding your style- and the styles of others- can help you relate to yourself and others with more sensitivity for all of your precious parts.

*Photo credit Monique Feil