Attachment Styles and How They Shape Our Adult Relationships

Have you ever wondered why you respond to relationship stress in a particular way? Why some people seem to withdraw during conflicts while others become increasingly demanding? Or perhaps why certain relationship patterns feel so frustratingly familiar?

The answer may lie in your attachment style—patterns of relating that begin forming in our earliest days and continue to influence our adult relationships in profound ways.

What Are Attachment Styles?

Attachment theory, pioneered by British psychologist John Bowlby and later expanded by Mary Ainsworth, suggests that our early relationships with caregivers create internal "working models" that guide how we view ourselves and others in relationships throughout life.

These formative experiences lead to four primary attachment styles:

Secure Attachment

Children who receive consistent, responsive care typically develop a secure attachment style. As adults, these individuals trust others and themselves in relationships, communicate emotions effectively, and balance independence and intimacy comfortably. They tend to recover relatively quickly from relationship setbacks and view both themselves and others positively. Their internal working model tells them that they are worthy of love and that others can generally be trusted to provide support when needed.

Around 55% of people have a secure attachment style, providing a foundation for healthy, fulfilling relationships. In times of stress, securely attached individuals can reach out for support without fear of rejection or engulfment. They can also provide a stable base for partners during difficult times, offering reassurance without becoming overwhelmed by their partner's emotional needs.

Anxious Attachment (Preoccupied)

When caregivers are inconsistently responsive—sometimes attentive, sometimes not—children may develop an anxious attachment style. This inconsistency creates an internal uncertainty about whether needs will be met, leading to hypervigilance about potential abandonment. As adults, these individuals often fear rejection and seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their partners. They may become overly dependent in relationships and feel their self-worth is determined by how their relationships are going.

During conflicts, those with anxious attachment often display heightened emotional reactivity. They might protest perceived distance through emotion-focused strategies like crying, becoming angry, or making dramatic bids for attention. Their nervous system is attuned to any signs of potential abandonment, making them quick to notice subtle changes in a partner's behaviour or emotional availability.

About 20% of people have an anxious attachment style. These individuals often have rich emotional lives and capacity for deep connection, but their fear of abandonment can create a self-fulfilling prophecy as their intense need for reassurance sometimes pushes partners away.

Avoidant Attachment (Dismissive)

When caregivers consistently discourage expressions of distress or need, children learn to suppress their attachment needs. As adults, these individuals typically develop a strong valuation of independence and self-sufficiency. Their early experiences taught them that vulnerability leads to rejection or that their needs won't be met, so they've learned to rely primarily on themselves.

Avoidantly attached adults often struggle with emotional intimacy and may distance themselves when relationships become too close. They might prioritise work or hobbies over relationships and appear emotionally unavailable or detached to their partners. During stress, they tend to withdraw into themselves rather than seek support, believing consciously or unconsciously that others cannot be relied upon.

Approximately 25% of people have an avoidant attachment style. Despite their outward appearance of self-sufficiency, research shows that avoidantly attached individuals still experience attachment needs and distress—they've simply become adept at suppressing awareness of these feelings, often at a physiological cost.

Disorganised Attachment (Fearful-Avoidant)

When caregivers are frightening or themselves frightened, children may develop a disorganised attachment style. This occurs when the very person who should provide safety becomes a source of fear, creating an unresolvable paradox for the developing child. As adults, these individuals often experience conflicting desires for closeness and distance, creating a confusing pattern in relationships.

Adults with disorganised attachment typically have difficulty regulating emotions in relationships and may have unresolved trauma or loss. They experience relationships as sources of both comfort and fear—they desperately want connection but are also terrified by it. This conflicted internal state often leads to unpredictable or erratic relationship behaviours that confuse both themselves and their partners.

This is the least common pattern, affecting about 5-10% of the population. For these individuals, healing often involves addressing underlying trauma and gradually building a more coherent sense of self and others.

How Attachment Styles Play Out in Adult Relationships

Our attachment styles don't exist in isolation—they create dynamic patterns, particularly in our most intimate relationships.

The Anxious-Avoidant Trap

One of the most common yet challenging relationship dynamics occurs between anxiously and avoidantly attached individuals. This pairing creates a cycle where the anxious partner's fear of abandonment and the avoidant partner's fear of engulfment continually trigger each other.

The cycle typically unfolds like this: The anxious partner senses distance and pursues closeness and reassurance. This pursuit feels overwhelming to the avoidant partner, who then withdraws to regain a sense of autonomy. This withdrawal confirms the anxious partner's worst fears, intensifying their pursuing behaviour. As the pursuit escalates, so does the avoidant partner's need to distance, creating an increasingly painful dynamic that can persist for years.

What makes this pattern so persistent is that both partners' earliest attachment fears are being confirmed—the anxious partner experiences the rejection they've always feared, while the avoidant partner experiences the engulfment they've worked so hard to avoid. Without awareness and intervention, this pattern can become increasingly entrenched.

Communication Patterns

Our attachment styles heavily influence how we communicate, particularly around emotional needs. Secure individuals generally communicate directly and effectively, addressing problems while maintaining connection. They can express needs clearly and listen openly to their partners, creating a foundation for mutual understanding.

Anxious individuals, in contrast, may communicate indirectly or through emotional displays, hoping partners will intuit their needs rather than stating them clearly. This approach stems from a fear that direct requests will be rejected or that they're asking for "too much." They may also engage in protest behaviours—indirect ways of expressing displeasure like withdrawing affection, making threats to leave, or becoming passive-aggressive.

Avoidant individuals often minimise problems or withdraw from difficult conversations, preferring self-reliance to vulnerable discussion. They might change the subject when emotional topics arise, intellectualise feelings rather than expressing them directly, or simply become unavailable when tensions rise. Their communication style prioritises maintaining emotional distance over resolving conflicts.

Disorganised individuals may alternate between aggressive communication and sudden shut-down, creating confusing patterns that make sustained dialogue difficult. Their communication often contains contradictory messages—reaching out for connection while simultaneously pushing away—reflecting their internal conflict about closeness.

Conflict Management

Conflict reveals our attachment styles with particular clarity. Secure individuals tend to approach conflicts as problems to be solved together rather than threats to the relationship. They can remain emotionally present during disagreements while working toward resolution, and they recover relatively quickly from arguments.

Anxious individuals may perceive conflicts as threats to the relationship, triggering their abandonment fears. This often leads them to prioritise reconnection over resolution, sometimes capitulating to end the conflict or escalating to maintain engagement, even if negative. For them, disconnection feels more threatening than the conflict itself.

Avoidant individuals typically experience conflict as overwhelming, triggering their need to withdraw. They might physically leave during arguments, emotionally shut down, or change the subject to avoid vulnerability. Their tendency to withdraw often leaves issues unresolved, creating a backlog of unaddressed problems in relationships.

Those with disorganised attachment often find conflict particularly triggering, as it activates both their fear of abandonment and their fear of engulfment simultaneously. This may lead to chaotic responses—lashing out followed by desperate attempts to reconnect, or freezing entirely, unable to engage productively.

Can Your Attachment Style Change?

The encouraging news is that attachment styles aren't fixed. While they represent deep-seated patterns established early in life, they can evolve through new experiences and intentional work. Research in neuroplasticity confirms that our brains remain adaptable throughout life, capable of forming new patterns even around such fundamental aspects as attachment.

Self-awareness serves as the foundation for change. Understanding your attachment style allows you to recognise when you're responding from old patterns rather than present reality. This recognition creates a crucial pause between trigger and response—a space where new choices become possible.

Relationships with secure partners can gradually shift your attachment style toward greater security. These "earned secure" attachments demonstrate that different ways of relating are possible. A partner who remains steady during your anxious moments or who continues to reach out despite your avoidant tendencies provides corrective emotional experiences that slowly reshape your expectations.

Psychotherapy—particularly approaches that address relational patterns—can profoundly help modify attachment styles. Therapeutic relationships themselves provide a secure base for exploring and reshaping attachment behaviours. At Heathwell, our therapists work with attachment patterns through various modalities, including existential, psychodynamic, and integrative approaches.

Existential therapy can be particularly valuable for attachment work as it helps individuals examine the fundamental choices they make in relationships and the meanings they attribute to connection and separation. By exploring how early experiences have shaped current patterns, clients can reclaim their freedom to choose new ways of relating that better reflect their authentic values and desires.

Moving Toward Secure Attachment

The journey toward more secure attachment involves developing new capacities and challenging long-held beliefs about ourselves and others.

For anxiously attached individuals, the path involves developing a stronger internal sense of security that doesn't depend solely on relationship reassurance. This means learning to recognise when attachment anxiety is activated and developing self-soothing practices to manage these feelings without immediately seeking external validation. It also involves gradually building trust in one's inherent worthiness, separate from relationship status or partner approval.

Working with anxious attachment often means examining deeply held beliefs about love being conditional and developing the capacity to recognise when past fears are being projected onto present relationships. As individuals build these capacities, they can learn to communicate needs directly rather than through protest behaviours and develop greater tolerance for normal relationship fluctuations.

For avoidantly attached individuals, the journey involves reconnecting with suppressed emotional needs and developing greater comfort with vulnerability. This often begins with simply acknowledging that independence has become overvalued as a protection against potential hurt. As awareness grows, avoidant individuals can practice staying engaged during emotional conversations rather than withdrawing and gradually increase their tolerance for intimacy.

The work often involves challenging core beliefs about self-sufficiency being safer than connection and recognising how emotional distancing protects from imagined rather than actual threats. As avoidant individuals develop these insights, they can begin to experience the benefits of genuine emotional intimacy while maintaining healthy boundaries.

For those with disorganised attachment, healing often requires addressing underlying trauma that created the approach-avoid pattern in the first place. Trauma-informed therapy can help resolve these experiences, allowing for more coherent relationship patterns to emerge. Building consistency in relationships, developing emotional regulation skills, and creating a coherent narrative about past experiences all contribute to establishing greater security.

The Compassionate Path Forward

Whatever your attachment style, approaching yourself with compassion is essential. These patterns developed as adaptations to your early environment—they helped you survive and get needs met under specific circumstances. They represent your mind's ingenious solution to the relationship conditions you faced.

With compassion and understanding, you can acknowledge these patterns while working toward more fulfilling ways of connecting. At Heathwell, we believe that understanding your attachment style is not about assigning blame to caregivers or yourself, but about gaining insight that empowers change.

The existential perspective reminds us that while we cannot choose our early experiences, we can choose how we respond to them now. We can become more conscious of the patterns we've developed and more intentional about the relationships we create. This perspective honours both the profound influence of our past and our capacity to transcend it.

Final Thoughts

Our early attachments leave an imprint that follows us into adulthood, influencing how we love, argue, connect, and separate. These patterns run deep, often operating outside our awareness, yet they shape our most important relationships in countless ways. By understanding these patterns, we gain the power to make different choices—to move toward more secure, satisfying relationships.

The journey toward secure attachment is not about perfection but about greater flexibility and choice in how we relate. It's about developing the capacity to be vulnerable when appropriate, independent when necessary, and connected in ways that honour both ourselves and others. It's about creating relationships where both partners can be fully themselves while growing together.

If you're struggling with relationship patterns and want to explore how your attachment style might be influencing your connections, our therapists at Heathwell are here to help. Through compassionate exploration and skilled therapeutic support, new ways of relating become possible—ways that bring greater intimacy, authenticity, and fulfillment to your relationships.

If you'd like to explore how your attachment style influences your relationships, contact us at Heathwell to book an initial consultation with one of our experienced therapists.