Punky Fu

Attachment Styles and Intimacy

Originally conceptualized by Bowlby, Attachment Theory emphasizes childhood relationships as the basis for our templates for adult (especially romantic) relationships. Simply put, Bowlby identified three attachment styles:

Secure, Anxious / Ambivalent, and Avoidant / Dismissive.

Secure Attachment results from strong and reliable bonds between children and their caretakers. The caretakers are reliable, loving and consistent. A strong bond develops between both.

Children with Secure Attachment:
* Are able to separate from their parents
* Seek comfort from parents when frightened
* Meet their parents return with positive emotions
* Prefer their parents to strangers

Adults with Secure Attachment:
* Are more trusting, open and understanding
* Tend to have good self-esteem
* Form lasting interdependent relationships
* Are comfortable being close to and sharing feelings with partners
* Can find a balance between intimacy (the revealing or sharing of all aspects of self) and independence
* Approach relationship problems and issues with their partners in a constructive manner

When caretakers are inconsistent or overly protective, the resulting style is called Anxious or Ambivalent Attachment.

Children with Anxious / Ambivalent Attachment:
* Are preoccupied with caregiver’s availability
* Do not deal well with either separation or return of the parents
* Are reluctant to warm to new caregivers

Adults with Anxious / Ambivalent Attachment:
* Are constantly worried and anxious about their love life
* Crave and desperately need high levels of intimacy, approval and responsiveness from partners, becoming overly dependent but, they never stop questioning their partner’s love (“do you really love me?”).
* Are obsessed with their relationships and everything that happens in them
* Tend to be less trusting and have less positive views about themselves and their partners, constantly concerned that their partners will leave them
* Rarely feel completely loved and they experience extreme emotional highs and lows
* Are hard to satisfy emotionally; you can’t love them enough, or be close enough to them, and they constantly monitor their relationships for problems.

Ironically, their need for love makes it easy for anxious individuals to be taken advantage of when it comes to love and romance, which in the long run can create even more suspicion and doubt.

And finally, when the primary caregivers are dismissive or ignore their children, and are neutral to uncaring or apathetic about the children, it is called Avoidant / Dismissive Attachment.

Children with Avoidant / Dismissive Attachment:
* May be wary of strangers.
* Become greatly distressed with the parent leaves
* Do not appear to be comforted by the return of the parent
* Treat strangers the same as parents

Adults with Avoidant / Dismissive Attachment:
* Are reluctant to become close to others
* Have both a high desire and high discomfort with emotional closeness
* Don’t like being dependent on a partner or having someone be dependent on them
* Deal with rejection by emotionally distancing themselves
* Mistrust their partners and are more self-sufficient, cynical, and independent
* View themselves as unworthy of a relationship
* Are more apt to invest energies elsewhere (e.g., career or hobbies)
* Get easily annoyed with their relational partners and often display negative feelings and hostility toward their loved ones.