Attachment Problems in Relationships: How Attachment Styles Affect Connections as an Adult

Ever since the introduction of attachment theory in the 1950s, research on attachment patterns and emotional intimacy has expanded considerably.^[1][2] While attachment studies originally focused on bonds between infants and their primary caregivers, literature now also tends to focus heavily on how these attachment bonds can affect adult relationships.^[3]

How attachment theory can be applied to dating, love, and relationships is widespread – and the findings from studies on the subject are often fascinating.^[4] They not only bring insight into how humans bond and build intimacy, but also shed light on how adults can actively work towards cultivating secure attachment and healthy relationships.

The four attachment styles can play out very differently in adult relationships. If you’re concerned that your style may be affecting your partnerships with others and quality of life, a mental health professional is always at hand to provide healing and support. This page can also help, as it highlights:

• The role of attachment theory in dating and love
• How attachment styles can affect adult relationships, including the impacts of the anxious, avoidant, fearful-avoidant, and secure styles
• Therapy options for attachment repair
• Where to find professional attachment repair support

The Role of Attachment Theory in Dating and Love

Deeply rooted in established science, attachment theory is based on a number of psychological and evolutionary concepts.^[2] These concepts emphasize that infants are born with the innate need to bond and belong – something that all humans possess.^[5]

Babies begin the process of attachment from the day they are born in the context of their very first relationships – with their caregivers. This first relationship with caregivers serves the primary, yet invaluable function of providing safety for a baby who would be otherwise unable to survive on its own.

But the caregiver-infant bond does more than just provide safety. For a baby, it becomes the ultimate blueprint of how relationships work in the world. Their bond with their parents gets imprinted on them and serves as a guide to connecting with other people in the future.^[4]

In other words, perhaps the most significant takeaway from attachment theory is that the first social connection we build as babies could affect our relationships (especially intimate ones) throughout our lives.^[4]

This takeaway alone is groundbreaking, so it’s understandable why researchers keep taking the opportunity to dive deeper into various implications and expansions of attachment theory in dating and love.

The following sections take a deeper look into these findings and what they can mean for relationships for people with the different attachment styles.

Attachment Styles in Adult Romantic Relationships

as the four attachment styles.^[6] These attachment styles include one adult secure type, and three adult insecure ones: anxious, avoidant, and fearful-avoidant (disorganized in childhood). Each of these categories can affect how people think and behave in various ways when it comes to connecting with others.

It’s important to note that attachment styles are not diagnoses. Rather, they represent our tendencies across the two attachment spectrums – attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance.^[7][8] If someone has little to no anxiety or avoidance tendencies, they are likely to be securely attached – which more than half of the population are.^[3]

Often, someone can be high on either attachment anxiety or high on attachment avoidance. If they’re high on attachment anxiety, they’re likely to have an anxious attachment style. The same goes for those who fall high on attachment avoidance – they may have an avoidant style. However, if someone jumps between high anxiety and high avoidance, they are likely to have a fearful-avoidant attachment style.

While attachment anxiety and avoidance (or both together) are not signs of a mental health disorder, they still point towards insecure attachment and might indicate attachment traumas. Mental health treatment for relationship attachment issues could shift unhealthy habits and cultivate secure attachment and healthy relationships.

Next, we take a closer look at how each of the different attachment styles can affect behaviors within relationships, starting with the anxious attachment style.

Anxious Attachment in Adult Partnerships

The anxious attachment style (known as “anxious-ambivalent” in children) develops in children who learn that they need to “earn” the love of their caregivers. For instance, if parents display inconsistent attention, care, or availability, a child can feel insecure and become preoccupied with figuring out how to get desired affection from their caregivers.^[4]

Children who develop the anxious attachment style tend to be hyperfocused on reading their relationships and typically overthink not only their own behaviors but the behaviors of their partners.^[9] This means they can become hypervigilant and hypersensitive to cues of rejection, which is perceived as the ultimate threat.^[4]

If healing experiences aren’t encountered, adults with an anxious-preoccupied style may worry intensely about being abandoned, ignored, or forgotten. Therefore, they might fight to stay in control of their relationships in order to prevent conflict and breakups.

As a means of securing stable connections, people with this attachment style are usually very caring, empathetic, and helpful. However, they often slip into people-pleasing and end up sacrificing their own needs to take care of their loved ones – especially their partners. While this might seem highly selfless and generous, it often comes at a price; anxious people can develop resentment and frustration due to not having their own needs met.

Attachment anxiety tends to be associated with a positive view of others and a negative self-view. This means that anxious adults are typically very self-critical and self-conscious, but tend to see their lovers in a very positive light and might even idealize them.^[9] Even though anxiously attached people love to be in relationships and fall in love easily, they view love as a source of worry. Therefore, they lack trust and often feel insecure, stressed, and unsatisfied in their partnerships.

Avoidant Attachment in Romantic Relationships

Attachment avoidance stands at the other end of anxiety on the attachment spectrum. While anxiety is associated with emotional hyperactivity, avoidance is characterized by emotional numbing.^[9][10] Avoidance typically develops in families where the caregivers themselves were unable or unwilling to display emotions. They might have even actively discouraged the child from demonstrating their feelings or needs.^[11]

Within such a dynamic, a child never learns to express or regulate emotions healthily. They can also develop the mindset that they cannot and should not rely on other people to meet their needs.

Without healing experiences, children can bring their avoidant tendencies into adulthood. As a result, the avoidant adult (also known as “avoidant-dismissive”) tends to be hyper-independent, typically confident, and self-reliant.^[9] They usually operate from a positive self-view but see others negatively.^[7] They also lack trust in others, so they rarely seek help. Emotional closeness is thus uncomfortable and even threatening to someone with an avoidant attachment style.

Nevertheless, having an avoidant attachment style doesn’t mean that the person doesn’t want to be in love or in a relationship – many actually desire to have a loving partner. Still, they might come across as cold or aloof and may distance themselves when their partners seek closeness.^[12]

For these reasons, attachment avoidance is connected to issues and low satisfaction in relationships. While anxious people might often complain about their love problems, avoidants are more likely to claim that they are “better off alone” and not share love life details.

Secure Attachment and Healthy Relationships

Secure attachment thrives in families where caregivers manage to make their children feel seen, taken care of, valued, and loved. Love doesn’t come at a price or with conditions. It’s freely available to the child, and they feel it.^[4]

Secure attachment is not about “perfect” parenting or never making a “mistake.” It’s about connection, attunement, and stability. When a child grows up with warm, predictable parents, they learn that their loved ones treat them with care, respect, and loyalty. Therefore, other people are perceived as reliable and able to provide safety, comfort, and help.^[4]

Later in life, secure people typically feel good about others and also about themselves.^[9] They usually have healthy self-esteem, good self-regulation skills, and a balanced view on interdependency – they are okay with being single but feel good in relationships as well. They don’t need romantic relationships, but when they feel right with someone, they are open to building loving, lasting connections with them.

Fearful-Avoidant Attachment in Love

The fearful-avoidant attachment style is also referred to as disorganized in childhood, exactly because it doesn’t follow a stable pattern.^[13] Rather, it shifts between the two ends of the attachment spectrum – attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance.^[14]

There’s not really a single, straightforward way to characterize the fearful-avoidant attachment in love. Yet, to get an idea of how this type of attachment manifests in romantic relationships, we can draw from the behaviors related to attachment anxiety and avoidance. Someone with the fearful-avoidant attachment style can display both anxious and dismissive traits, depending on the triggers and the context.^[14]

What makes disorganized attachment different is not only the lack of structure in social interactions, but also the severity of attachment insecurity. Fearful-avoidant attachment is typically found in people with more serious attachment issues or even traumas. It is uncommon, associated with extreme circumstances (significant early trauma or adverse caregiving environments), and often related to other mental health issues.^[13]

Therefore, although fearful-avoidant attachment shares behavioral traits with the other styles, it develops in a distinct way, and can lead to confusing and conflicting patterns in relationships.

Attachment Repair Therapy for Adults

Even though insecure attachment is not a diagnosable health issue, the patterns and tendencies it builds on can disturb someone’s social and love life significantly. Mental health treatment for relationship attachment issues is available and typically highly effective for the majority of insecure attachers.^[12] It focuses on repairing limiting beliefs, cultivating emotional regulation skills, and practicing new ways to connect and communicate.

When difficulties involve severe interpersonal dysregulation (such as chronic crises or prominent borderline features), clinicians may use Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) as an evidence-based approach to improve relational stability and safety.^[15] Techniques include inner child reparenting, somatic work, behavioral exercises, and cognitive-behavioral practices.

The core of healing attachment issues is self-awareness and self-reflection about past relational experiences and current beliefs and behaviors that activate simultaneously with the attachment system.^[16][17]

Mission Connection: Mental Health Treatment for Relationship Attachment Issues

At Mission Connection, we know that healing attachment wounds can transform a person’s life and significantly improve their relationships. This benefit not only applies to dating and love, but also to how someone bonds and connects with everyone in their day-to-day life.

If you or someone you care about struggles with attachment issues, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team of professionals. We are more than happy to provide the support you need – whether this is more information about how attachment styles affect adult relationships, insecure attachment in marriage, or overcoming attachment trauma for better relationships.

We believe that secure attachment and healthy relationships are possible and achievable for everyone. Reach out today so that you can receive the support and healing that you need.