Secure Attachment Style: How Emotionally Healthy Relationships Are Formed
Our mental health, relationships, and feelings about ourselves in adulthood can depend on how we developed as children. In particular, our social and emotional lives are often strongly influenced by the attachment we formed with our caregivers.1
If we form a secure attachment to caregivers during early years, we typically find it easier to adjust to the demands of life, including emotional turmoil and day-to-day stress. As a result, our relationships tend to be more stable and fulfilling. However, if our caregivers were dismissive of our needs or inconsistent in meeting them, we can develop an insecure attachment.1
People who are insecurely attached are more likely to be sensitive to stress, struggle with emotional regulation, and have low self-esteem. These issues can show up in relationships and cause problems with conflict, communication, and intimacy.1
Even if your childhood has caused you to be insecurely attached in relationships, attachment healing in adults is possible. A mental health professional can guide you towards the right treatment for your needs. This article can also help by exploring:
- Secure attachment and the other attachment styles
- Signs of secure attachment in adults and examples of secure behaviors
- Impacts of attachment styles on relationships
- Healing and moving toward secure attachment
- Forming emotionally healthy relationships
What Is Secure Attachment?
A secure attachment style develops in children whose needs are met consistently and sufficiently by their caregivers.
Securely attached children get upset when they’re separated from their caregiver, but they know they can rely on them to come back. They’re easily soothed when stressed because love, support, and affection have always been readily available to them when they’ve needed them. They’re not in doubt that love and affection will be taken away or followed by something to be afraid of.
When a child bonds like this, they view their caregiver as a secure base from which they can explore the world and come back to. In contrast, insecurely attached children have a different experience.
The anxious and avoidant attachment styles are called “organized insecure attachment” because children with these styles behave in predictable ways based on their patterns of caregiving. Children with these styles learned what to expect from their caregivers. Avoidant attachment is caused by caregivers who are consistently dismissive of a child’s needs. And in anxiously attached children, the caregiver has been consistently inconsistent, switching between meeting and rejecting the child’s needs.1
Disorganized attachment is the fourth insecure style, typically caused by frightening or chaotic behavior from caregivers when the child needs comfort and reassurance. This pattern is more common in families where there’s abuse, domestic violence, and instability. This style is called “disorganized” because there’s no clear pattern for children to become accustomed to.2
In extreme cases of neglect and abuse, children may develop an attachment disorder, affecting their emotional regulation, relationships, and sense of self in more severe ways.
When thinking about secure vs insecure attachment, it may be helpful to look for emotional and behavioral signs, as these indicate which style you have. We discuss the signs of secure attachment in adults next.
Signs of Secure Attachment in Adults
- Comfortable with intimacy and vulnerability
- Happy to offer comfort to their partners when they’re distressed
- Content with seeking comfort from their partners when distressed
- Willing to depend on others and have others depend on them
- Effectively calmed when receiving emotional support
- Not chronically worried about being abandoned or unloved
- Not hypervigilant to their partners’ needs
- In possession of a good sense of self-worth
People with secure attachment are also likely to be altruistic because they have a greater capacity for empathy and considering other people’s needs.6 They’re also typically less affected by jealousy because they’re not plagued by a negative self-image or view of their partner. In contrast, a low self and other view can cause insecurely attached people to feel unworthy, jealous, and threatened in their relationships.4
These secure attachment traits may feel a bit abstract, so here are some examples of secure attachment behaviors:
- Listening openly when hearing that a partner is upset and hurt by a certain behavior. A securely attached person typically admits responsibility for wrongdoing without feeling defensive or overly guilty.
- Openly expressing sadness during difficult times and asking a partner for a shoulder to cry on and extra understanding while they process what’s happened.
- Keeping their own needs, preferences, and boundaries front-of-mind when going on dates. To determine a course of action with a new date, they may think Am I attracted to this person?, not Are they attracted to me?
These signs of attachment security can help maintain emotionally healthy relationships.
How Attachment Styles Affect Relationships
Secure attachment in romantic relationships leads people to feel compassion when faced with their partner’s emotional needs. Attachment insecurity, however, can make people react with annoyance or distress when their partner needs emotional support.
As a result of open communication, conflict resolution tends to be more satisfying in securely attached relationships. This is because, even when stress is high, securely attached people think, feel, and behave in constructive ways, allowing them to maintain their own well-being and positive relationships.3
In contrast, insecure attachment behaviors can come out when partners feel either a threat to the relationship’s security or to their own integrity. For example, anxiously attached people are more likely to “hyperactivate” and seek reassurance, and avoidantly attached people are more likely to “deactivate” and deny vulnerability or neediness. Such behaviors can make conflict more convoluted, communication less authentic, and resolutions less satisfying for both parties.7
Additionally, because of more adequate caregiving, secure relationships tend to have higher sexual satisfaction levels.7 In contrast, insecure attachment is more strongly associated with lower sexual well-being. This might be because of the motivations that drive insecurely attached people to have sex.7
For instance, attachment insecurity can motivate people to have sex to either gain reassurance of the relationship’s security or as an act of caregiving and showing a partner love. Without the pressure of these ulterior motives present, more securely attached couples can enjoy sex for other reasons, like pleasure and intimacy.7
And finally, for insecurely attached couples having children, the postnatal period is characterized by lower relationship satisfaction and increased depressive symptoms, while the opposite is true for securely attached partners.3
Despite these relationship patterns, it’s entirely possible to heal from insecure attachment and increase satisfaction in both ourselves and our relationships.
Attachment Repair: How to Develop Secure Attachment
It’s a useful goal to want to heal from insecure attachment because becoming more secure can bring greater relationship satisfaction and reduce distress in life. However, it’s important to state that secure attachment doesn’t make you a “better person” – being insecurely attached is not a negative judgment of your character.
Healing from an insecure attachment style begins with increasing your self-awareness, which you are already doing by reading this article. With greater understanding, you’ll be able to pause without responding to threats on autopilot and practice new ways of relating to others.
If you haven’t experienced secure attachment parenting, therapy could be the right place for you to learn new behaviors and improve attachment security. One way it does so is by encouraging you to reflect on insecure and secure experiences and emotionally process them.9 It may also give you the opportunity to rewrite negative beliefs you might have about yourself and others that are holding you back from a secure place.5
Therapy might also involve helping anxiously attached people increase their self-confidence and encouraging avoidantly attached people to experiment with depending on others.5
Group therapy is another option as it can help reduce anxious and avoidant symptoms if there’s a good deal of emotional support, group cohesion, and respect for each member’s autonomy. It might also incorporate elements of play therapy, which can be useful if it allows participants to experiment without a fear of failure.8
How Emotionally Healthy Relationships are Formed
Given everything we’ve discussed in this article, emotionally healthy relationships are formed through good emotional regulation, communication, vulnerability, and self-reflection.
No relationship is free from conflict or negative emotions. Securely attached people still feel things like guilt, anger, and sadness. However, they are willing to own these feelings, communicate them to their partner, and be allowed to do so without rejection or blame. Plus, each partner is responsible for their own feelings – they don’t need to be “rescued” by the other person.
Additionally, emotionally healthy relationships are built with boundaries that are respected and communicated clearly between partners. When things go wrong, secure partners are willing to sit in the negativity and explore it. They’re able to be vulnerable and reflect on themselves when it’s necessary.
Finally, you’ll know you’re in an emotionally healthy relationship when you and your partner are emotionally available for yourselves and each other. Sometimes stability can mean that the butterflies in the stomach can fade, but this isn’t necessarily a lack of chemistry. Instead, it could mean that you’re not picking up on the sense of threat that’s typical of insecure attachments.
Get Therapy for Building Secure Attachment Today
Building secure attachment in adulthood is entirely possible with the right support. At Mission Connection, we offer a range of therapies to help you understand your upbringing. These allow you to reflect on how early years impact your life and cultivate new ways of regulating so that you can forge a happier relationship with yourself and others.
Our trauma treatments, in particular, may be especially helpful if your insecure attachment style stems from childhood adversity. You don’t have to continue to cope alone. Contact our team today to find out how we can help you shift toward a more stable, secure future.
References
- Beltre, G., & Mendez, M. D. (2023, November 13). Child development. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK564386/
- Lawler, M. J., & Talbot, E. B. (2012). Disorganized attachment – an overview. ScienceDirect Topics. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/disorganized-attachment
- Simpson, J. A., & Rholes, W. S. (2017). Adult attachment, stress, and romantic relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13, 19–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.04.006
- Chursina, A. (2023). The impact of romantic attachment styles on jealousy in young adults. Psychology in Russia, 16(3), 222–232. https://doi.org/10.11621/pir.2023.0315
- Arriaga, X. B., Kumashiro, M., Simpson, J. A., & Overall, N. C. (2017). Revising working models across time: Relationship situations that enhance attachment security. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22(1), 71–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868317705257
- Ma, Y., Long, W., Liu, G., & Ma, H. (2021). Boosting attachment security promotes giving behaviour in higher attachment anxiety. Australian Journal of Psychology, 73(4), 452–461. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049530.2021.1974800
- Beaulieu, N., Brassard, A., Bergeron, S., & Péloquin, K. (2022). Why do you have sex and does it make you feel better? Integrating attachment theory, sexual motives, and sexual well-being in long-term couples. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(12), 026540752211087. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075221108759
- Sadka, D. A., Zingboim, N., Shaver, P. R., & Mikulincer, M. (2024). Security-enhancement processes within group settings: Revising insecure working models of attachment during playful group interactions. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207284.2024.2314758
- Hudson, N. W., & Fraley, R. C. (2018). Moving toward greater security: The effects of repeatedly priming attachment security and anxiety. Journal of Research in Personality, 74, 147–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2018.04.002
