This Therapist Wants You to Stop Obsessing Over Attachment Styles.

In recent years, the concept of adult attachment styles has gained tremendous popularity, especially in discussions about romantic relationships. As a couples therapist, I find this trend both limiting and problematic. Here’s why—and what to consider instead.

The Origins of Attachment Theory and Its Limitations

Attachment theory is rooted in the study of mammalian behavior, particularly focusing on the bond between infants and their mothers. It highlights how crucial a mother’s presence is for a baby’s survival, especially when the baby feels insecure, such as when mom steps out of the room. The theory suggests that this bond is key to our development, but it’s based on observations that infants can’t verbally confirm—like saying, “I’m scared when you leave!” This lack of direct validation doesn’t make the theory incorrect by any means, but it does mean we should consider it as just that: a theory. So, while attachment theory can offer helpful insights, it’s important to keep an open mind and adjust it based on our own experiences, especially when considering adult romantic relationships.

Extending attachment theory to adult romantic relationships is, at times, a bit of a stretch and can often feel constricting and limiting. Remember how attachment theory is empirically formulated? The observations foundational to this theory were of infants placed in stressful situations (without mom nearby), and their reactions were observed, categorized, and interpreted. This means that the categories outlined in attachment theory (the attachment styles) are responses meant to maintain a sense of self and avoid dysregulation.

It’s essential to learn about our unconscious (involuntary/automatic) responses to fears and concerns regarding love and closeness. However, in adult relationships, there are many other needs that go beyond just threat and safety, including intimacy, shared experiences, building a life, parenting, sex, self-growth, and more. Instead of labeling yourself with an attachment style, consider asking why you react in certain ways to feel “safe” and what you really want instead. Instead of protecting yourself from the fear-inducing imagined outcome, what if you reached for the outcome you truly desire?

Relationships are dynamic, constantly evolving as both partners change and grow. This means that your responses within a relationship will also shift over time. What may feel like a secure attachment in one phase of a relationship could feel different as circumstances change. Recognizing this fluidity can help you avoid boxing yourself into a rigid label.

Attachment Styles are Contextual

Attachment styles are often talked about as if they are fixed personal traits or even prescribed to others as though they are a mental health diagnosis. But in reality, they are dynamic responses that occur between people with whom we care for, love, and depend. Your so-called attachment style isn’t a permanent feature of your personality or an inborn trait. It’s more accurate to think of what we observe as an attachment “style” as a self-regulation strategy—a way you’ve learned to protect yourself in certain situations. Strategies become habits, and habits can be changed.

For instance, a client recently came to me deeply convinced that they had an “anxious attachment style.” They felt trapped by this label, believing it defined all their relationships and wanted help with how to live with the terminal illness of insecure attachment (okay, the last part is a joke). Through our work together, we uncovered that this anxiety only surfaced in specific relationships, while in others, they felt secure and confident. This realization was empowering—it helped them see that their attachment responses were fluid and context-dependent, not a fixed part of their identity. Furthermore, it helped them trust their sense of their own needs in relationships: their anxiety was actually a signal of a lack of safety in specific relationships.

The Fluidity of Attachment Styles and Relationships

One of the most frustrating things for me as a couples therapist is the way attachment styles are communicated in popular culture as if they were a mental health diagnosis or, worse, as a personality type. In the same way someone may be an “extrovert,” they may come to believe they can be a particular attachment style as though it were a diagnosis. But there is no medical condition or singular objective cause behind what we often call attachment styles in adult relationships. These patterns we see in relationships are real, but they are rooted in our deep-seated desires and fears regarding our perceived safety in relationships (as expanded upon in the previous section).

The causes of these patterns are not a matter of personality (temperamental nature? Maybe). Instead, they stem from countless experiences with other important people throughout your life. These experiences shape your beliefs about the availability of love, the reliability of others, the safety of vulnerability, and your own worth and value. And if we asked ourselves where these beliefs or expectations came from, I am sure we would easily find ourselves in the realm of childhood, sibling relationships, or even previous romantic relationships…the cause of the relational pattern is almost always relational and best understood with a nuanced and contextual lens.

Attachment behaviors are also influenced by the dynamics between partners. It’s not just about how one person reacts—it’s about how both partners interact and respond to each other, reinforcing or challenging our preexisting expectations of an encounter. This mutual influence means that attachment styles can shift depending on the relationship, further challenging the idea of a fixed “style.”

Research suggests that attachment styles, while often considered stable, can change over time. Life events, new experiences, and intentional efforts to work on relationships can shift someone from an insecure to a more secure attachment style. This is how and why therapy works: by challenging our unconscious expectations and offering new and reparative experiences, we begin to hope and expect more positive outcomes in relationships. I promise I would not do this work if we were doomed to live our lives with a fixed style of relating to one another—it would be not only a depressing line of work but also quite boring for me. 🙂

Practical Tips for Shifting Your Perspective

If you find yourself identifying strongly with an attachment style, here are some practical steps to help you broaden your perspective and learn more about your relational patterns:

1. Journal About Your Triggers: Document situations that evoke feelings of anxiety, avoidance, or security in your relationships. Reflect on whether these triggers are consistent across all relationships or specific to certain ones. Ask yourself if they remind you of past experiences.
2. Discuss Your Past Experiences: Talking to a therapist about how your past relationships have influenced your current patterns can offer deeper insights. Understanding these roots allows you to move beyond labels and explore what you are both avoiding and yearning for.
3. Reflect on Mutual Influence: Pay attention to how your partner’s behaviors affect your responses and vice versa. Consider how this dynamic shapes your relationship and what underlying emotions or beliefs inform your reactions

TL;DR: Take a moment to reflect on your relationships. What patterns do you notice? How have past experiences shaped these patterns? Are there relationships in your life where these patterns don’t apply? Understanding these nuances can provide much more insight than any attachment style label ever could.

In Conclusion: A Broader perspective on Relationships

Attachment styles originate from attachment theory, which, at the end of the day, is that: a theory. A very powerful and explanatory theory, of course, but one that is based in empirical research with mammals and infants and thus, when globally applied to all relationships—like adult romantic relationships—it may not be helpful and most certainly is not encompassing of the whole picture. It is important to hold all theory loosely, use them when helpful, and let them go if you find them becoming confining or authoritative.

Rather than boxing yourself into an attachment style, it’s more useful to explore the underlying reasons for your behaviors and reactions. Attachment styles pertain mainly to the avoidance of threat in important relationships. There are more motivations for our behaviors than just the avoidance of threat, and if we focus on this aspect, we miss out on learning more about what we wish for, what we want, and how to improve other aspects of our relationships. Consider how your past experiences have shaped the way you relate to others today. Understanding these factors can provide much more insight into your relationships than any attachment style or overarching label ever could.