Uncover Your Attachment Style & Transform Your Relationships
Have you heard of relationship attachment styles?
The concept has actually been around since the 1960s and when I first came across it, I was blown away! It was a massive game changer for me for understanding how I showed up in relationships, and how I could change my experience of them.
I want to help you understand what the attachment styles are too, so you can have more clarity around your own experience in relationships.
Introducing the Attachment Styles
There are four attachment styles (one secure and three insecure), with each one describing different insecurities that fall along the axis of anxiety and avoidance and they show up repeatedly in relationships.
Stan Tatkin uses the metaphors of the Anchor, the Island, and the Wave to describe the three core styles, which I’ve used to help you discover which may be your dominant attachment style.
The Anchor
The secure Anchor style is low on both anxiety and avoidance. These people are very self-secure and confident and show up this way in relationships. They are happy both in and out of relationships and are sure they will find a new relationship when they are single, or if a relationship ends.
They know what they want, they’re good at communicating their needs and boundaries, and they tend to move relationships forward in a natural progression.
Anchors aren’t afraid of commitment or conflict, and they do what it takes to move through each stage of a relationship. If the relationship stalls or becomes too much work, they aren’t afraid to move on and find a new partner, especially if they find their partner too needy, clingy, or emotionally unavailable.
The reason for this is that the core belief of the Anchor attachment style is the belief that I am loveable and there are people in this world who love me.
In contrast to this, we have our Wave and Island styles.
The Wave
A person who tends to show primarily wave-like behaviors will fall in love hard and fast. They really enjoy experiencing the high of a new relationship and look to build a deep intimate connection with their partner very quickly.
These people find it hard when they are not in a relationship and will often go to great lengths to be in one. When one relationship ends, it is likely that they will meet another partner quite quickly and fall deeply in love with that person.
Another common characteristic of the Wave style is not being very comfortable being alone. They will often find ways to stay connected with people to limit the time they need to spend alone. Often received by others as criticism or being clingy, the fear of having to be alone is very real for the Wave. When something negative happens in their life, they are quick to reach out to others for support and seek the opinion and advice of others. They don’t even realize it, but they avoid meeting their own needs and will rely on others to soothe their anxiety, provide validation and a sense of connection and security.
On a social level, people with a dominant Wave Attachement Style are great connectors and can easily build meaningful relationships. Friends will likely describe them as being very charming and able to quickly open up to other people, but with a tendency to overshare and people please. The Wave’s preferred style for connecting with people will likely includes a lot of talking and touching.
At the core of the Wave attachement style are the underlying negative beliefs that I will be abandoned or rejection or simply that I am not good enough.
The Island
In contrast to the Wave, people with a dominant Island attachment style love to spend a lot of time alone.
They tend to pull themselves out of relationships more than go into them, and often believe they don’t need a relationship at all. In fact, they may have been single for many years or even decades, because the fear of being in a relationship actually outweighs any negative feelings they get from being alone.
In fact, most Islands don’t even describe themselves as lonely because they mostly enjoy their own company. They don’t like to depend on other people and they’re not very good at asking for or receiving help.
The underlying fear of the Island attachment style is that they’ll get lost, or they’ll be suffocated in a relationship, so for them, it’s important to keep their distance.
Partners of Islands tend to describe them as being emotionally unavailable, cold, slow to warm up, and very difficult to reach. An Island tends to disengage from relationships by focusing on creature comforts – things like:
· Watching a lot of television
· Gaming, and/or
· Hobbies that really are about them being alone and pulls them out of their relationship connection
The Combination Island/Wave
Finally, we have the combination Island/Wave style. This style is often called the ‘fearful’ style because they often have a great fear of relationships – of losing their partner, being dependent, or being depended on.
Initially, these people will show up in a relationship as a Wave, with a strong desire to connect, share and move the relationship forward. However, as the relationship deepens, the fear starts to set in and they get scared. They start to flip-flop between being totally loving and committed one moment, to being avoidant and distant the next. Often partners describe them as being hot and cold.
They also tend to display a lot of mistrust, so they may question their partner’s loyalty or faithfulness throughout their relationship. Even when there is no reason to, their fear and distrust can erode even the healthiest relationships.
This often comes from growing up in a family where there was trauma, addictions, or emotional distance between a parent or perhaps an absent parent. They may feel that they never had the love and attention from them that they needed but they couldn’t find successful coping behaviors to get their needs met. As a result, they are still living relationships through trial and error, not sure how to get the love and attention they need, often sabotaging the relationship as a result of these life-long insecurities.
A Game of Cat and Mouse
When it comes to building healthy relationships, people with an anchor or secure attachment style often fall in love with another person with a similarly secure attachment style and stay together forever.
Island/Wave parings in contrast can look like a game of cat and mouse. It’s the type of relationship where one person is constantly trying to get their partner to engage and be in the relationship, and the other person is trying to create distance, stay independent or is closed off to a deep connection. One is chasing, the other is running away.
It is the result of two insecure attachment styles coming together and each one triggering the insecurities of the other.
Your Attachment Style
It’s important to point out that the four attachment styles I’ve described here aren’t set in stone. Even if you have one style as your dominant, you can still show traits of the others.
For example, the most secure type of Anchor still has insecurities. And people with a dominant insecure attachment style, still have areas where they feel very secure and confident. They may show up very secure in friendships but struggle with romantic relationships.
Ultimately, the important thing to know is that you can shift things. The attachment style you have today is not necessarily the one you will have for the rest of your life. You can do things to reprogram what you believe about yourself and move towards a more secure Anchor style of attachment.
And this is the core of the work that I do in helping people create better relationships. You learn to understand your attachment style and how to fix it, so there’s less conflict and you can begin feeling more settled and trusting in relationships.
Whether you’re single and looking for love, want to improve a long-term relationship, or you’re in an unfulfilling relationship, understanding the different attachment styles will help you better navigate both dating and relationships. CLICK HERE and take the Relationship Style Quiz today!