From hookup culture to hometown sweethearts, college is notorious for its range of relationship styles. Being in a new environment is the perfect opportunity to explore things like your sexuality, your comfortability in relationships, and generally what works for you.
Familial, friendly, and romantic relationships have a strong impact on wellbeing because they can either encourage positive or negative personal development. Early life relationships teach a person how to relate to others in the future, and according to attachment theory often affect the attachment patterns they develop. In 1969 Dr. Mary Ainsworth and Dr. John Bowlby originally developed Attachment Theory while observing the occurrence of separation anxiety in the familial relationships between mothers and newborn infants. However, Dr. Cindy Hazan and Dr. Phillip Shaver extended the research of attachment in adults by comparing similarities between the caregiver/infant relationship and romantic relationships during 1987.
An attachment pattern is an internalized relationship model that a person will refer back to for later relationships. By identifying your attachment pattern and understanding your attachment style you may become more aware of areas of strength and vulnerability in your relationships.
Attachment style is measured on a spectrum. There are four distinctly observable behaviors; secure, anxious preoccupied, dismissive avoidant, and fearful avoidant (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). Secure attachment is optimal as it sits at the center of the attachment spectrum. Securely attached people—surprise, surprise–feel more secure in their relationships. They are confident in their stability and as a result, won’t feel the need to cling or hide from their partner, friend, or family member. In romantic relationships, secure partners continue to have lives outside of their partners but are not hesitant to include them either.
Anxious preoccupied attachment manifests as an intense fear of rejection and a need for constant reaffirmation. This often translates into neediness. Anxiously preoccupied individuals are likely to cling to, as well as scrutinize, their partner’s commitment to the relationship. They are prone to misinterpret the independent actions of their partner as indicative of infidelity or threatened departure. They seek safety and proof of security, but oftentimes this behavior pushes others away, reinforcing their anxieties.
Avoidant types need freedom and independence in order to feel comfortable, directly conflicting with anxious types. Dismissive Avoidant attachment centers around an inability to accept orders from anyone other than the self. These types find relationships confining and are prone to flighty behavior. They experience low mood when they perceive their partners to be overly demanding. Dismissive Avoidant attachment also predisposes people to defensive attitudes and emotional detachment. However, this style is not self-sustainable as no one is impervious to loneliness; a Dismissive Avoidant will inevitably pursue relationships again.
Fearful Avoidant attachment presents itself as the fear of vulnerability. People with Fearful Avoidant attachment dissolve relationships as a means of avoiding the vulnerable situations that come with deep connection. They fear abandonment yet at the same time struggle with intimacy. Avoidance is intended as a defense measure, but in the end does its own harm when it prematurely ends well-meaning relationships.
A few weeks after our discussion of attachment style my “Positive” Psychology professor introduced the concept of “emotionships” during one of our class activities. “Emotionships” is a fancy term for an emotional support network. When pursuing emotionships, an individual expands their base of support beyond their significant other. They turn to different friends and family for help solving specific issues. Think of it as, when you need a person to vent to, there is one friend or relative that hears you out and hypes you up better than most. When you’re sad, you know that your mom has the best shoulder to cry on. When you are pissed and need to vent, you immediately facetime the bestie that you know will share your rage. Cultivating emotionships means designating the most qualified individual within your immediate life to your specific emotional needs. A network of emotionships could relieve some of the strain that presents itself between conflicting attachment styles in a relationship. Coupled with the awareness of your differences and vulnerabilities and an open platform of communication, emotionships could keep an avoidant significant other from becoming overloaded by the demands of an anxiously attached person. Emotionships may also teach an anxiously attached individual to distribute their needs in a manner that allows them to rely on multiple capable people for support and will strengthen their feelings of security. Identifying your personal attachment style will allow you to approach difficulties that arise in your relationship with tailored solutions. The first step to fixing anything is recognizing what needs fixing in the first place.
It took two failed, relationships for me to notice that my attachment style fell towards the anxious side of the spectrum, and another relationship after that for me to actually apply that information to how I went about relating to others. When I felt insecure and sad, I started calling Jeannie who knows how to make crying enjoyable. When I needed an extra shot of girl power to get me to the gym, or to remind me to feel comfortable in my skin, I took a day with my roommate, Genesis. When it was time to actually do my homework, and I ran into major writer’s block, I’d seek out Carly to bounce ideas off of. By getting to know myself and learning which people in my life I should lean on, I feel like I’ve become a more reliable person for others; and I will take the longstanding success of my current romantic relationship as proof.
Knowing what your attachment type(s) is/are puts you in a position to move forward consciously and intentionally. You increase your ability to foster stronger, healthier relationships and can then share your relationship savvy with others who may be trying to catch a fish with a broken lure.