"You let them go. If they love you, they will come back. If they don't come back, it was never love"
I came across this quote the other night when I was just scrolling through the Instagram Reels. If I were a teenager, I would have really believed it. However, growing up, I realised that most of 'love' is not what the famous poets and Rom-com authors might have suggested. In fact, it's every little thing that these famous 'shayars' missed out on.
As an adult, we talk to so many people every single day. We observe. We notice. We make mental notes. We imitate. We create. But we seldom notice the changes within us, that happen because of just 'being'. But if you were to weigh it out - our childhood [early 5-6 years] weigh heavier in terms of shaping us, as opposed to anything else that we do all our lives.
Before we get into how we get 'attached' to someone, here's a terminology bank. These are the terms that would keep popping up through and through this article.
What is an attachment style?
It is simply the lens through which we talk to people, respond to situations and behave in a relational setting. It trickles down to every single relation that we have with different people. It is not our personality, but it definitely is the 'aura' we have around ourselves.
How you react when your partner does not respond to your text message for a handful of hours, how much you trust your peers, how you respond to a confrontation from a friend, how you confront your parents and how you talk to yourself - all of this make up your attachment style.
What are the types of attachment styles?
If I were to broadly categorise attachment styles, I would just have two buckets - Secure attachment and Insecure attachment.
Now: The word 'insecure' is widely infamous. But it need not be seen as the villain of the story. So in this context, it's not the villain, it's just another character of our story.
Secure Attachment: When you talk to someone, it's never evident as to what their attachment style is. But the attachment style presents itself when situations arise that demand their reaction. A secure attachment is the one where there is trust, there is harmony and understanding. Most importantly, the secure attached ones would have impeccable choice of words while communicating. They know how to process their feelings without resorting to 'tactics' or 'deactivating strategies' like threatening or barging out.
Insecure attachment: The simplest differentiation would be - anyone who is not completely secure in how they view other people, relational settings and how they communicate their needs; can be called people with 'insecure attachment style'. They are not insecure people, but they seem to have a huge amount of tactics and deactivating strategies within them, that can sometimes make relational settings a challenge. People who are not completely in touch with what they are feeling and why, and what is causing this emotional drift; usually have this attachment style.
a). Anxious- If I were to sum up how anxious attachment style usually works. it's this: You are as secure as your last interaction with them. Someone who responds with anxiety to any and every relational setting, would definitely have this attachment style.
Example 1 : If A has an anxious attachment style and has had a fight with their partner B - chances of A panicking and being extremely anxious over their future would be very high. They have a tendency to seek perfection so that nobody thinks of them as unworthy. They also would think of the worst case scenario first, then look at the reality later. They would catastrophize every single thing that goes against their plan.
Example 2- Manager A has an anxious attachment style. She delegated a few tasks to her subordinates. Just a few hours after delegating, she is anxious and is already doubting her own subordinates whether or not they would complete the task. So she uses indirect passive aggression to reaffirm the timeline of the tasks in a group chat.
b). Avoidant- To sum this attachment style up: Seeing the worm instead of an apple. The type of attachment style that wants a partner, but dreads emotional intimacy. The type that knows they would end up with someone, but also fears 'ending up' with them. So to avoid emotional intimacy they would look at the worm rather than the apple, just to be able to tell themselves why the other person is not good enough for them. Their deactivating strategies are emotional starvation, pinning after a phantom ex (the ideal ex they still idolise), keeping secrets and avoiding physical closeness.
Example - If A has an avoidant attachment style, they would completely shut out their partner after a fight and resort to silent treatment as a means to 'punish' the other person. They would have the tendency to starve the other person (not intentionally sometimes) of emotional intimacy and physical closeness as well.
c). Anxious-Avoidant - The distrust and hyper-independence is to an extent that they become paranoid of every other person and hence put walls between themselves and others. To sum it up: Fearful of others' intention towards them, they build walls and guards around them to secure their emotions. They do have a tendency of creating scenarios in their own minds that prove the other person is actually planning and plotting against them. The scenarios and assumptions go to an extreme and they sometimes lash out emotionally on the ones that try to get close to them.
Example - Person A has anxious-avoidant style. In a party, they want a lot of friends complimenting them and also liking their company; but at the same time they would also doubt that these friends have ulterior motives and hence would shut them out.
How do I determine my attachment style?
There are lot of questions that you can ask yourself to determine the attachment style(s) you possess. But before that, there are a couple of disclaimers to give: These are not ALL the questions that you can ask. And second, it all starts by first unpacking 'YOURSELF' (how you are wired and how you like to think of yourself), then your childhood and then your behaviour in a relational setting. I'm dropping some examples of some questions you can ask yourself:
Q. What was my childhood like? Was it normal or do I trace my traumas back to my childhood?
Q. Do you have dependable parental figures you can go to, with any problem?
Q. As a kid, who did you most confide in, with your problems?
Q. Who do you confide in, now?
Q. What's your love language? - Distance or physical closeness or comfort?
Q. How do you like to give love to others? - By talking or by touching or by distancing yourself?
Q. What scares you the most in a relational setting? - Confrontations or abandonments?
Q. When in an uncomfortable situation, do you fight or take a flight?
Q. Do you trust the closest circle in your life?
Q. The previous few fights in your life - Who started them, and who escalated them?
Myths about attachment styles:
A secure attachment style never hurts - They do.
If you are with a secure attachment styled person, you will barely fight - There will always be fights between two different individuals.
You can't change your attachment style - You can, by first identifying what your attachment style is.
We have just one attachment style - We usually have multiple attachment styles, in multiple phases of our lives.
Only trauma shapes up our attachment style - No, even how somebody spoke to us as a kid too can shape up our styles.
Only childhood and teenage dictate the attachment styles - No, even ethnicity, culture, upbringing and schooling define our attachment style.
How to hold control over your attachment style:
More often than not, compatibility trickles down to the attachment styles that we all have, as adults. But if you have seen a pattern of failed relations, unresolved conflicts with others, and emotional reactions to a lot of situations that do not ideally demand your reaction - you can definitely try holding some control and navigating through your style.
Communication - It is the first and the foremost tool that you can use to take control of your style. Assuming, pushing them away, making up scenarios in your head and various other by-products of the styles do not really take us anywhere. However, if you were to communicate (first with yourself, and then with the other person involved), you would definitely realise that a lot of issues are not even that big.
Clarity around your own emotional and social needs - Create a list (repository) of all your emotional and social needs in different settings of life. When you have clarity over what you want and need to function without a lot of friction and hiccups, you would also realise that you seek and attract just that.
Debunk the Disney fairytales - Relationships / relations are never easy. All these fairytales that have taught us otherwise, since childhood, need to be abandoned to fully accept who you are and what you seek out; in this world.
Listen to understand, not to judge - We all would have different viewpoints of the world and of other people. Every person would see the world through a different lens; and that's only natural. When we listen to others speak about their viewpoint, we seldom listen to understand them. We usually do it to judge them, because at the end of the day it's only humane to find discomfort in things that are unknown to us.
One book that is a game changer and I would heavily recommend everyone reads this is - Attached, by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. This is a book that summarises adult relations and how each one of us is wired.
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