A securely attached person can develop anxious or avoidant tendencies from repeated bad dating experiences, but won't shift into fearful-avoidant patterns without significant trauma. Your core attachment style stays, though relationship stress can add insecure edges to it.
I feel like I grew up securely attached with great parents, but now I'm 30 and actively dating. So do our attachment styles change much as we age?
Even for our securely attached, when we have that repetition and emotion over time, especially around negative experiences— dating is an interesting space, it can be challenging— and when we have a lot of maybe negative experiences, that can influence the way in which we experience our reality. And so we may have like a secure base with maybe like an anxious leaning, and when we have those experiences that may push us into a little bit of that more AP behavior, or maybe more DA behavior. I wouldn't expect that if you have a really secure base that there'd be a lot of fearful avoidance unless there was more of that chaos and trauma and kind of instability. But I would expect to see maybe pieces of that in there in dating. Maybe that accentuates some of the sort of like insecure fringes around the secure base.
