Episode 29: Anxious? Avoidant? What Your Attachment Style Says About You (And Your Relationship)

Sometimes this can be a bad thing where you're really overanalyzing. And we do this sometimes too. About like, oh, did you have a weird tone in your, like, oh, you looked at me weird. What does that face mean?

Oh, yeah, that's when we get in trouble.

Hello and welcome to the Pillow Talks podcast. We're your hosts, Vanessa and Zander Marin. I'm a sex therapist with over 20 years of experience.

And I'm just a regular dude. We share the ups and downs in our relationship Relationship. While giving you step by step techniques for improving yours.

Make sure you subscribe for your weekly double date full of totally doable sex tips, practical relationship advice, hilarious and honest stories of what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors, and so much more. It's the sex education you wish you'd had. Today we are talking about attachment. On a scale of 1 to 10, how attached are you to me?

10. That's easy. Was there any other option?

I was trying to think of if there was a song about attachment that I could get you to sing at the beginning of our episode like you sang at the beginning of last week's episode. But I drawn a blank there.

Att C h shoot. I lost my place in the spelling. I was like kind of gonna do it to respect but didn't quite work.

T T C H A atcha coming.

At ya A C H M E N T find out what to me.

Wow. Okay.

A T T S C H I M E N T and today we.

Learned that Xander can't spell.

So we are coming say it's hard to try to spell while singing.

You're right. Well, today we're just going to come at you with our podcast all about attachment.

I feel like a lot of people have heard this term attachment styles. I feel like this probably gets mixed up with like all the other things out there. Is this like enneagram type or like, what are the other Myers Briggs, like, personality type? I feel like for a lot of people this all probably just gets mixed up. All these different things, all these different quizzes that we're supposed to take.

You know what keeps coming to mind for me is Harry Styles. I keep probably because we have an employee. Keely is very into Harry Styles. We've been learning a lot about him lately. So I'm just picturing one of those, like dumb buzzfeed quizzes of like, which Harry Styles are you? The anxious Harry Styles, the secure Harry Styles or the avoidant? So your attachment style is something that you developed early in your life and it was based on your relationships with your caregivers. We're going to get all into some of the science and the background in a second, but it's basically like, did you learn that your needs would get met by your caretakers? What kind of relationships did you have with them? Our attachment styles tend to be mostly stable over time, so we'll get into that a little bit more later, too. But it does tend to be something that you get that attachment style and it stays with you throughout your relationships. So we really want to talk about, you know, what are the attachment styles? What do they mean? How do they work with other styles? Can you change your attachment style? And really, this is all around the idea of helping you have a healthier and happier relationship. This is just one of those crucial pieces of information that you need to know to understand how to have a.

Great relationship and who to have a great relationship with. All right, but before we get into all of that, we are going to do, per usual, our review of the week. Love it. Five stars. Thank you for the five stars. I've been following on Instagram for a while, but I love the podcast. My husband and I listened to the Mental Load episode together, and now we're both listening, sometimes together, sometimes not. We love to hear that it's changed how we approach conflict together and how we're relating in general. We've also scheduled time together to be intimate, and we're really liking the effect that has had so far. Life after babies was challenging for us as a pair, and we're finding our way back to each other in part because of the podcast. Thank you.

Oh, that's super sweet.

That is very sweet. Unfortunately, there are no emojis in this one. There's nothing for me to decipher. Just reading English is quite easy.

Well, thank you so much for this review. Your reviews really do mean so much to us. It's the only way the podcast can grow and reach more people. If you haven't heard us talk about it yet, we do a weekly giveaway with these reviews. We just want to say thank you for taking the time to write them. We pick a review of the week every week, and if you are picked, you can come over to Instagram anessamarintherapy DM us with a question. Tell us about your situation and we will give you a free mini coaching session. So once you write that review, you are entered for life every week going forward, or I guess, however long we have this podcast.

You're set for life.

You're set for life. You will be entered into the giveaway. So thank you in advance. We really, really apprec you taking the time to leave these reviews. So let's get into the attachment styles first. Let's back it up a little bit and kind of talk about how attachment theory came to be. I actually brushed up a little bit on my psych 101. Went back and looked at my old textbooks.

Very good. Yeah, very good.

And looked at the research. There were a lot of different researchers who worked on attachment theory, but some of the more prominent ones were John Bowlby and Mary Ainsley. Do you remember them from Psych Grad?

I do not remember them. I just want to say that John Bowlby is a great name.

It is, isn't it? Bowlby.

Bowlby. I think the way you spell it is even better than how it sounds.

Yeah. Not a lot of people know that. Xander was a psych undergrad.

I was. I got an undergraduate degree in psychology. However, I really focused on more of the organizational psychology, which is like psychology in the workplace, AKA hr.

So this research, it really goes back to, like, the 1950s. There were a lot of studies that were done with infants and their parents. Studies that, quite frankly, probably would not be allowed to be conducted these days.

Oh, yeah.

There were some interesting ethical issues that came up with some of these studies, but they looked at different things in the relationship between the caregiver and the infant. So one dynamic was, does the infant feel comfortable, like, exploring. Exploring the world around them? They talked about, does the parent service? It was called a secure base where the infant would kind of check in with the parent, but then feel comfortable going out into the world to explore. And another study that was done really looked at what would happen when parents and their children were separated. So they did this one study in a lab, brought the parent and the infant in, took the parent out of the room.

This is where it would probably get a little sketchy to have this research approved today. Yeah, there's a thing called an institutional research board, which I believe got started in the 70s sometime, which, like, evaluates the ethics of a given experiment on human subjects and approves it or doesn't approve it. This happened before then. There was not a lot of regulation on what we did with people in research.

And if you want a good example of that, look up Stanley Milgram's Stanford experiment. It was Stanley, right?

Yeah, I believe.

I know it was Milgram, but Stanley and Stanford seemed too close.

You know, when you're talking about psychology research, you don't even want to say the first name. It's so much better to be like, oh, look up Milgram. Stanford Research.

That one is a whopper. But anyways, in this particular study, they looked at how the infants reacted, and there were kind of three general categories of what happened. So the first one was secure. In those situations, the infant would get upset when their parent left the room. But as soon as the parent came back, the infant would seek them out. They would get soothed by them, and then it was like things were back to normal. They felt good pretty quickly after.

Yeah. Kind of like it never happened.

Yeah. The next category was anxious. So in these situations, the infant would become extremely distressed by the separation.

Understandable.

Yeah. But this was the really interesting thing, is when the parent came back, these kids would have a really difficult time being soothed. They would often sort of have these conflicting reactions where, on the one hand, they wanted to be comforted, but on the other hand, they almost seemed like they wanted to, like, punish the parent for having left in the first place. And then the third category was avoidant. And in those situations, the infant didn't seem too bothered by the parent leaving the room. It wasn't this distressing thing like it was in the other two cases. Even when the parent returned, the infant would still kind of avoid seeking contact with them. Like, they wouldn't go back to them like, oh, you're back. You're back. Oh, my gosh.

No. It seems like a dream scenario. You can leave. Your. Your kid's gonna be fine. No big deal. I can imagine how back in the 50s, might have been like, oh, great. This. This baby looks like they're in great shape. They don't care at all.

So, yeah, sometimes these. The avoidant category, you know, these infants would, like. Yeah, they. They'd play with toys, they'd turn their attention onto something else, and they didn't seem to really pay as much attention to the parent. So this was some of the, like, really early research that was done, and it formed the foundation of attachment theory, which would really evolve a lot over the next next few decades. But the basic idea behind attachment theory attachment styles is just looking at the ways that we respond to other people based on the ways that we responded to our earliest relationships, our relationships with our parents. So we actually kind of blew our load there a little bit.

Wow. That's kind of uncharacteristic for you to say.

Just a casual blowing of the load.

Casual blow, load, blow.

Casual load, blow. So we kind of blew our load sharing the three different attachment styles, which are anxious, avoidant, and secure. There are actually a number of different models of attachment theory. Some people have come up with four different types. There's, like, disorganized, there's fearful. Some have five different types. Some have different names. So there are a lot of different variations on this. But we're just kind of sticking with the core model that really has been popularized by the book Attached, which was written by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller in 2010.

Yeah, and if you hear the term disorganized, I believe that just refers to people that don't fit cleanly in any of those initial three categories.

There are a lot of different categories that people have come up with, but we're just gonna stick with this basic model of the anxious, avoidant, and secure. It's really useful to know which type you are, because it just helps you understand yourself. I mean, I think this is the case with any sort of personality or introspection kind of thing. It's like you just get to understand a little bit more about what makes you t you the way that you are. Attachment theory is really interesting because it talks about those early relationships with your caregivers. On the one hand, it's Such a Psych 101 thing to say your relationships with your parents affect who you are as an adult. Like, duh, of course. But I think the reality is that so many people just don't make that connection, and they don't really think about, oh, this way that I'm reacting to my partner now as an adult. Maybe there are some reasons behind that. Maybe this has been a pattern for my life.

Or you just kind of think, what happened in my childhood, it had an impact, but, like, it's not gonna solidify who I am. I'm in more control of my destiny than that. I think a lot of people are like, oh, yeah, you know, like, I had some stuff that happened when I was a kid, but I've moved past that. But I think the interesting thing about this stuff is really how much these early experiences hardwire, in many ways, how we relate in our relationships. Of course, we'll talk later about how you can move the needle a bit, because it is possible. But, you know, in general, it's not like you grow up and all of a sudden you just kind of choose who you want to grow into.

Yeah, absolutely. It can also be really useful for you to understand your partner's type, too, because that gives you more insight into who they are, what makes them tick, why they respond the way that they do. And in particular, looking at the Interaction between your types can really help you understand, like, what do you guys need from each other? How do you need to communicate with each other? How do you handle conflict? Are there certain dynamics or patterns that are going to come up in your relationship over and over again? So it's just some useful information to have about yourself and about your partner. Now, of course, the drawback of a model like this is it's lumping all of humanity into one of three categories. Like, of course, that's not going to be the cleanest model.

Oh, yeah. We're always going to have aspects where part of us is more one than another. It's not like you're just. You're one of these three, and that explains everything about you. This is just some aspects of our life, some aspects of our relationship.

Yeah. Okay, so let's get into the three types. And again, we're working off of the book Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.

We're going to go through kind of like the definition for each of these types as they talk about it in this book Attached. We're going to give you some information a little later on, really, exactly how to drill down on your type. But as we're reading these definitions, just think about which of these really resonate most with you. First up is anxious. So this one is, you love to be very close to your romantic partners and have the capacity for great intimacy. You often fear, however, that your partner does not wish to be as close as you would like him or her to be.

There's the anxiety right there creeping in.

Relationships tend to consume a large part of your emotional energy. You tend to be very sensitive to small fluctuations in your partner's moods and actions. And although your senses are often accurate, you take your partner's behaviors overly personally. You experience a lot of negative emotions within the relationship and get easily upset as a result. You tend to act out and say things you later regret. If the other person provides a lot of security and reassurance, you are able to shed much of your preoccupation and feel contented.

According to research, about 21% of the population is anxious. So we turned to our Instagram audience, as usual, and we asked people, you know, if you know, your attachment style, let us know which type you are. And interestingly, 59% of our audience is anxiously attached.

Well, I think that that's good news because we can talk about anxiety and we can talk about ways to soothe anxiety.

Yeah, I was just kind of blown away by that. Three times more than the national average in our Audience. We got an anxious audience. So anxious attachment comes from the child feeling unimportant to their parent or to their caretakers. They are trying to, like, do what they can to get their parents attention. Parents of anxious children often will react, like, in inconsistent ways. So at some times they might be really nurturing and really tuned into their child. But at other times, they might be very insensitive, might be emotionally unavailable, they might come across as cold or critical. You know, stuff like that. So there's really this inconsistency in the response. Parents can also be slow to respond to signs of distress. For example, you know, you'll hear a lot of parenting advice will say things like, you know, don't pick up the crying baby because you're going to spoil it. You're going to teach it that all it has to do is like, cry to get your attention. So I think this is an interesting example because a lot of these attachment styles come down to, like, different parental wisdom at the time, you know, so we're always learning more things about child development and learning how to be better parents and caretakers to children. But there definitely were times where it really was the prevailing wisdom of the day of like, yeah, don't pay attention, attention to a child who's showing you distress because that's going to be bad for their development. Right. So as an adult, if you have anxious attachment, you know, other than the description that Xander read, some other things that might come up for you are feeling like you get attached really quickly or too quickly. Yeah, too quickly. Sometimes really feeling like something is wrong with you. Like, you have a very low sense of self worth and you require a lot of assurance from other people. Like, you really want to know. They're not upset with you. They like you. They love you. We did that episode about neediness a while back and that might be some of the same dynamic of like, wanting that frequent reassurance.

Oh, yeah. All right, so let's move on to avoidant. Now for avoidance. It is very important for you to maintain your independence and self sufficiency. And you often prefer autonomy to intimate relationships. Even though you do want to be close to others. You feel uncomfortable with too much closeness and tend to keep your partner at arm's length. You don't spend much time worrying about your romantic relationships or about being rejected. You tend not to open up to your partners and they often complain that you are emotionally distant in relationships. You are often on high alert for any signs of control or impingement on your territory by your partner. So Very much the opposite of the. Of the anxious type.

Yeah. And so research has shown that about 25% of the population is avoidant, but in our Instagram audience there is only 15%.

Well, as I'm thinking about it more, this is making so much more sense because, you know, we just read that definition. If you are more of an avoidant attachment type, you are probably not particularly interested in relationship advice. Maybe they're only following us for the sex.

Yeah, that 15%.

If you're only, you're only here for the sex, you might be an avoidant attachment type there. It's a one question quiz.

Okay. So in avoidant situations, typically what this really dates back to is that the parent wasn't responsive to the child. Your parent wasn't very responsive to you, so you learned to be very independent. Some of the specific reactions that parents might have shown that your parents might have shown is maybe they didn't respond to you when you were crying or upset. They could even have like actively discouraged you from showing emotions or from being upset. Or they may not have been very emotional themselves. Maybe it just felt like they were always kind of this baseline bleh kind of experience. Not very strong emotional reactions. They can have more extreme reactions. If you ever had a problem and your parent made fun of you or they kind of showed annoyance, like, ugh, don't bother me. Why, you know, why is this coming up for you? There can be cases where it gets into like, issues of neglect, not really addressing medical issues, not giving you like the basic, you know, needs that you have, and even avoiding any sort of touch or physical contact. So yeah, I mean, you know, Xander read over that definition that really the main thing is you're just so focused on independence and you don't want, you know, to have that connection with others. So there's definitely, you can have this worry that the relationship is like caging you in. If you often feel like trapped in relationships, that's a classic avoidance sign.

Yeah, it's like this push, pull of, you know that you need it, but in needing it, you become trapped.

Yeah. And they also, a lot of avoidant people have this idea in their head of this true love, this ideal partner, but they never feel like they meet them. So there is a desire to be close to others, but there's kind of this idealized mythical partner that's out there. And like the partners that you're with, there's just a sense of like, ugh, you're too needy, you're wanting too much.

Like, yeah, like this Ideal person. They're gonna give me everything I need. They're not gonna want anything else from me. They're not gonna, you know, we're gonna be super independent, but also fulfill all of our needs.

Yeah. To contrast avoidant and anxious even more like, the anxious person really feels like it's their fault. Oh, I'm the problem. I'm the issue. The avoidant person feels like it's their partner's fault, so they're putting it on the other person. It's not internalized in the way that it is with anxious avoidant people. You know, overall, they tend least happy and least satisfied with their relationships.

All right, so let's move on to the final one, which is secure attachment. So this one is being warm and loving in a relationship comes naturally to you. You enjoy being intimate without becoming overly worried about your relationships. You take everything in stride when it comes to romance, and you don't get easily upset over relationship matters. You effectively communicate your needs and feelings to your partner. And you're also strong at reading your partner's emotional cues and responding to them. You your successes and problems with your mate, and you're able to be there for him or her in times of need. Well, this one just sounds great.

Sounds great, right? So, surprisingly, research has found that over 50% of the population is securely attached. And that kind of surprised me because I think a lot of people think of themselves as being bad at relationships or having a lot of relationship issues. And so, yeah, I was kind of, like, surprised to learn that about 50% of people actually have, like, a pretty good secure attachment. So, of course it means nobody is perfect. We all have ways that we're anxious, that we're avoidant, insecure, all kinds of stuff. But, you know, a lot of us have a pretty secure base for relationships.

Yeah. And I think if you're thinking, like, I'm out there dating and, like, I never meet anybody like this, I think in this book, they kind of talk about. If you think about, like, the dating pool, you don't necessarily see that many secure attachment types out there because they may take themselves off the market quickly. So it's one of those things where, yeah, they're 50% of the population is this type. You often don't see that many of them out there because they have found each other and, you know, taken themselves off the market.

They found each other, taken themselves off the market, and also are not following our Instagram account because only 25% of our audience is securely attached. So I guess that makes sense too.

But, yeah, I think we found our niche.

Anxious people.

Wow. This is the market research that we needed.

Okay, so with securely attached people, what this traces back to, you know, in your childhood is just this general sense that you felt like your parent or your caregiver was going to meet your needs. Nobody is perfect. No parent is, like, perfectly attuned to their child at all times. But there was a. There's just this general trust that you had in your parents that they're there for you, they're gonna help you in times of need. You're gonna get what you need from them. So as adults, there's just this general sense of ease around your relationships. Again, there's nobody perfect. You're gonna have ups and downs, times where you feel better and worse. But in general, like, relationships just feel a little bit more steady and straightforward to you. You're good at supporting your partner, letting them support you. And when issues do come up in your relationship at, like, navigating that together, rather than putting the blame on yourself or putting the blame on your partner, there's just more evenness.

Yeah. And then if you move on from a relationship, you just have a general trust. You will find new relationships that, you know, you haven't, like, squandered your one and only chance. You feel confident that you know how to form good relationships with people and that you'll continue to find them.

Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully, as we were reading over those definitions, you found yourself relating to one of them more strongly than the other. But there are definitely quizzes online that you can take. If you want to dig into this a little bit more, we'll mention the website attachedthebook.com since that's what, you know, we were leaning on for the majority of this episode. And that website is interesting because they have a quiz for understanding your type and a quiz for understanding your partner's type. So we took that quiz, and I was particularly interested to see the quiz that I took to evaluate Zander. Was I going to get the same results that he took evaluating himself and vice versa?

And actually, the really interesting thing about taking those quizzes is the quiz that you take for yourself is a lot more nuanced. It felt like it required a lot of introspection and, like, you know, where do I fall on this scale? For each of the questions, the one that you take where you evaluate your partner, it felt like a much more clear cut type type of quiz. Like, they are kind of presenting you with, like, pretty clear situations, and it's, does your partner do this or Not. Not. And so it was. It's really interesting to see, you know, like. Like, does it come out the same way?

Okay, so let's do this. On the count of three, you share what you got for yourself, and I'll share what I got for you.

Okay. All right.

One, two, three.

Secure.

All right. And then on the count of three, I'll share what I got for myself, and you'll share what you got for me.

Okay.

One, two, three, Secure.

Wow. I guess we are qualified to be doing this podcast, then.

All right. Secure attachment. So I think it would be interesting for us to discuss, like, what do you think led to you having a secure attachment? And I'm also curious to know, which of the other two types do you feel like you skew a little bit more towards?

In my childhood, I, I. There was a lot of love in my household. Both of my parents really loved me. They were there for me emotionally, physically. You know, my parents are still together. I guess I kind of have a positive idea of what marriage is. Yeah. And I think, like, there were just a lot of things reinforced to me. I had options in life. My parents were going to love me regardless of what happened, that I could do this or I could do that. There wouldn't be any judgment. And so I think that that probably formed a lot of the basis. That's not to say that I had a perfect childhood, because I didn't. You know, on balance, looking back, setting those issues aside, that was sort of the basis of my childhood. You know, there are other things that happen that have, you know, maybe pushed me in one way or another way, in little ways, but in general, that I feel pretty secure about. Kind of, like, things.

Okay, I want to do the 1, 2, 3 thing again. And we both share which of the other types we think we resonate with more, but I'll jump in a little bit and share. You know, I think that our upbringings were really similar in a lot of ways, like how you're describing your parents. There are a lot of similarities with my parents. I felt very loved. I felt that trust that my parents were always going to be there for me, no matter what. And that was something that my parents said all the time, is like, we love you unconditionally, no matter what. We are always here. And so I felt that safety and that security. Of course, my parents were not perfect, just as your parents were not perfect. There were times that we fought. There were times that I didn't feel supported. There were challenges that I had with each of them individually. But, like, overall, there was that really, really secure foundation of love and of trust there. And actually, if you want to see my parents, they are also still married. I think that's really rare that both of us have parents that are still married. But we have a highlight on Instagram of my parents because they have come to really enjoy popping up in our Instagram channel whenever they come into town. So I think the. The highlight is just called V's parents, and it's them, like, answering questions and just being super cute. They're really, really adorable.

You can see how secure they are.

Yes. Okay, so on the count of three, let's share the other type that we veer towards sometimes. One, two, three.

Anxious. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that. I think that my mom probably also skews a bit anxious as well. And so I kind of, like, picked up on that as a child and skew towards that a bit. When I look at all the relationships that I've been in before Vanessa, I'm pretty sure that all of them have. Have. My partners have all been fairly avoidant. And so it's interesting. Like, you know, in this book, they talk about how you. Someone who has secure attachment style can successfully be in a relationship with either an avoidant or anxious attachment style person. I am. I am spoiling it.

You're blowing our low.

Like, like you can. I think that for whatever reason, I kind of always, like, skewed towards wanting to be in a relationship with an avoidant person. I guess probably because I had this romantic idea that I could fix them. What I find looking back is when those really avoidant tendencies would come out, then I would stop feeling so secure and start feeling like, oh, my God, have I done something wrong? Like, now I need to anxiously get closer, get closer, get closer to try to feel better about myself. I kind of had, you know, one or two somewhat traumatic relationships early on with avoidant types that left some lasting damage. And that definitely brought out my anxious tendencies, which, you know, I've been working a lot on recently. And I feel so much more secure than I did in the past.

Yeah, I think I have the tendency to skew anxious at times because, you know, I do devote a lot of energy to my relationships. Like, I like to be very close with people, and so my relationships can take up a lot of space in my life. I can be definitely sensitive to, like, small fluctuations in energy. And I think that's true for all of my relationships, not just romantic relationships.

I thought you're gonna say that's true for Both of us. Because that's definitely true for me.

Yeah. Just that a little bit of, like, hyper attunement. Like, what's going on? Is someone upset? How are they feeling? And that it can affect me in that way. I think looking back, though, the majority of my romantic relationships have been with other anxious people, too. Ye. I don't. I don't think I've maybe dated, like, one or two avoidant people, but in general, I think I've tended to have, like, slightly more anxious partners, too.

Yeah. I mean, what I will say is, I think when Vanessa and my anxious attachment tendencies come out at the same time, that's probably when we feel. That's when we're in trouble. It's probably when we feel the least close.

Oh, yeah.

Like, we both just feel like, oh, my God, like, what the hell are we gonna do? Yeah.

Yeah, Absolutely. Yeah. I would say that our. Yeah. Our issues, our worst fights, they definitely come out when those tendencies are coming out in both of us. So, yeah, we're starting to talk about this already, but we wanted to discuss a little bit about, like, how the different types work together, because, of course, that's a natural question that comes up. What if I'm secure but my partner's avoidant? How do our types work together? So we're going to go through all the different combinations that can come up. The first one that we have is anxious and anxious. So this is a little bit of what we're talking about. So in these kinds of relationships, there's a really strong desire for intimacy and closeness.

So probably on paper, you guys sound, like, perfect for each other. If you're talking about what it is that you're looking for in a relationship, you're probably like, oh, yes, that's it. They understand me.

Yeah. And I mean, this can be a good thing. Like, you and I, our intimacy is very important to us, and our relationship takes up a lot of space in our life. Right. But it definitely can get into territory where it's like that desire for closeness is just so strong. And you can even be, like, together, spending all the time together, but you're still like, oh, I want us to be closer. You know, it definitely can. Can pick up anxiety, obviously.

Yeah.

I mean, it's.

It's funny. It's funny to hear you describe that, because you and I are extremely, extremely close. And if I think about, like, how would I describe my ideal relationship? I don't think my number one thing would be like, oh, I need to be so extremely close. Like, that doesn't feel that important to me. If. If somehow we weren't dating. If we weren't married. Oh, my God. I was gonna say we weren't dating.

Wow.

Oh. Cause I was gonna say, like, if I had to be on a dating app tomorrow, I feel like I wouldn't write, oh, like, I need to be super, super close. However, if I think about, like, when do I become really happy in a relationship? It's, you know, when I start to get really close with someone I just don't like, oh, my God, I have to have that.

Yeah. Anxious and anxious can also, like, really pick up on a lot of emotional cues. And again, sometimes this can be a good thing. Like, you guys can be attuned to each other and sort of empathetic in certain ways, but sometimes this can be a bad thing where you're really over analyzing. Like, and we do this sometimes too. About, like, oh, did you have a weird tone in your. Like, oh, you looked at me weird. What does that face mean?

Oh, yeah, that's when we get in trouble.

The weird face.

Faces, the faces, the tone. I mean, like, once, once things, you know, once the secureness gets rocked a little bit, then it's like every little thing, like, what did that mean? What did that mean? What's. What's that look?

Yeah.

Oh, that didn't sound right. Must be about me.

So the key with the anxious, anxious pairing is to really be able to communicate needs with each other and not jump to conclusions. So in that case, you. You can work well together. Like, both partners can get their needs met by each other, and there' kind of a baseline understanding that you guys have of each other. But if there's not that open communication, if you guys are jumping to conclusions a lot in your head, then there can be jealousy that comes up. Resentment, frustration, a whole bunch of stuff. All right, next up, we have avoidant. Avoidant. So this is a really interesting pairing because you sort of wonder, like, how do these people even find each other in the first place? Because neither one of them really wants. Wants intimacy, and yet somehow they have found each other.

Yeah, it's like, you know, it's like your friend who's like, oh, I'm not really looking for a relationship.

Yeah.

So then it's like, you know, how. How do they find another person that's also not really looking for a relationship?

Let me introduce you to my friend who is also not looking for one. Yeah. So in these relationships, it can feel often like there's not very much of a pull towards each other. Maybe even not much of a spark or a connection. It's sort of, oh, okay, like you're cool and. And we can hang out and I guess you're there. But there's not that pull towards each other that I think a lot of people are looking for in relationships. Like, you want to feel that, like, deep connection to another person. These relationships can often be just, like, very functional. You're really good teammates, you're really good roommates. But maybe it doesn't quite feel as romantic. And for some people, that's great. Not everybody's looking for or wanting like, a really intimate, deep relationship. So both people are clear about that then. These can work out.

Yeah. I feel like this is sort of that stereotypical. I feel like most of us probably have one couple friend where you're like, I do not understand how these two work together. I don't understand it. This should not work. But somehow it does. They're probably just two avoidants.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

I think that probably the challenge with avoidant avoidant is that someone who is avoidant avoidant, they don't not have needs. You do have needs. You just oftentimes aren't looking for them to be fulfilled in a relationship because you're worried about becoming dependent on someone or becoming too close. You do still sometimes need to express a need in a relationship. So I could imagine that it can be difficult for two avoidance because on those rare times where, like, a need is being expressed in a relationship, the other one is probably going to have a lot of trouble. Trouble hearing that need and meeting that need without having those alarm bells ringing around. Oh, my God, they're getting too close. They're getting too close.

Yeah. All right. The third category that we want to talk about is either avoidant or anxious paired with a secure partner. Good news here. You're good.

Yeah, you're done. Stop listening to the podcast.

As long as one partner in the relationship has secure attachment, there's what some researchers call the secure buff effect, which means that there's that one partner creates enough security for the relationship, kind of buffers up the entire relationship. It helps the non secure partner kind of move towards a more secure style. And it's really like such a strong effect. Research has found that there really isn't very much difference between a secure secure relationship and mixed secure relationship. So secure secure versus secure anxious. They can be almost the same. So good news here, especially given that over 50% of the people are secure. And finally we have the anxious avoidant pair. This is a tricky pairing. I want to be careful in saying like it's not that it's hopeless or you should run if you're in a relationship like this. But this is definitely the most challenging pairing out of all of the pairings. And that's really because each partner's needs are so opposite. You know, you're going to have a lot of ups and downs in this kind of pairing. Probably you guys are going to need to go to therapy to, you know, learn communication, understand each other better, learn better coping skills, how to manage stuff. So it's definitely a doable thing. But it is going to require more effort and more work than other pairings because there's so many differences in between your types.

And I think the thing that is really important if you are in this type of relationship is just to be aware of the kind of cycle that can really tend to happen that just repeats itself in these type of relationships. So in this cycle, the person who has anxious attachment type does something to get closer to their avoidant partner. Then the avoidant sort of senses that dependency or the impingement on their independence. And so then they start to run away or sort of create some distance. Then the anxious attachment type starts a fight about this and then the avoidant goes to sort of avoid a solution to that fight. And then it feels like things are really far away. Maybe you're on the verge of a breakup or you're at a standstill and then there's sort of this short lived reconciliation where maybe things get really intense again and feel really good. Good. And then things are feeling good. And so then the anxious again wants to get a little bit closer and starts the whole cycle over and over. It's sort of that push, pull type thing. I think we see this a lot in movies.

It's the pursuer, distancer.

Pursuer, distancer.

Yeah. Oh yeah. It's a common dynamic.

It's important to be aware of that cycle and that can really tend to happen in this pairing because each of those things that are happening are very natural for each person. Person.

All right, so that wraps up our overview of attachment styles, the different types, how they work together. So hopefully this has been really interesting for you to understand yourself a bit more how your early connections, your early attachments affect your relationships later in life and has given you some ideas of how to better balance attachment styles in your relationship.

All right, so we're going to get into some listener questions now. This one was far and away the most common question. You are probably wondering it yourself if you are not A secure attachment style. Can you change your style?

Yeah, I don't think there are any anxious people who are like wanting to go to avoidant or secure wanting to go to anxious. The interesting thing with our attachment styles is that they do tend to stay pretty consistent over our lifetime. But it is possible to change your style. So there has been some research on this. They've shown that one in four people will change their attachment styles. 25%. It's not super high, but it's not nothing.

Yeah, I can definitely vouch for this because I was sort of talking about being in relationships with avoidant types and I could very much, you know, in one of these relationships, I could really start to kind of detect that something was changing in me as a result of being with this partner. And I was definitely becoming more and more anxious. And that's one of the things that really ultimately led me to end that relationship was just like, I don't feel good about the way that I feel myself changing. This can't be healthy for me in that case. And you know, fortunately, you know, I feel really fortunate and lucky and grateful to be in a relationship with Vanessa after being in a couple relationships with avoidant types because, you know, being back with someone who's secure has really helped me get just much more comfortable with me being me and not needing to make it always about me or being worried about what's happening all the time.

So obviously you can't go back and change your childhood. You can't change those early experiences interacting with your caretakers. But I think rather than trying to think about like, okay, I'm anxious, how do I become secure? What can be more useful is to think about like, what are the specific secure characteristics or qualities or traits that you want to work on personally? So is it that you have a low self worth worth? That's something concrete, you know, that you could work on changing. Is it that you're not very assertive? Is it that you don't know how to like, identify or express what your needs are? So, you know, you can kind of go back through that definition that we shared about the secure type and look at what are the specific things that you want to embody a little bit more. Some other really, like key things that you can do are are practicing being vulnerable. In the book, they talk a lot about not playing games. Like we've really been taught, especially in dating to play games, like not be too available to try to like be a little standoffish.

Oh yeah, like, don't call back, don't text for X number of days.

Yeah. And the authors here really advocate just like putting your needs out there more clearly, just putting your cards on the table and how that can often lead to better relationships. And there's also stuff like, you know, learning how to self soothe, like navigating your own emotions as well. So these are all things that of course we're going to tell you. Like, therapy can be really beneficial in exploring this and learning how to embody more of those traits, but it definitely is possible to learn how to change the way that you interact with other people.

Yeah. And just to reiterate what Vanessa just said, I think the key thing is if you tell yourself, oh, my God, I need to change types. And here are 10 things I need to change right now. Now the weight of that list of all those changes is going to be so heavy. It's going to create a cycle that gets you back into that anxious attachment type again, where you're like, oh, my God, what's wrong with me? Why can't I change? But if you try to look at kind of these traits and think about, okay, what is one thing that I would like to work on right now that makes it much more manageable, you can actually take some concrete action steps to try trying to make some small changes in that area. And then once you build up a habit, doing things a little differently in that area and it becomes more second nature, then you can move on to working on something else. I mean, I think that's a good kind of description of what therapy is in general. You know, you go to therapy, you're not going to be overnight just changing all these things. You talk about one thing for a session, two sessions, four sessions, and really digging deep on one area. And then it kind of stops being big thing because you've worked through it, and then you move on to the next thing.

Yeah.

All right, so the next question is, can styles vary in different relationships? So I assume this kind of means, was my style in this one relationship different than my style in the next relationship?

Yeah, absolutely. And we, you and I have talked about that a little bit already. The dynamic that you have with one person can be very different from the dynamic that you have with other people. So I've definitely had relationships where I skewed more anxious relationships where I skewed a little bit more avoidant. My general type type is always going to be that secure type. But different people can bring out the anxieties or the insecurities or the avoidance in me.

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I Imagine, Yeah. If you're with a different type, they can skew you towards them or they can skew you the opposite way as well. Like, I think that it's super common if you are with someone who is avoidant, they can. They can bring out more anxious traits. Traits in you or. Or possibly they bring out some avoidant traits in you because you go, oh, I see what they're doing to me. I'm going to do the same thing to them. The last question is, how do I not let my attachment style affect communication with my partner during an argument?

Okay, so this is an interesting one. Fast answer is you can't. Like, that's the whole point of having an attachment style is like, that's going to be the dynamic that you naturally go to. But I think something like a really powerful technique or little trick to that you can use is to try to identify the attachment style as it comes out. So if you again, like, you know, re listen to our descriptions of the types and start to look for, okay, what are the specific ways that my anxious attachment comes out for me? And then you can label that in the moment or you can even take a second to ask yourself, okay, what is it that's coming up for me right now? I'm having this argument with my partner. Partner, is this something around my anxious attachment coming up? And I think, you know, it sounds like a really simple step, but that the ability to label these dynamics as they come up for us in the moment, it's actually one surprisingly hard because we really tend to get lost in the moment during an argument. But it's also too very effective to be able to pinpoint, hey, okay, this is my attachment style stuff that's coming up right now. Because I think in. In conflict, everything feels so real to us. We're like, no, my partner is doing this bad thing and it's their fault or, you know, whatever it is, or it's my fault. Everything just feels so real. But if we're able to take that step back and recognize, huh, okay, maybe there's a little bit of my attachment stuff coming into play. That's a way for us to get a little bit of perspective on it and to think, okay, what are some ways that I might be able to shift more towards that secure kind of reaction and that this moment.

Yeah. So I think the important thing is almost like reframing the entire question. So instead of it being I need to not have my attachment style affect my communication, instead think about, of course my attachment style is going to affect my Communication with my partner. And the more aware I am of my attachment style and how that may impact my communication, the better my communication can probably be because I'll be more able to. To listen to myself as I'm communicating and being like, oh, yeah, there's that anxiety coming out. Instead of just like, you know, letting that anxiety come out. What do I need right now to soothe my anxiety and maybe focus on that instead of getting into an argument?

Yeah. And I guess one final point that I want to mention that we haven't really talked about yet is being able to have empathy for yourself around your attachment style. You know, it's really easy for us to blame ourselves or to blame other people. And if we can kind of take the step back and recognize, you know what, Like, I have these tendencies that come up in my life because of some of the things that I've experienced as a child or at different stages in my life. And it doesn't mean you have to say that your parents are terrible people or you're such a fucked up person or whatever it is, but just being able to have a little bit of compassion for yourself of, oh, okay, I understand where these tendencies come from. I understand that this was a way of me, like, coping with some challenging things that I've been through. If we can have that compassion for ourselves, if we can be, like, kinder with ourselves and gentler with ourselves, it really helps us move through those dynamics rather than letting those dynamics take control of us.

Oh, that's a really nice way to wrap it up and ask.

Just wrapping it up with a little empathy. All right, so, you know, another really important thing that comes up with attachment styles, especially in your relationship relationships, is being able to communicate about this with your partner. So just like we were talking about being able to identify your own dynamics, like, when you and your partner can more clearly identify the dynamics that come up between the two of you. When you guys can express your needs to each other, you can talk through things more clearly. Like, communication is just the best way to deal with having different attachment styles. So we have a free gift to get you started with that. It is called the Golden Rules of Communication. It's a PDF guide that we've put together for you that goes over some of our absolute favorite communication tips. I know the idea of. Yeah, just learn how to communicate. You're like, wait, okay, okay, sure. But where? So we really break it down for you and give you practical, actionable tools that you can use, things that you can start incorporating into your communication to have more effective communication. So we will put a link to download that in the show notes.

All right, that's all for today's episode of Pillow Talks. Thank you so much for listening. It's holiday travel time, so join us again next week when we talk about getting down and dirty at your parents house.

Oh boy.

Or parents in law's house.