Most attachment specialists believe that the disorganized attachment style is the most difficult of the three insecure attachment styles to treat because it incorporates both the anxious and the avoidant styles.
Disorganized attachment is the most extreme insecure attachment style, therapist Chamin Ajjan, M.S., LCSW, A-CBT, tells mbg. People with a disorganized attachment style have a strong desire for intimate connections but also put up walls to protect themselves from getting hurt.
Anxious and avoidant relationships are considered unhealthy or insecure attachments. They can often lead to relationships that cause you great anxiety, distress, or emotional pain. Alternatively, you can also form attachments to objects. These attachment objects can play a role in how safe you feel.
Avoidant Attachment: less likely to fall in love and more likely to engage in casual sex. Adults with an avoidant attachment style typically have a deactivated attachment system. Avoidant individuals do not seek proximity and intimacy, avoid the display of emotions, and appear distant and cold.
So what does the research say about attachment theory and playing hard to get? Across four experiments, the researchers found that those with an avoidant attachment style are more likely to play hard to get. In contrast, those exhibiting anxious attachments are more willing to pursue someone who plays hard to get.
Both avoidant and anxious attachment are both insecure types of attachment. Just over 50% of people are securely attached to their partner. The securely attached are the least likely to be unfaithful as they do not worry about their partner straying or the strength of the relationship.
Some studies showed that differences in attachment styles seem to influence both the frequency and the patterns of jealousy expression: individuals with the preoccupied or fearful-avoidant attachment styles more often become jealous and consider rivals as more threatening than those with the secure attachment style [9, ...
According to psychologists, people with avoidant attachment styles are individuals uncomfortable with intimacy and are therefore more likely to multiply sexual encounters and cheat.
Cook says hopeless romantics are often coping with anxious attachment, which goes hand-in-hand with a fear of abandonment. "With anxious attachment, we feel desperate to find a connection — sometimes, any connection — and will do just about anything to hold onto it, even if it is not serving us."
Due to the fact that someone with an avoidant attachment style is more likely to end a relationship because it's starting to become serious, combined with their reluctance to re-establish a romantic connection, many people may be wondering how to get over an avoidant partner.
Individuals high in anxious attachment are more likely to engage in emotional manipulation and other harmful behaviors intended to prevent a partner from leaving the relationship, which in turn is linked to reduced relationship satisfaction, according to new research published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.
AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIP PATTERNS
People with an avoidant attachment style can come across as selfish, appearing to put their own needs in front of their partner's needs.
Individuals with an anxious attachment style are characterized with: Being clingy. Having an intensely persistent and hypervigilant alertness towards their partner's actions or inactions.
As I pointed out earlier, previous studies on dating couples had showed that the anxiously attached were least likely to be unfaithful and the avoidantly attached the most.
Attachment Style
This suggests that those higher in avoidant attachment might actually enjoy unrequited love, as they are less likely to actually want to be in a relationship – allowing them to receive positive and self-expansive feelings of love without worrying about a relationship or commitment.
Emophilia describes the tendency to easily fall in love, a tendency that used to be captured by the term "emotional promiscuity." People high in emophilia are eager to fall in love and feel themselves falling in love quite often.
A hopeless romantic is someone who continues to believe in love, no matter the struggles they might have experienced in the past. They choose to see the positive in relationships over the negative, believing wholeheartedly that love conquers all.
Higher fearful and dismissing attachment styles, and higher physical activity index were significantly associated with higher physical and verbal aggression. A higher fearful attachment style was significantly associated with more anger. A higher secure attachment style was significantly associated with less anger.
Anxious attachment is what is most often referred to as codependent. Those with anxious attachment often feel as though they would like to be close to others or one person in particular but they worry that another person may not want to be close to them. They struggle with feeling inferior, never good enough.
Conflict avoidance: Most people with this attachment style are conflict-averse. They may shut down or end a close relationship at the first sign of conflict. Suppressing emotions: Dismissive avoidant people tend to conceal their feelings.
The dismissing / avoidant type tend to believe that they don't have to be in a relationship to feel complete. They do not want to depend on others, have others depend on them, or seek support and approval in social bonds. Adults with this attachment style generally avoid emotional closeness.
It is possible that other studies will show that single people, on the average, are more likely to have an avoidant attachment style or an anxious style — or that coupled people are! What is highly unlikely to happen is for some study to find that most single people have attachment issues.
Adults with an anxious/preoccupied attachment style might think highly of others but often suffer from low self-esteem. These individuals are sensitive and attuned to their partners' needs, but are often insecure and anxious about their own worth in a relationship.