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.
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.
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.
There are four principles of attachment theory - secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganized attachment. People with an anxious attachment style are more likely to struggle with self-doubt, fall in love quickly and carry a strong fear that their partner will leave them.
Fearful-avoidant
This is the least common type of attachment style, but it can also be the most difficult. Again, while there are many factors that contribute to the development of attachment styles, early childhood influences are often key.
Fearful-Avoidant, aka Disorganized Attachment
The fearful-avoidant attachment style is the rarest, and "develops when the child's caregivers — the only source of safety — become a source of fear," according to the Attachment Project, an attachment style education site.
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, ...
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.
The secure attachment style is the most common type of attachment in western society. Research suggests that around 66% of the US population is securely attached. People who have developed this type of attachment are self-contented, social, warm, and easy to connect to.
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."
What is Avoidant Attachment? Parents of children with an avoidant attachment tend to be emotionally unavailable or unresponsive to them a good deal of the time. They disregard or ignore their children's needs, and can be especially rejecting when their child is hurt or sick.
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.
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.
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.
According to psychologists, people with avoidant attachment styles are individuals uncomfortable with intimacy and are therefore more likely to multiply sexual encounters and cheat.
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.
Despite their negative affect regarding sexual encounters, people with anxious attachment have more intimate partners (as compared to the other groups) and are prone to being unfaithful to their lovers.
Although it is a spectrum of four styles, common parlance refers to only three: anxious, avoidant and secure. Studies show that people who are securely attached have the healthiest relationships, and it's the type that everyone should strive for.
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.
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.
People with an anxious attachment style generally want a lot of closeness in their relationships. They want it quickly and they want it unconditionally. I like to refer to these people as 'Open Hearts'.
The three types of insecure attachment are anxious, avoidant, and fearful-avoidant, which are also known in children as ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized.