Supporting The Anxiously Attached Partner
By: Annie Tanasugarn
Tags: Self Improvement, Psychology, Life, Self, Love

However, certain attachment styles differ on an organic level such as an insecure attachment, which include both Anxious and Avoidant styles. Insecure attachments not only affect intimate relationships, they also impact how a person engages in all of their relationships.

For example, an Anxious attachment — is marked by one (or both) partners seeking constant approval and reassurance from the other partner. There’s an overarching fear that their partner is either cheating, planning to cheat, or going to leave them. Many who battle an Anxious attachment bend over backwards to try and please their partner often by neglecting their own needs in the process.

A person who struggles with an Anxious attachment style may demand to see their partner’s phone, or may question or look for holes in a family member’s story. They are often on heightened-alert and struggle with trust issues that are carried with them.

Many who battle insecure attachments also struggle with being alone, and often confuse “being” alone with “feeling” lonely. The same insecurities that trigger a fear of abandonment are the same ones that can have them abandoning one relationship for another in an effort to avoid being abandoned.

Intimate relationships with insecurely attached partners are often filled with passion and toxic peaks and valleys where solutions aren’t found, often because partners may not be able to pinpoint the issues at hand. Or, they’re used to having dramatic and unstable relationships as “normal” — and even comfortable — so a solution may not want to be found.

These relationships are often riddled with the push-pull cycle, where each partner should take a time-out in order to best understand themselves, their part in the cycle and where and how it started (*hint: childhood).

Yet, the same reasons that call for a relationship breather, are the same ones keeping the push-pull dynamic in full effect.

Adding another layer to these unstable relationship dynamics, is that Anxiously-attached partners and Avoidantly-attached partners are usually drawn to each other like two moths to the flame.

These are the two attachment styles synonymous with the push-pull.

If we think about it, this makes perfect sense.

Each type of insecure attachment style seeks out (chases), and simultaneously pushes away (runs) from the qualities the other has. This works two ways: they want to approach the other for belonging and at the same time they reproach the other because that person is seen as a threat to their sense of autonomy.

…two sides to the same coin.

For example, those who are Anxiously-attached may want to be “fixed” or “saved” in the relationship where their partner’s needs come before their own in an effort to make them feel whole or complete, while many Avoidantly-attached partners like doing the “fixing” or “saving” to shy away from their own growth.

Partners who are Anxiously-attached often have a fear of being left behind or abandoned that can be triggered by an Avoidantly-attached partner who often has a fear of engulfment, or a feeling of losing themselves in the relationship. The Anxiously-attached partner may ‘chase’ the Avoidantly-attached partner to be reassured they’re loved, or wanted, which in turn can cause the Avoidantly-attached partner to ‘run’ from emotional overwhelm.

Those with an Anxious attachment can misconstrue their partner’s autonomy or need for personal space as being abandoned by their partner, whereas those with an Avoidant attachment can misconstrue their partner’s belongingness, emotional availability and ease of intimacy as suffocating, and something to avoid at all costs.

Anxiously-attached partners commonly report feeling fear, anxiety or impending doom whereas an Avoidantly-attached partner is often seen as shallow, aloof and emotionally isolated.

On the flip-side, Avoidantly-attached partners often report feeling numb, bored or indifferent where the excitement, spontaneity and passion of an Anxiously-attached partner makes them feel alive or gives them a sense of purpose.