What are love and attachment? And how can they impact your relationship with your partner? Do we have to see love and attachment as counter-parts, or can they work together harmoniously? What if we could recognize the kind of attachment we have for someone and use that to determine if the relationship is healthy, solid, and strong, or if one or both partners have some personal work to do on themselves? 

​

            Love often makes us blind to aspects of a relationship that need addressing. This blindness can be caused by romantic desire, being overwhelmed by such a strong connection with another person, or it may be a response to the attachment that one is feeling for the other person. In fact, it could be the mechanism that one's brain is using to cover the warning signs that the attachment being felt is not actually good for the person or the relationship. We often neglect to see that “attachment is where you become self-centered” and the feeling can be similar to an obsession (Angge Co). In unhealthy forms of attachment, we often keep the other person around because they are filling a void or they are boosting the low self-esteem that was there before that person came and created a feeling of comfort for us (Angge Co).

​

            Instead of relying on someone else in a relationship, people need to learn how to be able to stay autonomous within the relationship. If they are already a secure person, and if someone was not secure before the relationship, then the insecure person needs to take their time and find themselves before entering a relationship.

​

           There are a few things that show that love and attachment have large differences that can help someone to realize which one they are actually experiencing. One difference is that love is “ego-reducing” and attachment is “ego-boosting” (Thibaut Meurisse). The idea of love is that it is self-less, and allows people to learn more about themselves while the other person is doing the same. Love prompts people to grow and share the best and worst parts of themselves and still feel comfortable and happy. While love brings people closer, attachment pushes them further apart, with the misconception that they are becoming closer. Attachment makes a relationship seem like it is growing, but the boost it gives internally is making it more difficult for the relationship to thrive. The feeling attachment gives people makes them reliant on that person, and it makes them feel as if “[they] can’t be happy without [their] partner” (Thibaut Meurisse). And this kind of reliance on someone else makes people push their problems aside, and that other person fills that distraction and uses that person to solve all of their issues.

​

            There are four different forms of attachment that can show in relationships, secure, fear, preoccupied, and dismissive. Each of these styles of attachment represent themselves very distinctly within a relationship.

​

            The first, and best, type of attachment is secure attachment. The concept of secure attachment sprouts from the fact that the partners within a relationship are autonomous beings. Due to feeling secure within themselves, as well as secure in their relationship, they are able to maintain a healthy balance. The key concept with a secure relationship is that the two help each other grow as people. This is where you will see true love within a relationship.

​

            Fear attachment is often shown in people who lack security in both themselves and other people. Imagine feeling lonely inside and craving love and affection. Then you meet someone wonderful. You are full of joy and excitement and feel good. Yet, several months later, if your romantic partner does anything, you experience a flood of anxiety. You run into your own defensive wall; that part of your personality that is trying to protect you. You feel unworthy of their love and trust and you also expect other people will ultimately hurt you. When these people get into relationships, they struggle with separation anxiety and have difficulty building trust. Often, if a partner with a fear-based attachment style is in a relationship with one that is secure, they are more invested in the relationship than their partner. They internalize problems within a relationship and assume passive roles. This ultimately will cause a secure partner to feel as if it is rather one-sided. A fear based attachment and pre-occupied attachment may get along well on the exterior, due to fear-based attachment being based on passivity and investment into a relationship. Nonetheless, internally this is a rather toxic relationship. 

​

            Pre-occupied attachment, also known as anxious attachment, results in people acting clingy and desperate. They feel that the best way to get their needs met is to cling to their attachment figure. These people are often self-critical and insecure and seek out approval and reassurance from others. These people will often have positive views of other people, but a negative view on themselves, so they rely heavily on their partner to validate their self-worth. They anticipate rejection or abandonment and look for signs that their partner is losing interest. If this type of person is in a relationship with a secure partner, these actions will ultimately push the secure partner farther and father away. They feel stifled by the relationship due to the insecure attachment coming from the partner.

​

            Dismissive attachment is often represented in casual sex relationships or acquaintance friendships. These people often have faith in themselves, but not in other people. These people are not likely to try and engage in any kind of real relationship. These people tend to run away from a relationship when they feel it is getting too intimate and when their partner is getting too “clingy or needy.” As you can see from this, dismissive and pre-occupied attachment styles go hand-in-hand. These are the worst two types of attachment styles to have within a relationship because it most likely will not work out. These types of people will not get into a relationship with any attachment style.

 

             In these four types of attachment, only one can have genuine love without a lot of work and patience. In order for relationships to have successful love, it is important that both parties have secure attachment, or if only one has secure attachment, that person must know that the other person is going to need help coming to a healthy place in their attachment.

​

Through love we find happiness, and through attachment we find dependence.

 

Reference

Co, Angge. “Attachment vs. Love .” Be Yourself, Be Yourself, 21 Nov. 2015, byrslf.co/attachment-vs-love-51c7aa6f375.

​

Meurisse, Thibaut. “5 Differences Between Real Love And Attachment.” Lifehack, Lifehack, 10 Jan. 2018, www.lifehack.org/317383/5-         differences-between-real-love-and-attachment.