What’s Your Romantic Attachment Style?

Your romantic attachment style is the pattern you consistently use to connect with others on an emotionally intimate level.

Developed primarily from your childhood relationships with your parents/guardians, attachment styles generally form by the age of three and significantly impact our romantic relationships as adults.

How Attachment Styles Are Measured

In order to determine your romantic attachment style, we measure your level of relationship anxiety among two different scales: 1) the degree to which you fear emotional intimacy (high or low), and 2) the degree to which you fear abandonment (high or low).

These two scales intersect to form four possible styles of attachment: Secure, Anxious, Avoidant, and Anxious-Avoidant. Here’s a free assessment to find out your attachment style (I’m not an affiliate btw).

Secure Attachment

Approx. 50% of the population. The Secure style is characterized by a low fear of intimacy and a low fear of abandonment. While all people can experience fear and anxiety to some degree, the Secure style usually doesn't experience it to the degree that it would cause irreparable issues in their romantic relationships. People with the Secure style tend to be comfortable with both emotional closeness and with giving their partners space when needed.

Anxious Attachment

AKA Preoccupied/Ambivalent. Approx. 20% of the population. The Anxious style is characterized by a low fear of intimacy and a high fear of abandonment. Their anxiety gets triggered most when partners pull away or need space. People with the Anxious style are afraid of being alone, so they try to cope with their anxiety by clinging to partners and/or bending themselves to fit what they think their partners desire.

Avoidant Attachment

AKA Dismissive/Avoidant. Approx. 25% of the population. The Avoidant style is characterized by a high fear of intimacy and a low fear of abandonment. Their anxiety gets triggered most when relationships get too close. Avoidant people are afraid that their needs won't be met if they get too close to a partner, so they try to cope with their anxiety by running from intimacy and often search for reasons to blame their partners for why a relationship won't work even if there aren't any.

Anxious-Avoidant Attachment

AKA Fearful/Avoidant or Disorganized. 
Approx. 5% of the population. The Anxious-Avoidant style is characterized by a high fear of intimacy and a high fear of abandonment. A person with this style is often a product of traumatic experiences and their anxiety is often triggered when things get too close and when partners pull away. People with the Anxious-Avoidant style are afraid of being hurt if they get too close, so they try to cope with their anxiety through a disorganized style of sometimes clinging and sometimes avoiding.

Can Attachment Styles Change?

It is possible for attachment styles to change, although there are only three ways they do so; however, 70% of people will have the same attachment style throughout their lifetime.

On the plus side, one can only become secure through either:

• Being in a long-term, healthy relationship with a securely attached partner (though it can take years to shift to a more secure style), or

• Therapy/hypnotherapy specifically focused on attachment styles. This is the fastest way to "earn" attachment and happens to be one of my specialties as a hypnotherapist. (Click here to learn more about hypnosis for love.)

On the debit side:

• Traumatic experiences (like war, death, or abusive relationships, etc.) can quickly change a secure style into one of the insecure styles.

Attachment Style Compatibility

If you're single with an insecure attachment style (if your type isn't Secure, you have an insecure style), it's recommended that you only choose romantic partners with a Secure style.

Insecurely attached partners can trigger and reinforce each other's relationship anxiety, especially when one partner has a high fear of intimacy and the other has a high fear of abandonment.

Unless both partners are in attachment-related therapy, two insecurely attached partners often create an unintentionally toxic and tumultuous relationship together.

Understanding your attachment style (and the style of your partner) is one of the most important (if not the most important) things you need to know in order to have a happy, healthy, romantic relationship.

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Amari Ice is a relationship coach, matchmaker, and hypnotherapist who helps gay men master their romantic magic by developing their dating skills, healing subconscious patterns of self-sabotage, and enhancing their romantic magnetism so that love becomes inevitable. Take the free Dating Skills Quiz to discover your dating skill level.