Anyone who’s ever been caught up in the anxious/avoidant back-and-forth in a relationship would love to avoid it in the future. Often, we walk away from those relationships thinking to ourselves “I’m definitely never dating someone with that attachment style again!” Maybe we add telltale signs of avoidant or anxious attachment to our personal red flag lists. I’ll make sure I date someone with a secure attachment style in the future, we think to ourselves. 

This isn’t a bad idea; our attachment styles function in dynamic connection with others, so it’s possible that a close connection with someone who can attach securely could offer some stability or even help heal some of your own attachment struggles. However, part of having anxious or avoidant attachment is often finding yourself drawn to your opposite counterpart — and finding and dating someone with a secure attachment may be trickier than it sounds. Where to start? Here’s seven signs of secure attachment it might be helpful to watch out for in future dates and relationships.

Healthy boundaries

Everyone knows boundaries are important — but healthy boundaries can also be difficult to get right. Many people take some practice to find our footing when it comes to setting boundaries. 

For many of us, especially those of us with anxious attachment, our boundaries may start out too “squishy,” or function as boundaries in name only: we may state a preference about what occurs, but make no moves to enact it, and have little or no pushback if someone behaves counter to it (but silently resent them for it). Alternatively, we may come out of the gate swinging with invocations of “boundaries” left and right, maybe especially if we have more avoidant attachment. Our “boundaries” may really be ways to try to limit what others can ask of us or expect of us, or trying to litigate others’ needs. 

Securely attached people, on the other hand, generally know that boundaries are about their own actions, not about trying to control the actions of others. They have a clear sense of what’s healthy and safe for them in relationships, and take responsibility for taking actions for their own wellbeing within them. Much like they tend to treat conflict as potentially generative, securely attached people can see boundaries as a way to maintain and preserve relationships, not a threat to them.

Capable of both co-regulation and self-regulation

At their core, issues of avoidant or anxious attachment are often expressed in our tendencies around emotional regulation. Adult humans are designed to both self-regulate (soothe ourselves when we’re upset) and co-regulate (be soothed by others when we’re upset). When someone is avoidantly or anxiously attached, however, they tend not to be equally capable of both these things. 

Avoidantly attached people struggle with co-regulation, unable to be vulnerable enough with others to be soothed by them. Anxiously attached people aren’t always able to successfully self-regulate; they can struggle to manage strong emotions or calm themselves down without social support from others. 

Securely attached people, on the other hand, generally have some facility with both co-regulation and self-regulation. They’re able to manage their own emotional needs and get themselves back to an emotional baseline when distressed on their own, but are also able to reach out to others in their life for support, share their internal experiences openly, and accept comfort and support when it’s offered.

Comfort with intimacy and independence

Anxious attachment might be defined as an overriding need for intimacy and a discomfort with independence — being unwilling to spend any time away from their partner, needing very high degrees of constant communication, and/or becoming subsumed in their partner, giving up other interests or friendships.  Conversely, avoidant attachment often looks like a discomfort with intimacy and a need for independence that can be at odds with having a committed relationship: excessive need for space or alone time, refusal to engage with emotional or vulnerable topics, or an inability to commit.

A person with healthy, secure attachment is able to experience and enjoy intimacy comfortably, but not at the cost of their own independence. They enjoy spending time with their partner and feel good about increasing intimacy with them as the relationship goes on, but also enjoy nights spent alone and pursuing their own interests outside the relationship.

Basic trust

At the root of all attachment struggles is the inability to trust that a connection will be safe — anxiously attached people often distrust that their partner will stay in the relationship and fear losing the connection, whereas avoidantly attached people tend to distrust that intimacy can be safe or a positive experience, fearing that their partner will hurt them or lash out against them. For many people, there’s some real-life context explaining these fears; trust issues can be hard to overcome. 

But one of the hallmarks of secure attachment is a foundation of basic trust in relationships. While even people with secure attachment will lose trust in someone if it’s violated repeatedly, they tend to approach relationships with the expectation that everyone in them is doing their best and is operating in good faith. This means they don’t assume their partner is cheating on them baselessly, fear that their partner will blow up at them cruelly when they’ve never raised their voice before, or require ceaseless reassurance about the status of the relationship.

Able to seek and offer support

Being able to rely on your partner for emotional and psychological support is a core part of a healthy romantic relationship. Our original attachment blueprints were formed in large party by whether or not we could consistently rely on our caregivers for care, safety and support as children; it makes sense that being able to do so in an adult relationship is a hallmark of mature secure attachment as well. 

Crucially, people with secure attachment are able to not only offer support and care to their partners, but are able to ask for it as well; the comfort with reciprocity is a big part of what differentiates secure attachment from anxious attachment, where care or comfort might be bid for repeatedly as a reassurance of the relationship’s stability, or avoidant attachment, where someone may not be comfortable enough being vulnerable with their partner to ask for support.

Functional relationship to conflict

Almost nobody enjoys conflict, but it also doesn’t need to be the end of the world. People with secure attachment experience conflict as a way to resolve disagreements or get needs met — one that can be challenging at times but is ultimately necessary and serves a purpose. They don’t experience conflict as so threatening and overwhelming that they would rather ghost than engage in any kind of difficult conversation, like an avoidantly attached person might. But securely attached people also don’t pick fights or use arguments as a protest behavior to capture their partner’s attention and focus (even if that attention is having a fight).

Successful relationships with others, romantic or otherwise

Having an avoidant or anxious attachment style doesn’t mean that your relationships are doomed or that you’re incapable of having fulfilling, healthy ones. (Having a particular attachment style doesn’t make you a good or bad person, or a good or bad partner!) 

But it’s also true that people with secure attachment can often be identified by the range of healthy, solid relationships across their life — strong friendships, healthy connections with coworkers, solid dynamics with family, and generally good rapport with others in their community. They also have a healthy perspective on these relationships, treating them as valuable and significant without centering their entire sense of self around them in a codependent way (or cutting and running from a relationship as soon as there’s conflict or difficulty).

Recommended Books:

Hold Me Tight

Attached

Attachment Theory in Practice

 

For More Articles Check Out These Recent Posts:

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