Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find--and Keep-- Love

Instead, you will begin to see that you are partners suffering from past hurts and also partners in the project of helping each other create safety in your relationship and respond to each other’s needs. This way, you both can experience the sensations of feeling fully alive and joyful connecting. You are allies on this journey, not competitors. Yo

Secure, Anxious, and Avoidant. Basically, secure people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving; anxious people crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationships, and tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back; avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to mi

If you’re avoidant, you connect with romantic partners but always maintain some mental distance and an escape route. Feeling close and complete with someone else—the emotional equivalent of finding a home—is a condition that you find difficult to accept.

When couples disagree about the degree of closeness and intimacy desired in a relationship, the issue eventually threatens to dominate all of their dialogue. We call this situation the “anxious-avoidant trap,” because like a trap, you fall into it with no awareness, and like a trap, once you’re caught, it’s hard to break free.