Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep – love

Adult attachment designates three main “attachment styles,” or manners in which people perceive and respond to intimacy in romantic relationships, which parallel those found in children:

Knowing about the attachment styles empowers people to harness their biology to work for them rather than against them.

People’s response to effective communication is always very telling. It either allows you to avoid getting involved in a dead-end relationship, as in Lauren and Ethan’s case, or it helps bring the relationship to a deeper level, as in Serge and Tina’s case.

Our memories are not like old books in the library, lying there dusty and unchanged; they are rather like a living, breathing entity. What we remember today of our past is in fact a product of editing and reshaping that occurs over the years whenever we recall that particular memory. In other words, our current experiences shape our view of our pas

they’re all employing techniques known as deactivating strategies. A deactivating strategy is any behavior or thought that is used to squelch intimacy. These strategies suppress our attachment system, the biological mechanism in our brains responsible for our desire to seek closeness with a preferred partner.

If you are avoidant, the first step, therefore, is to acknowledge your need for space—whether emotional or physical—when things get too close, and then learn how to communicate that need. Explain to your partner in advance that you need some time alone when you feel things getting too mushy and that it’s not a problem with him or her but rather you

“working model” is a phrase that describes our basic belief system when it comes to romantic relationships—what gets you going, what shuts you down, your attitudes and expectations. In short, what makes you tick in relationships.

people with a secure attachment style view their partners’ well-being as their responsibility. As long as they have reason to believe their partner is in some sort of trouble, they’ll continue to back him or her. Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver, in their book Attachment in Adulthood, show that people with a secure attachment style are more like

referred to as the strange situation test (the version described here is an abbreviated version of the test). Mary Ainsworth was fascinated by the way in which children’s exploratory drive—their ability to play and learn—could be aroused or stifled by their mother’s presence or departure. She found that having an attachment figure in the room was e