Single and Securely Attached
People who stay single aren’t avoiding closeness
“Single people — they are insecurely attached, right?” “Don’t they have an avoidant attachment style?”
I’ve been studying single people for decades, and variations of those questions come up over and over again. People with just a passing interest in psychology seem sure that single people have “issues” with attachment. Alarmingly, so do some mental health professionals.
As I will explain, research casts considerable doubt on that disparaging view of single people. But how did so many people become so sure that people who are single are insecure? The answer to that question explains a lot.
At the end of this article, I’ll tell you about two very different ways of thinking about sources of comfort and security. One asks whether there may be advantages to turning to different people in different situations rather than looking to the same one person all the time. The other asks whether you can be your own source of comfort and security.
First, though, a word about what scholars mean when they talk about attachment.
What Is Attachment?
At first, attachment scholars were interested in the bond between an infant and the infant’s mother. Only in the last…
