How to Change Your Attachment Style

We’re wired for attachment — why babies cry when separated from their mothers. Depending especially upon our mother’s behavior, as well as later experiences and other factors, we develop a style of attaching that affects our behavior in close relationships.

Fortunately, most people have a secure attachment, because it favors survival. It ensures that we’re safe and can help each other in a dangerous environment. The anxiety we feel when we don’t know the whereabouts of our child or of a missing loved one during a disaster, as in the movie “The Impossible,” isn’t codependent. It’s normal. Frantic calls and searching are considered “protest behavior,” like a baby fretting for its mother.

Attachment Styles

We seek or avoid intimacy along a continuum, but one of the following three styles is generally predominant whether we’re dating or in a long term marriage:

Secure — 50 percent of the population
Anxious — 20 percent of the population
Avoidant — 25 percent of the population

Combinations, such as Secure-Anxious or Anxious-Avoidant are 3–5 percent of the population.

Among singles, statistically there are more avoiders, since people with a secure attachment are more likely to be in a relationship…