21. A poem, a love, a lifetime 🕊️

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Hi friends,

Welcome to the twenty-first dispatch of How Humans Flourish, a research-informed newsletter on how humans thrive.

We’ve reached our last week reading Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love by authors Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, and I’m curious how you’ve found the insights. Feel free to respond to this email and let me know. I always love hearing from you, as your emails, questions, and musings are the true highlight of writing this newsletter. 

On my end, it’s been humbling having intimacy attachment styles on the brain while being deeply immersed in a season of loss. A few weeks ago my grandfather passed away at the wizened age of 93, and I must say, nothing illustrates the value of life more clearly than death. 

It may be morbid but I’ve often thought grief, in its own way, is a dialect of love, because more than anything, the depth and force of its pain shows in clear form what it means to be made undone by the loss of love. 

At his funeral, I watched my grandmother wail in ways poets of the old would call a lamentation of suffering. They’d been married for 70 years and in that church hall, her desolation was so palpable, so sweeping, so staggering, the room was imbued with the presence of her sorrow.

The profundity of a seven decades long romance is more than I can unpack in this newsletter, but it does speak vividly as to why attachment styles matter. Becoming attached to another means becoming wired to seek their support by ensuring their psychological and physical proximity.

There are three main attachment styles: Secure (50% of the population), Avoidant (25%), Anxious (20%), with the remaining 3-5% being both Anxious and Avoidant. 

Researcher Dr. Sue Johnson calls secure relationships a masterclass in effective dependency, characterized by availability, responsiveness, and emotional engagement. Heller and Dr. Levine write, “People with a secure attachment style are…programmed to expect their partners to be loving and responsive and don’t worry much about losing their partners’ love.” 

People with an avoidant attachment style, however, “feel a deep-rooted aloneness, even while in a relationship. Whereas people with a secure attachment style find it easy to accept their partners, flaws and all, to depend on them, and to believe that they’re special and unique—for avoidant people such a stance is a major life challenge. 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 maintain.” (Heller and Dr. Levine, pg. 47-48 - Kindle)

Approximately 70 to 75% of adults retain the same attachment style throughout their lives, while 25 to 30% experience changes. The change happens after experiencing powerful romantic relationships that alter our core beliefs about connection and can occur in both directions: secure individuals may become less secure, and insecure individuals may become more secure.

Interestingly enough, these classifications, “come from watching babies’ behavior. Attachment styles were first defined by researchers observing the way babies (usually 9 to 18 months old) behaved during the strange situation test (a reunion with a parent after a stressful separation). Some of their responses can also be detected in adults who share the same attachment style.

Anxious: This baby becomes extremely distressed when mommy leaves the room. When her mother returns, she reacts ambivalently—she is happy to see her but angry at the same time. She takes longer to calm down, and even when she does, it is only temporary. A few seconds later, she’ll angrily push mommy away, wriggle down, and burst into tears again. 

Secure: The secure baby is visibly distressed when mommy leaves the room. When mother returns, he is very happy and eager to greet her. Once in the safety of her presence, he is quick to be reassured, calm down, and resume play activity.

Avoidant: When mommy leaves the room, this baby acts as though nothing has happened. Upon her return, she remains unmoved, ignores her mom, and continues to play indifferently. But this façade doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact, inside, baby is neither calm nor collected. Researchers have found that these babies’ heart rates are actually just as elevated as other babies who express immense distress, and their cortisol levels—a stress hormone—are high.” (Heller and Dr. Levine, pg. 47-48 - Kindle)

Anxiously attached partners can be made secure over time if reassured often and wholeheartedly in the relationship. Avoidants, however, require a bit more work. As a recovering avoidant myself, it’s been critical to learn about deactivating strategies and how they trigger anxious and secure partners.

“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.” For example, “Focusing on small imperfections in your partner: the way they talk, dress, eat, or (fill in the blank) and allowing it to get in the way of your romantic feelings. Pining after an ex-partner—(the ‘phantom ex’)...” or fantasizing about a non-existent, perfect soul-mate. “Flirting with others—a hurtful way to introduce insecurity into the relationship. Not saying ‘I love you’—while implying that you do have feelings toward the other person. Pulling away when things are going well (e.g., not calling for several days after an intimate date). Forming relationships with an impossible future, such as with someone who is married. ‘Checking out mentally’ when your partner is talking to you. Keeping secrets and leaving things foggy—to maintain your feeling of independence. Avoiding physical closeness—e.g., not wanting to share the same bed, not wanting to have sex, walking several strides ahead of your partner.” (Heller and Dr. Levine, pg. 116-117 - Kindle) 

For those with an avoidant attachment style, it becomes important to know when a deactivating strategy is in effect.

“In one study, Mario Mikulincer, dean of the New School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and one of the leading researchers in the field of adult attachment, together with colleagues Victor Florian and Gilad Hirschberger, from the department of psychology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, asked couples to recount their daily experiences in a diary. They found that people with an avoidant attachment style rated their partner less positively than did non-avoidants. What’s more, they found they did so even on days in which their accounts of their partners’ behavior indicated supportiveness, warmth, and caring. Dr. Mikulincer explains that this pattern of behavior is driven by avoidants’ generally dismissive attitude toward connectedness. When something occurs that contradicts this perspective—such as their spouse behaving in a genuinely caring and loving manner—they are prone to ignoring the behavior, or diminishing its value.”  (Heller and Dr. Levine, pg. 120 - Kindle)

It’s not all doom and gloom for avoidants, however. Below I’ve included eight tips from the book avoidants can leverage to nurture togetherness. 

Ultimately, the goal for all of us is to become a safe haven for our loved ones–to be emotionally available, supporting and empowering, and to provide encouragement and acceptance. In the words of Professor Keating from Dead Poet’s Society, “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

With gratitude,

p.s. Heller and Dr. Levine lay out a few strategies for avoidantly attached partners interested in improving their game. They write, “On occasions when avoidants reach a low point in their life—because of severe loneliness, a life-altering experience, or a major accident—they can change their way of thinking. The following eight actions get avoidants one step closer to true intimacy, but most of these steps require, first and foremost, increasing self-awareness…The next and harder step requires identifying instances in which you employ these attitudes and behaviors, and then to embark on the voyage of change.

1. Learn to identify deactivating strategies.
   a.) Don’t act on your impulse. When you’re excited about someone but then suddenly have a gut feeling that they are not right for you, stop and think. Is this actually a deactivating strategy? Are all those small imperfections you’re starting to notice really your attachment system’s way of making you step back? Remind yourself that this picture is skewed and that you need intimacy despite your discomfort with it. If you thought they were great to begin with, you have a lot to lose by pushing them away.

2. De-emphasize self-reliance and focus on mutual support.
   b.) When your partner feels they have a secure base to fall back on (and doesn’t feel the need to work hard to get close), and when you don’t feel the need to distance yourself, you’ll both be better able to look outward and do your own thing. You’ll become more independent and your partner will be less needy.

3. Find a secure partner.
   c.) People with secure attachment styles tend to make their anxious and avoidant partners more secure as well. Someone with an anxious attachment style, however, will exacerbate your avoidance—often in a perpetual vicious cycle. Given a chance, we recommend you choose the secure route. You’ll experience less defensiveness, less fighting, and less anguish.

4. Be aware of your tendency to misinterpret behaviors.
   d.) Negative views of your partner’s behaviors and intentions infuse bad vibes into the relationship. Change this pattern! Recognize this tendency, notice when it happens, and look for a more plausible perspective. Remind yourself that this is your partner, you chose to be together, and that maybe you’re better off trusting that they do have your best interest at heart.

5. Make a relationship gratitude list.
   e.) Remind yourself on a daily basis that you tend to think negatively of your partner or date. It is simply part of your makeup if you have an avoidant attachment style. Your objective should be to notice the positive in your partner’s actions. This may not be an easy task, but with practice and perseverance, you’ll gradually get the hang of it. Take time every evening to think back on the events of the day. List at least one way your partner contributed, even in a minor way, to your well-being, and why you’re grateful they’re in your life.

6. Nix the phantom ex.
   f.) When you find yourself idealizing that one special ex-partner, stop and acknowledge that they are not (and never were) a viable option. By remembering how critical you were of that relationship—and how leery you were of committing—you can stop using them as a deactivating strategy and focus on someone new.

7. Forget about ‘the one.’
   g.) We don’t dispute the presence of soul mates in our world. On the contrary, we wholeheartedly believe in the soul mate experience. But it is our belief that you have to be an active part in the process. Don’t wait until ‘the one’ who fits your checklist shows up and then expect everything to fall into place. Make them into your soul mate by choosing them out of the crowd, allowing them to get close and making them a special part of you.

8. Adopt the distraction strategy.
   h.) As an avoidant, it’s easier to get close to your partner if there’s a distraction. Focusing on other things—taking a hike, going sailing, or preparing a meal together—will allow you to let your guard down and make it easier to access your loving feelings. Use this little trick to promote closeness in your time together.” (Heller and Dr. Levine, pg. 127-130 - Kindle)