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

over 50 percent are secure, around 20 percent are anxious, 25 percent are avoidant, and the remaining 3 to 5 percent fall into the fourth, less common category (combination anxious and avoidant).

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

Studies have found that the same areas in the brain that light up in imaging scans when we break a leg are activated when we split up with our mate. As part of a reaction to a breakup, our brain experiences the departure of an attachment figure in a similar way to that in which it registers physical pain.

If you’re secure, you’re very reliable, consistent, and trustworthy. You don’t try to dodge intimacy or go nuts over your relationships.

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.

Before the groundbreaking work of Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby, the founders of attachment theory in the fifties and sixties, psychologists had no appreciation of the importance of the bond between parent and child.

People with a secure attachment style, like Stan, are characterized by something very real but not outwardly visible—they are programmed to expect their partners to be loving and responsive and don’t worry much about losing their partners’ love.

Dr. Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) has demonstrated through her clinical work and writings that creating true security in the relationship and recognizing that you are emotionally dependent on your partner on every level is the best way to improve your romantic bond.

Studies have found that avoidants are unlikely to be in a relationship with other avoidants, because they lack the emotional glue to stay together. In fact, one study that looked at dating couples didn’t find even one pair that was avoidant-avoidant. Conclusion: Avoidants don’t date each other; they are more likely to date people with different att