Choose to Love Your Friends Based on Your Attachment Style [Quiz]

You might have heard of attachment style about romantic relationships, but how could your attachment style relate to your relationships with friends?

What Are Attachment Styles?

The distinction of “attachment styles” might automatically bring some feelings of burden, as the word attachment implies vulnerability and “need.” But attachment style is precisely that, a style. Think about your dressing style ten years ago. How would you compare it to now? Has it evolved, or changed with the times, trends, maybe the weather you live in?

Four Attachment Styles

A person may find that they fall into any of these categories at different periods in their life as they undergo psychological development and evolution.

• Secure: You feel at ease with intimacy, not threatened by the rejection of preoccupied. Comfortable with codependency.
• Avoidant: You tend to function low on anxiousness, avoidant of closeness, and prefer freedom. You have trouble with requests for deeper intimacy.
• Anxious: Often, you’re craving intimacy, but this gives you high anxiety. You’re reluctant to get close despite wanting to. You fear abandonment.
• Disorganized: Your attachment style is often a combination of both avoidant and anxious styles.

Don’t Feel Attached to Your Style

Attachment style relevant to friendship can reveal information about ourselves that others might not necessarily recognize, let alone be able to point out to us. We all show love differently, and the way we show love tends to be a product of the emotional experiences we have previously had with those close to us.

While the labeling of an attachment style can feel brash and permanent, it’s important to remember that while somewhat ingrained, it can change if one chooses to change it. It’s like a behavior change request you give yourself, and what’s more empowering than that?

If you feel like your attachment style doesn’t reflect the kind of person, friend, or partner you want to be, you’re only some self-work away from getting to where you desire.