Building Secure Attachment with Your Partner

Many couples come to therapy because they want to learn how to communicate better, manage conflict more effectively, or find a way to increase connection. They expect to be given tools and strategies and an understanding of how to improve their relationship. While this is all necessary and important, most couples don't realize the deeper need to understand attachment theory and how it impacts communication, conflict, and connection. We are going to dive into why attachment matters, specifically secure attachment, how to understand the difference between secure and insecure attachment, and how to build it. Let’s dive in!

At the root of most of our relationship challenges is attachment. If we can change how we attach to our partner and move into secure attachment, we can begin to shift out of the communication issues, the conflict cycle we have, and the intimacy challenges that show up in our partnership. Attachment develops from the minute we are born and continues to be shaped by the emotional experiences we have, traumas we endure, and beliefs we have about ourselves. We bundle these together and use them to help us navigate relationships. The issue is that these experiences tend to create self-protection for ourselves and can impact the closeness, vulnerability, and connection we have with our partners. These self-protections worked and helped us survive in ways, but they are not always needed and they can become a blocker to having a secure attachment.

The are four styles of attachment and we like to simplify it by focusing on secure versus insecure attachment. All of us develop insecure attachments as we grow up–we didn’t have perfect parents, we got hurt intentionally and unintentionally, we had experiences that were out of our control and shaped how we think, believe, and feel about ourselves, and more. Because of this, it means we show up in dating and building relationships with our insecure dynamics even if we desperately want to have secure attachments. 

Some ways you know you are showing up in a relationship with insecure attachment are (keep in mind there are more ways than this):

• Keeping the perks of who you are high and your costs low

• Withdrawing and shutting down because you feel like you are too much or this is too good to be true.

• Being sensitive to changes in tone/mood/emotions in your partner and becoming a chameleon to stay connected to them

• You perform for love or you test for love

• It feels unsafe to depend on or rely on someone else

• You have doubts you are fully lovable, good enough, or deserving of being someone's top priority.

• You fear rejection or feel you must be perfect

• You wrestle with a lot of shame and/or shame others 

• You take too much accountability for faults or hold others with a high level of accountability for their faults

• Have little compassion for yourself or others

• You feel powerless in the relationship or helpless

• You can be rigid, defensive, and critical

• Vulnerability feels scary

• You believe compatibility is something you have or you don’t

• You believe if a relationship is too much work it just isn’t meant to be

We want you to have compassion if you see yourself in any of those examples listed above. You are not alone in feeling any of those or identifying with them. The good news is that when you have awareness of how you learned to attach to someone and how you show up in relationships you are taking the first step towards building a secure attachment with your partner. 

Building secure attachment is important because it helps shape our relationship resilience, satisfaction, connection, and intimacy. When we have secure attachment in our relationship, we feel safe, we feel seen, we have a high level of trust and confidence, we repair and heal when there is conflict, and we know we can rely and depend on our partners through the good and the bad of life. 

Thanks to the research on neuroplasticity we can rewire how we attach to our partner. If you are insecurely attached, you can change your attachment to secure with your partner. You have to be consistent and accountable to yourself and your partner to do this rewiring process in your brain. We repeat what is familiar and what we know which means you have to learn a new way of engaging, thinking, and feeling to help you develop secure attachment. 

A key part of creating a secure attachment is that we have to do it in a relationship with someone else. We are wounded in relationships and we are healed in relationships. You need to start first with the awareness which is a goal of this blog post. The awareness comes from understanding what you learned about love and connection growing up and what was modeled by your partners, what you experienced in other relationships that may have shaped your view on love and connection, the trauma and emotional experiences you have had, and the meaning/stories that came from it, and how you view yourself. If you are in a relationship, you also need to have awareness of your partner's experience of all that’s listed above.

Once you have awareness, you then move into compassion for yourself and what you adapted to in order to survive and find connection AND compassion for your partner and what they adapted to. Compassion fights against the shame we may have and it opens the door for change and growth. 

From here we move to accountability towards yourself and your partner. Accountability is where we start to take action and change our attachments. You become accountable to be a safe person for your partner and yourself–someone who is gentle, curious, open, empathetic, understanding, and vulnerable. You become a partner focused on building trust and healing past hurts. You tune into your partner's emotional needs and share your own. You show up emotionally with your partner and invite them to be emotional with you, and so much more. 

To tie it all together, you also must have a growth mindset. You have to believe that you can change and grow, that you are not stuck doing the same thing over and over again, and you desire to keep improving who you are and your relationship. Both you and your partner must have a growth mindset to build a secure attachment. 

Awareness+Compassion+Accountability+Growth Mindset=Building Secure Attachment

The journey of building secure attachment can be beautiful and it takes grit to do it. If you want a relationship that stands out, looks different from the norm, and feels deeply intimate, you need to take the steps above to begin the process of creating a secure attachment in your relationship. I can say for myself that I thought I had a secure attachment with my husband and while we didn’t have a bad relationship, we were not as secure as I thought. My insecure attachment styles were sneaky and swift and I didn’t even see they were happening until I started digging into attachment theory and neuroplasticity. I am on the journey of rewiring my attachment style in my marriage and you can too. You deserve to have an amazing relationship that allows you to feel safe and seen, that is vulnerable and open, and that desires growth together. I am cheering you on!!

If you want to dive deeper into this work, reach out today to schedule a free consult and learn more about our process of helping couples rewire their attachment together!

Building Secure Attachment with Your Partner