Attachment theory overview
Adult attachment describes how you handle closeness, trust and reassurance in relationships. Researchers measure it on two dimensions, and your scores on both place you in one of four styles.
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Attachment anxiety is how much you worry about rejection and whether a partner really cares. Attachment avoidance is how uncomfortable you are with closeness and with depending on others. Low or high on each gives four combinations.
| Style | Anxiety | Avoidance | In short |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secure | Low | Low | Low anxiety, low avoidance |
| Anxious (preoccupied) | High | Low | High anxiety, low avoidance |
| Dismissive-avoidant | Low | High | Low anxiety, high avoidance |
| Fearful-avoidant | High | High | High anxiety, high avoidance |
What a secure attachment style looks like in adult relationships: low anxiety, low avoidance, clear communication, and how people move toward earned security.
You tend to trust that people who love you will stay, and you are comfortable both depending on others and being depended on.
The anxious (preoccupied) attachment style in relationships: why attachment anxiety happens, common signs and triggers, and communication ideas that help.
You value closeness and are willing to depend on others, but you often worry about whether you are loved as much as you love. Delays, mixed signals or a partner's low mood can feel like evidence that something is wrong.
The dismissive-avoidant attachment style: why closeness can feel like pressure, common deactivating strategies, and how to build comfortable intimacy.
You are rarely worried about rejection, but closeness can feel like pressure. You value self-reliance and often prefer to handle feelings and problems on your own.
What fearful-avoidant (disorganized) attachment means in adults: why you crave closeness yet fear it, push-pull relationship patterns, and conversation ideas.
You want closeness and fear losing it, but you also find closeness hard to trust. Relationships can swing between pursuing a partner and pulling away from them.
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth first described attachment between infants and caregivers. In 1987, Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver showed that adults relate to romantic partners in similar patterns. Later questionnaires, such as the Experiences in Close Relationships scales, measure adult attachment on the anxiety and avoidance dimensions used here.
The best-known mismatch is an anxious partner with an avoidant one, where one reaches for closeness and the other pulls back. Read about the pursue–withdraw cycle → For conversation prompts and the limits of a quiz, see communication and support.
Guides summarize these frameworks for self-reflection and conversation. They are not clinical advice.
Secure (low anxiety, low avoidance), anxious or preoccupied (high anxiety, low avoidance), dismissive-avoidant (low anxiety, high avoidance) and fearful-avoidant (high anxiety, high avoidance).
Attachment theory began with John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth's work on infants and caregivers. Hazan and Shaver (1987) applied it to adult romantic relationships, and later researchers measured it on two dimensions: anxiety and avoidance.
Disorganized attachment is a classification from research on children and from interview methods. In adult self-report models, the closest pattern is fearful-avoidant, but the two are not interchangeable.
Yes. Attachment patterns are fairly stable but respond to experience: consistent, responsive relationships, reflection and therapy can all move people toward security.