Part 1 of the Love Styles series. New here? Start with the Love Styles overview.
What if your past is quietly shaping every relationship you have right now? That’s the question at the heart of attachment theory, and in this series I want to give you the simplest possible overview of it from a Christian perspective. I’m not a counselor or a psychologist, but I’ve come to believe attachment theory is one of the best secular descriptions of what broke between Genesis 2 and 3: we were meant to be born as whole people into a perfect family, and instead every one of us is raised by imperfect people and grows up imperfect ourselves. That changes how love works.
The thermostat running your relationships
When I moved into a new office, it was always too hot or too cold. I’d adjust the thermostat right outside my door and nothing changed, because, as my boss eventually told me, that wasn’t the thermostat for my office. Mine was around the corner. That’s a picture of attachment theory. In an ideal relationship, the two people in it are the ones setting the temperature. But if we haven’t done the work to understand our past, the thermostat actually regulating our relationships today is often the one installed in us long ago. Put simply: the way you love today is how you were loved yesterday.
The experiment behind the theory
Attachment theory goes back to John Bowlby in the 1940s and 50s, and to his researcher Mary Ainsworth, who designed the “infant strange situation.” A caregiver and a young child enter an unfamiliar room full of toys; over a series of steps a stranger comes and goes, and the caregiver leaves and returns, while researchers watch how the child responds. A securely attached child uses the parent as a home base, checks in when a stranger appears, gets briefly distressed when the parent leaves, and settles again when they return. About half the children behaved roughly this way. The other half responded in ways that surprised the researchers, and that’s where the other attachment patterns come from.
The four love styles
Attachment splits first into secure and non-secure, and non-secure shows up in three forms:
Secure: Can give and receive love, manage conflict, and seek comfort when needed. The core belief is, “I’m safe with or without you.” I want you, but I don’t need your approval to know who I am.
Anxious: Clingy, fears abandonment, craves reassurance. The core belief is, “You’re going to leave me.” Love was real but unpredictable, like a slot machine that pays out just often enough to keep you gripping tighter.
Avoidant: Withdraws, prizes independence, avoids emotion. The core belief is, “You’re going to smother me.” Having been hurt or unmet, this person decides needs are safer handled alone, and closeness starts to feel like a threat.
Disorganized: Unpredictable, a constant push and pull, often rooted in trauma. The heartbreaking internal script is, “The person I love might hurt me,” so they reach for comfort and freeze an arm’s length away.
It’s a pattern, not a label
Here’s a correction to how attachment theory usually gets used online: you are not “an anxious person.” Attachment describes a relationship’s pattern, not a tag on your shirt. As Dan Siegel warns, turning it into an identity (“that’s just how I am”) excuses bad behavior and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most of us are secure in some relationships and non-secure in others. In fact, nearly everyone has at least one secure relationship, often with a dog. When your dog shreds a pillow, you’re annoyed, but you don’t decide the dog did it to hurt you, and you don’t give it the silent treatment for two days. Yet a spouse might say one wrong thing and get 48 hours of silence. The difference is that you’re securely attached to the dog: you see it, and yourself, clearly.
The good news
Non-secure patterns tend to create the very thing they fear, clinging can eventually push a partner away, producing the abandonment you dreaded. But attachment isn’t a life sentence. If the bad news is that the way you loved yesterday shaped you, the good news is this: the way you choose to love today is how you’ll love tomorrow. Your love style can genuinely change. That’s the whole hope of this series.
A great first step is to name your patterns. Take the free Love Styles assessment, it’s short, and the trick is to take it several times for different relationships (your spouse, a parent, even your most difficult relationship) to see where you’re secure and where you’re not. For the full picture, my book Love Styles is the simplest explanation of attachment theory from a Christian perspective.
Next in the series: what secure attachment actually looks like, and how to move toward it. Understanding your love style goes a long way toward changing the odds of your relationships.