Attachment theory has its flaws. But it can still help make your relationship stronger

In 2010, Amir Levine and Rachel Heller released the book Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find – and Keep – Love. Despite the book’s many strengths, it has also received its share of criticisms.

Some believe it comes down too hard on avoidantly attached individuals and does not show enough empathy and understanding for them. Others say it’s not always helpful to conceptualize feelings and behaviors into rigid categories. Envisioning them as more of a spectrum not only captures nuance but also gives people space to breathe and the motivation to change.

Related:

Insecurely attached couples are not doomed to fail. Here’s how to make your love last a lifetime

Security is a climate created by two people and can flourish when both are ready to work for it.

But while there is no one size fits all approach to human relationships, there remain many benefits to examining one’s self through the lens of attachment theory.

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So let’s explore those criticisms a little bit more.

It feels somewhat reductive

Labels can be helpful templates. Adopting one can provide belonging, help people feel less alone and connect us to necessary resources and larger community. Power exists in group identification.

As Esmé Weijun Wan writes in The Collected Schizophrenias, “Some people dislike diagnoses, disagreeably calling them boxes and labels, but [I’ve always found comfort in preexisting conditions]. I like to know that I’m not pioneering an inexplicable experience.”

They may also come with the implicit understanding that you don’t necessarily check every single box that defines it.

And yet labels can also be polarizing. Some people feel reduced and stigmatized by them. At times, they can, ironically, complicate the journey to arriving at the real root of the issue.

As physician Mark Hyman put it: “These descriptions (in the DSM) tell us nothing at all about why those symptoms occur, or how people with exactly the same symptoms may have them for many different underlying reasons and need different and individualized treatment as a result.”

Applied specifically to attachment theory The New York Times explained, “Self-identifying as an anxious attachment type or an avoidant attachment type, or labeling someone else — those words become insurmountable. You’re creating these barriers of: I can’t get out of this.”

It’s primarily in stigma-free climates that people feel safe enough to acknowledge and confront their issues. It’s within them that they feel freer to become their better selves.

It puts too much emphasis on early experiences.

We’re shaped by so much more than our families. Our friendships, acquaintances, teachers, messages from the larger culture, and even one-time traumatic encounters all contribute to our way of relating to the world and our ability to trust. The pattern of people we date can further reinforce a certain type of attachment style.

People may struggle with attachment difficulties despite having had what they consider to be a secure upbringing. Maybe you entered a marriage mostly secure, with a highly traumatized, unhealed insecure partner. Maybe over the years, that dynamic chipped away at some of your security, so you now lean more anxious or avoidant but don’t understand why.

PIVOT Relationship Coaching wrote that going through a divorce as an adult “can affect your attachment style and cause issues in any one of the four forms of attachment.”

The authors acknowledged, “Even individuals who are certain of themselves and fall into the secure attachment categories can develop difficulties with trusting others, become emotionally unavailable, at least for a time, suffer from low self-esteem, experience discomfort in future relationships, and become less able to adequately regulate their emotions.”

It offers little hope for anxious and avoidants to heal together

Some have argued the book establishes an almost God-like power and fails to account for potential growth between two insecure types.

According to the New York Times, “One of the primary knocks against the book, from its critics: Its view toward intimacy issues is often tilted at finding partners who suit one’s own attachment style — either one that matches, or someone with a secure attachment style — rather than mending relationships between two conflicting attachment styles, which the book dedicates some real estate to, but not a ton.”

Though it’s difficult work, anxious and avoidants can move towards security with each other inside a partnership. They can grow with each other by recognizing that security is a climate created by two people, that it can flourish when both are on board and when both wholeheartedly believe that what you put in affects what you get out.

When the chemistry, values, and interests are strong, each partner can find ways to resolve their past pain and forge a healing connection.

Counselor Casey Tanner, who goes by the handle @queersextherapy on Instagram, is one example of a person whose relationship involved such growth. She acknowledges that her and her partner’s attachment styles ebb and flow, but that she is “solidly the more anxious one” while her partner leans somewhat more avoidant.

Still, the two have mutual empathy and continually strive to work within an awareness of the other’s respective style. Having learned the language of the other’s attachment makes them less likely to misinterpret one another.

It lacks compassion for those with avoidant attachment

I recall how years ago, my parting hug with a woman I dated (who had avoidant tendencies) was one of the most emotional I’ve shared with anyone. I could feel it in her body how much she cared. It really brought home for me how nuanced avoidance and emotional unavailability can be.

The book suggests that avoidantly attached individuals don’t care as deeply as their anxious partners. Yet it’s not always a clear-cut case of this person is 100 percent shut down and doesn’t care. It can also be a case of, this person might deeply fear what they also deeply want.

Many avoidantly attached individuals experience deep pain and distress about their relationships. They just may not show it in the same way that their anxiously attached counterparts do.

Authors of the book now acknowledge this shortcoming. According to the New York Times, “[Levine] even conceded what he would do differently if he wrote it now, which is to emphasize the need for empathy toward avoidant attachment styles, who suffer as much (if not, in many ways, more so) than those with anxious attachment styles. Their instinctive aversion to intimacy can translate to more broken relationships with people they genuinely love, and thus, more loneliness, despite deeply desiring companionship.”

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In short, humans are infinitely complex, often too complex to be summed up by a single label or diagnosis.

We are the way we are due to a number of reasons; some distinct and unrelated, others interlocking and overlapping. The full journey to self-comprehension requires shining light on all of those pieces, as well as how they interact — the totality of which exceeds what one theory can account for.

But though attachment theory can’t explain everything, it can still function as an immensely helpful framework. Take and apply what you see fit.