The 4 Attachment Styles: Which One Are You?
Understanding your attachment style is the first step to building healthier, more fulfilling relationships. Discover your pattern and learn how to create lasting connection.
Explore the Attachment Styles
Avoidant Attachment Style
Learn signs, causes, and healing steps for Avoidant Attachment style, plus traits, relationship patterns, and repair tips.
Anxious Attachment Style
Learn signs, causes, and healing steps for Anxious Attachment style, plus traits, relationship patterns, and repair tips.
Fearful Avoidant Attachment Style
Learn signs, causes, and healing steps for Fearful Avoidant Attachment style, plus traits, relationship patterns, and repair tips.
Dismissive Avoidant Attachment Style
Learn signs, causes, and healing steps for Dismissive Avoidant Attachment style, plus traits, relationship patterns, and repair tips.
Anxious Avoidant Attachment Style
Learn signs, causes, and healing steps for Anxious Avoidant Attachment style, plus traits, relationship patterns, and repair tips.
Anxious Preoccupied Attachment Style
Learn signs, causes, and healing steps for Anxious Preoccupied Attachment style, plus traits, relationship patterns, and repair tips.
Secure Attachment Style
Learn signs, causes, and healing steps for Secure Attachment style, plus traits, relationship patterns, and repair tips.
Disorganized Attachment Style
Learn signs, causes, and healing steps for Disorganized Attachment style, plus traits, relationship patterns, and repair tips.
What Is Attachment Theory?
Attachment theory, developed by psychologist John Bowlby and later expanded by Mary Ainsworth, explains how our early bonds with caregivers shape our patterns of relating throughout life.
The quality of care we received as infants—whether consistent and responsive, or unpredictable and dismissive—creates mental models for how we expect relationships to work. These models, called “attachment styles,” influence everything from how we handle conflict to how comfortable we are with intimacy.
Researchers have identified four main attachment styles: Secure, Anxious (also called Anxious-Preoccupied), Avoidant (including Dismissive-Avoidant and Fearful-Avoidant), and Disorganized.
The good news? Attachment styles aren't fixed. With awareness and effort, anyone can develop “earned secure attachment” and build healthier relationship patterns.