Secure

What this style is

Low attachment anxiety and low avoidance. You can get close without losing yourself, and you can have space without reading it as rejection.

A pattern in which a person is generally comfortable with both closeness and independence, can ask for support, and can offer it. Most people in studies fall here, and people can move toward security over time through experiences and relationships.

Where it comes from In Bowlby's terms, your internal working model is that you are worth caring for and that other people are, on the whole, reliable. In Bartholomew and Horowitz's model that is a positive view of self and a positive view of others. It usually grows from care that was consistent enough, but it is also built later: research calls this earned security.

Words to know

Anxious attachment

in plain language: fear of abandonment, need for reassurance, protest behaviour, and why it isn't the same as being "crazy."

Attachment styles

The four attachment styles in plain language: secure, anxious, dismissive-avoidant and fearful-avoidant, and why researchers call them dimensions.

Attachment theory

explained plainly: where it came from (Bowlby, Ainsworth), what it says about adult love, and where online use stretches it.

Not sure this is you?

36 statements about how you tend to feel and act in close romantic relationships. Takes about 8 minutes. You get two scores, anxiety and avoidance, and where they place you among the four adult…

Take the style quiz