Love, Attachment Styles & Relationships
Relationships are where we do our most important and most difficult work.
They are where our oldest wounds tend to surface. Where the strategies we developed to survive our earliest experiences get played out, often without us realising it. Where we can feel most alive and most afraid, sometimes simultaneously.
If you find yourself repeating the same patterns across different relationships, struggling to feel secure even when things are going well, shutting down when conflict arises, or swinging between craving closeness and pushing people away, this is not evidence that you are bad at relationships. It is usually evidence that something earlier is still running in the background.
If you have already figured that out, if you have read the books, done the journaling, understand your patterns with impressive clarity and still cannot seem to change them, you are not alone. You are not failing. You are just bumping up against the limits of what insight alone can do.
More on that soon.
What is Attachment theory?
Attachment theory was developed by psychologist John Bowlby and later expanded by Mary Ainsworth. At its heart it is a simple idea. The way we learned to connect with our earliest caregivers shapes how we connect with everyone who comes after them.
As children we needed our caregivers to be consistently available, responsive and safe. When they were, we developed a secure attachment. We learned that relationships were a source of comfort, that it was safe to need people, and that we could explore the world knowing we had a secure base to return to.
When caregivers were inconsistent, unavailable, frightening, or simply not attuned to our needs, we developed strategies to cope. Those strategies became our attachment style. They followed us into adulthood, and they tend to show up most vividly in our closest relationships.
The four attachment styles
Secure attachment People with a secure attachment style tend to feel comfortable with intimacy and interdependence. They can communicate their needs, tolerate conflict without catastrophising, and trust that relationships can survive difficulty. This is the goal, not the starting point for everyone.
Anxious attachment People with an anxious attachment style tend to crave closeness but worry constantly about losing it. They may be hypervigilant to signs of rejection, seek reassurance frequently, and find it difficult to self soothe when the relationship feels uncertain. Underneath the anxiety is usually a deep longing to feel truly secure with another person.
Avoidant attachment People with an avoidant attachment style learned early that needing others was unsafe or unlikely to be met. They tend to value independence, feel uncomfortable with too much closeness, and withdraw when relationships become emotionally intense. This is not coldness. It is protection.
Disorganised attachment People with a disorganised attachment style often experienced their caregiver as both a source of comfort and a source of fear. As a result they can feel deeply conflicted in relationships, simultaneously wanting closeness and being terrified of it. This style is most commonly associated with early trauma or loss.
Want to understand your attachment style?
A good starting point is taking a quiz. These won't replace the deeper work, but they can give you a useful framework and language for what you might already be noticing in yourself and your relationships.
The Attachment Project Quiz:
How I work with love, attachment and relationships at The Integration Space
Relationship patterns are among the most complex things we work with in therapy. They are shaped by biology, early experience, nervous system wiring, protective parts, body held memory, and the deeply human need to be seen and loved. No single therapeutic approach reaches all of that.
This is why I work integratively. The research and my clinical experience both point to the same thing: different layers of relational pain require different tools to reach them. Talking helps. But it does not reach the body. Insight helps. But it does not shift the nervous system. Parts work helps. But sometimes the wound is held too deep for words.
What follows is how each modality contributes to the work, and why together they create something that none of them could achieve alone.
EMDR: Processing what the past left behind
Many of our relationship responses are not really about the present moment. They are the nervous system replaying something older. Attachment informed EMDR allows us to go directly to those early relational experiences and process them at the level where they are actually stored, helping the brain and nervous system complete what got interrupted. Over time, the past starts to feel like the past, and the automatic responses that have been hijacking your relationships begin to loosen their grip.
Brainspotting: Reaching what words cannot
Some of the deepest attachment wounds do not have a clear memory attached to them. They are a chronic felt sense. The persistent background hum of not being quite safe with people. The bone deep belief that you are too much, or not enough, or that love always comes with a condition. Brainspotting works directly with that level of the nervous system, accessing and processing what has been held there, often for decades.
Internal Family Systems: Working with the parts that protect you from love
Most of what blocks genuine intimacy is not a lack of desire for it. It is a collection of protective parts that learned, at some point, that opening up was dangerous. IFS gives us a way to approach these parts with curiosity rather than frustration. When they feel understood and safe enough to soften, the more vulnerable parts underneath finally get a chance to be seen. Often for the first time.
Somatic approaches: Teaching the body something new
Lasting change in relationships does not just require the mind to understand something new. It requires the body to feel something new. Safety. Warmth. The genuine experience of being with another person without needing to brace. Somatic work makes this possible, and it is woven through everything I do.
The Gottman research: Understanding what makes relationships work
John Gottman spent decades studying what pulls relationships apart and what holds them together. His research identified four communication patterns most predictive of relationship breakdown, which he called the Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. He also found that what healthy relationships do instead is build a foundation of deep friendship, trust, shared meaning, and the ability to repair after conflict.
I trained in Gottman couples therapy and while I now work with individuals rather than couples, that research base is embedded in how I understand relationships and what I listen for in our work together.
Why integration matters
Each of these approaches reaches a different layer. Used together, they create conditions that insight alone cannot produce. A nervous system that begins to genuinely feel safe enough to open. To receive. To stay present with another person without bracing for what comes next.
That is where real change in relationships becomes possible. Not just understanding your patterns, but finally being free of them.
Further watching
If you want to understand attachment and relationships at a deeper level, this talk by Alain de Botton of The School of Life is one of the most honest and thought provoking things you will watch on the subject.
De Botton argues that most of us are drawn to partners not because they are right for us, but because they feel familiar. That the patterns we formed in childhood quietly shape who we fall for, what we tolerate, and why we keep ending up in the same place.
It is not a comfortable watch. But it is an illuminating one, and for many people it is the beginning of understanding why their relationships have unfolded the way they have.
This work might be for you if:
You find yourself repeating the same relationship patterns no matter who you are with
You struggle to feel secure even in relationships that are going well
You shut down or become overwhelmed during conflict
You give a great deal in relationships but find it hard to receive
You want to understand your attachment style and where it came from
You are navigating a relationship where you and your partner seem to bring out the worst in each other despite genuinely caring
You have read all the books and still feel stuck
You want to show up differently in the relationships that matter most to you
Your next chapter starts here
You don’t have to keep carrying this alone. If you’re ready to go deeper, heal what’s been holding you back and finally feel like yourself again - I’d be honoured to be part of your journey.