Attachment style compatibility research finds that the two least compatible personality types are the anxious and avoidant. A person who is avoidant wants to avoid getting too attached to the other person. Around one in four people has an avoidant attachment style.
Most attachment specialists believe that the disorganized attachment style is the most difficult of the three insecure attachment styles to treat because it incorporates both the anxious and the avoidant styles.
Anxious and avoidant relationships are considered unhealthy or insecure attachments. They can often lead to relationships that cause you great anxiety, distress, or emotional pain. Alternatively, you can also form attachments to objects. These attachment objects can play a role in how safe you feel.
Insecure attachment is an umbrella term to describe all attachment styles that are not secure attachment style. The three types of insecure attachment are anxious, avoidant, and fearful-avoidant, which are also known in children as ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized.
Avoidant Attachment: less likely to fall in love and more likely to engage in casual sex. Adults with an avoidant attachment style typically have a deactivated attachment system. Avoidant individuals do not seek proximity and intimacy, avoid the display of emotions, and appear distant and cold.
Some studies showed that differences in attachment styles seem to influence both the frequency and the patterns of jealousy expression: individuals with the preoccupied or fearful-avoidant attachment styles more often become jealous and consider rivals as more threatening than those with the secure attachment style [9, ...
The Russell study on infidelity
As I pointed out earlier, previous studies on dating couples had showed that the anxiously attached were least likely to be unfaithful and the avoidantly attached the most. Among these married couples, however, the anxiously attached were the most likely to cheat on their partners.
Attachment style compatibility research finds that the two least compatible personality types are the anxious and avoidant. A person who is avoidant wants to avoid getting too attached to the other person. Around one in four people has an avoidant attachment style.
Fearful-Avoidant, aka Disorganized Attachment
The fearful-avoidant attachment style is the rarest, and "develops when the child's caregivers — the only source of safety — become a source of fear," according to the Attachment Project, an attachment style education site.
Individuals with an anxious attachment style are characterized with: Being clingy. Having an intensely persistent and hypervigilant alertness towards their partner's actions or inactions.
Both avoidant and anxious attachment are both insecure types of attachment. Just over 50% of people are securely attached to their partner. The securely attached are the least likely to be unfaithful as they do not worry about their partner straying or the strength of the relationship.
Individuals high in anxious attachment are more likely to engage in emotional manipulation and other harmful behaviors intended to prevent a partner from leaving the relationship, which in turn is linked to reduced relationship satisfaction, according to new research published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.
AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIP PATTERNS
People with an avoidant attachment style can come across as selfish, appearing to put their own needs in front of their partner's needs.
Narcissists have insecure attachment styles that are either avoidant or anxious, or some combination. People with insecure attachment styles feel a basic insecurity stemming from relationships with early caregivers.
The most common attachment style was secure attachment style, which can be a positive prognostic factor in medical students, helping them to manage stress.
Adults with an anxious/preoccupied attachment style might think highly of others but often suffer from low self-esteem. These individuals are sensitive and attuned to their partners' needs, but are often insecure and anxious about their own worth in a relationship.
There are four principles of attachment theory - secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganized attachment. People with an anxious attachment style are more likely to struggle with self-doubt, fall in love quickly and carry a strong fear that their partner will leave them.
It is possible that other studies will show that single people, on the average, are more likely to have an avoidant attachment style or an anxious style — or that coupled people are! What is highly unlikely to happen is for some study to find that most single people have attachment issues.
Although it is a spectrum of four styles, common parlance refers to only three: anxious, avoidant and secure. Studies show that people who are securely attached have the healthiest relationships, and it's the type that everyone should strive for.
The anxiously attached person craves more connection and closeness and feels triggered by the avoidant person pulling away. Meanwhile the avoidant person feels triggered by the anxious person's desire for closeness because they themselves value their independence and freedom and fear being consumed.
Conflict avoidance: Most people with this attachment style are conflict-averse. They may shut down or end a close relationship at the first sign of conflict. Suppressing emotions: Dismissive avoidant people tend to conceal their feelings.
About Gaslighting
People with an anxious/preoccupied style of attachment, who worry and fret about signs and signals that they're about to be left or betrayed, present ideal candidates for gaslighting.
Anxious attachment is what is most often referred to as codependent. Those with anxious attachment often feel as though they would like to be close to others or one person in particular but they worry that another person may not want to be close to them. They struggle with feeling inferior, never good enough.
A securely attached person might be the ideal match for someone with an anxious attachment style. They're able to understand their partner's needs and therefore can help to regulate their partner's emotions.