By the last show Tim and Karen were leading the race. They almost won the big cash prize, but at the finish line they were beaten. When they were interviewed for the season finale, they were asked if in retrospect they’d do anything differently. Karen said: “I think we lost because I was too needy. Looking back I see that my behavior was a bit much. Many times I needed Tim to hold my hand during the race. I don’t know why it was so important to me. But I’ve learned a lesson from that and I’ve decided that I don’t need to be that way anymore. Why did I need to hold his hand so much? That was silly. I should have just kept my cool without needing this gesture from him.” Tim, for his part, said very little: “The race in no way resembled real life. It was the most intense experience I have ever had. During the race we didn’t even have time to be angry with each other. We just dashed from one task to the next.”

Both Karen and Tim neglected to mention an important fact: Tim got cold feet before a joint bungee-jump challenge and almost quit the race. Despite Karen’s encouragement and reassurance that she too would be jumping with him, he just wouldn’t do it. It reached the point that he took off all his gear and started walking away. Finally, he mustered the courage to take the challenge after all. Because of that particular hesitation they lost their lead.

Attachment theory teaches us that Karen’s basic assumption, that she can and should control her emotional needs and soothe herself in the face of stress, is simply wrong. She assumed that the problem was that she is too needy. But research findings support the exact opposite. Getting attached means that our brain becomes wired to seek the support of our partner by ensuring their psychological and physical proximity. If our partner fails to reassure us, we are programmed to continue our attempts to achieve closeness until they do. If Karen and Tim understood this, she would not feel ashamed of needing to hold his hand during the stress of a nationally televised race. For his part, Tim would have known that the simple gesture of holding Karen’s hand could give them the extra edge they needed to win. Indeed, if he knew that by responding to her need early on, he would have had to devote less time to “putting out fires” caused by her compounded distress later—he might have been inclined to hold her hand when he noticed that she was starting to get anxious, instead of waiting until she demanded it. What’s more, if Tim was able to accept Karen’s support more readily, he would probably have bungee jumped sooner.

Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet needs. When their emotional needs are met, and the earlier the better, they usually turn their attention outward. This is sometimes referred to in attachment literature as the “dependency paradox”: The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become. Karen and Tim were unaware of how to best use their emotional bond to their advantage in the race.

The erroneous belief that all people should be emotionally self-sufficient is not new. Not too long ago in Western society people believed that children would be happier if they were left to their own devices and taught to soothe themselves. Then attachment theory came along and turned these attitudes—at least toward children—around. In the 1940s experts warned that “coddling” would result in needy and insecure children who would become emotionally unhealthy and maladjusted adults. Parents were told not to lavish too much attention on their infants, to allow them to cry for hours and to train them to eat on a strict schedule. Children in hospitals were isolated from their parents and could only be visited through a glass window. Social workers would remove children from their homes and place them in foster care at the slightest sign of trouble.

The common belief was that a proper distance should be maintained between parents and their children, and that physical affection should be doled out sparingly. In Psychological Care of Infant and Child, a popular parenting book in the 1920s, John Broadus Watson warned against the dangers of “too much mother love” and dedicated the book “to the first mother who brings up a happy child.” Such a child would be an autonomous, fearless, self-reliant, adaptable, problem-solving being who does not cry unless physically hurt, is absorbed in work and play, and has no great attachments to any place or person.

Before the groundbreaking work of Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby, the founders of attachment theory in the fifties and sixties, psychologists had no appreciation of the importance of the bond between parent and child. A child’s attachment to her mother was seen as a by-product of the fact that she offered food and sustenance; the child learned to associate her mother with nourishment and sought her proximity as a result. Bowlby, however, observed that even infants who had all of their nutritional needs taken care of but lacked an attachment figure (such as infants raised in institutions or displaced during the Second World War) failed to develop normally. They showed stunted physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development. Ainsworth’s and Bowlby’s studies made it clear that the connection between infant and caretaker was as essential for the child’s survival as food and water.

Further studies by Hazan and Shaver and others corroborated these findings. The emotions, thought patterns, and behaviors automatically triggered in children in attachment situations appear similarly in adults. The difference is that adults are capable of a higher level of abstraction, so our need for the other person’s continuous physical presence can at times be temporarily replaced by the knowledge that they are available to us psychologically and emotionally. But the bottom line is that the need for intimate connection and the reassurance of our partner’s availability continues to play an important role throughout our lives.

Unfortunately, just as the importance of the parent-child bond was disregarded in the past, today the significance of adult attachment goes unappreciated. Among adults, the prevailing notion is still that too much dependence in a relationship is a bad thing.

The basic premise underlying this point of view is that the ideal relationship is one between two self-sufficient people who unite in a mature, respectful way while maintaining clear boundaries. If you develop a strong dependency on your partner, you are deficient in some way and are advised to work on yourself to become more “differentiated” and develop a “greater sense of self.” The worst possible scenario is that you will end up needing your partner, which is equated with “addiction” to him or her, and addiction, we all know, is a dangerous prospect.

While the teachings of the codependency movement remain immensely helpful in dealing with family members who suffer from substance abuse (as was the initial intention), they can be misleading and even damaging when applied indiscriminately to all relationships. Karen, whom we met earlier in the televised race, has been influenced by these schools of thought. But biology tells a very different story.

A study conducted by James Coan is particularly illuminating to that effect: Dr. James Coan is the director of the Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. He investigates the mechanisms through which close social relationships and broader social networks regulate our emotional responses. In this particular study, which he conducted in collaboration with Richard Davidson and Hillary Schaefer, he used functional MRI technology to scan the brains of married women. While these women were being scanned, Dr. Coan and his colleagues simulated a stressful situation by telling them that they were about to receive a very mild electric shock.

Normally, under stressful conditions the hypothalamus becomes activated. And indeed this is what happened in the experiment to the women when they were alone awaiting the shock—their hypothalamus lit up. Next, they tested the women who were holding a stranger’s hand while they waited. This time the scans showed somewhat reduced activity in the hypothalamus. And when the hand that the women held was their husband’s? The dip was much more dramatic—their stress was barely detectable. Furthermore, the women who benefited most from spousal hand-holding were those who reported the highest marital satisfaction—but we’ll get back to this point later.

The study demonstrates that when two people form an intimate relationship, they regulate each other’s psychological and emotional well-being. Their physical proximity and availability influence the stress response. How can we be expected to maintain a high level of differentiation between ourselves and our partners if our basic biology is influenced by them to such an extent?

It seems that Karen from our example instinctively understood the healing effect of holding her partner’s hand under stressful conditions. Unfortunately, she later gave in to common misconceptions and viewed her instinct as a weakness, something to be ashamed of.

Despite variations in the way people with different attachment styles learn to deal with these powerful forces—the secure and anxious types embrace them and the avoidants tend to suppress them—all three attachment styles are programmed to connect with a special someone. In fact, chapter 6 describes a series of experiments that demonstrate that avoidants have attachment needs but actively suppress them.

Then Kimmy’s mother is instructed to leave the room; she gets up and quietly walks out. The minute Kimmy realizes what has happened she becomes distraught. She crawls over to the door as quickly as she can, sobbing. She calls out to her mother and bangs on the door. The research assistant tries to interest Kimmy in a box full of colorful building blocks, but this only makes Kimmy more agitated and she throws one of the blocks in the research assistant’s face.

When her mother returns to the room after a short while, Kimmy rushes toward her on all fours and raises her arms to be held. The two embrace and Sarah calmly reassures her daughter. Kimmy hugs her mom tight and stops sobbing. Once she is at ease again, Kimmy’s interest in the toys reawakens and she resumes her play.

The experiment Sarah and Kimmy participated in is probably the most important study in the field of attachment theory—referred to as the strange situation test (the version described here is an abbreviated version of the test). Mary Ainsworth was fascinated by the way in which children’s exploratory drive—their ability to play and learn—could be aroused or stifled by their mother’s presence or departure.

She found that having an attachment figure in the room was enough to allow a child to go out into a previously unknown environment and explore with confidence. This presence is known as a secure base. It is the knowledge that you are backed by someone who is supportive and whom you can rely on with 100 percent certainty and turn to in times of need. A secure base is a prerequisite for a child’s ability to explore, develop, and learn.

Brooke Feeney, the director of the Carnegie Mellon University Relationship Lab, illustrates how a secure base works in adult relationships. Dr. Feeney is particularly interested in studying the way in which partners get and give support to each other and the factors that determine the quality of that support. In one of her studies, Dr. Feeney asked couples to discuss their personal goals and exploratory opportunities with one another in the lab. When participants felt that their goals were supported by their partner, they reported an increase in self-esteem and an elevated mood after the discussion. They also rated higher the likelihood of achieving their goals after the discussion than before it. Participants who felt that their partner was more intrusive and/or less supportive, on the other hand, were less open to discussing their goals, did not confidently examine ways for achieving those goals, and tended to downgrade their goals during the course of the discussion.

Back to Karen and Tim, our reality-TV-show couple: In many ways, their experience is a close adult equivalent to the strange situation test for children. Just as Karen needed Tim’s hand for encouragement and Tim gathered strength from Karen’s reassurance, Kimmy wanted her mother’s presence. Karen engaged in protest behavior (not agreeing to continue until he held her hand), just as Kimmy had done when she called out for her absent mother. Both needed the reassurance of their attachment figures before they could focus on other tasks. Only once their secure base was restored could they go back to other activities.

Other experiments have produced even more far-reaching results. Brian Baker, a psychiatrist and researcher at the University of Toronto, studies psychiatric aspects of heart disease and hypertension and, in particular, the way in which marital discord and job strain affect blood pressure. In one of his studies, Dr. Baker found that if you have a mild form of high blood pressure, being in a satisfying marriage is good for you; spending time in the presence of your partner actually benefits you by lowering your blood pressure to healthier levels. If, on the other hand, you are not satisfied with your marriage, contact with your partner will actually raise your blood pressure, which will remain elevated as long as you are in physical proximity! The implications of this study are profound: When our partner is unable to meet our basic attachment needs, we experience a chronic sense of disquiet and tension that leaves us more exposed to various ailments. Not only is our emotional well-being sacrificed when we are in a romantic partnership with someone who doesn’t provide a secure base, but so is our physical health.

It seems, then, that our partners powerfully affect our ability to thrive in the world. There is no way around that. Not only do they influence how we feel about ourselves but also the degree to which we believe in ourselves and whether we will attempt to achieve our hopes and dreams. Having a partner who fulfills our intrinsic attachment needs and feels comfortable acting as a secure base and safe haven can help us remain emotionally and physically healthier and live longer. Having a partner who is inconsistently available or supportive can be a truly demoralizing and debilitating experience that can literally stunt our growth and stymie our health. The rest of the book is about how to go about finding a partner who can become your secure base, becoming that kind of partner yourself, and helping your existing partner take on this life-altering role.

After the introduction, we invite you to “roll up your sleeves” and get straight to business by determining your own attachment style. This will allow you to home in on your unique relationship “DNA” or attachment style. Next you’ll learn how to identify the attachment styles of those around you. These are key chapters, the first steps in understanding your specific needs in relationships and who will be able (or unable) to meet those needs. We’ll guide you through this process step-by-step and then give you a chance to practice your new skills.

The next part discusses each attachment style in more detail. You’ll start to get a better feel for the inner workings of each style. You may experience these chapters as a true revelation as they allow you to see your own romantic experiences and the experiences of people around you in a fresh new light.

Part three comes with a big warning sign attached. You’ll learn the emotional price of connecting with someone who has drastically different intimacy needs from your own. We describe the specific problems of the anxious-avoidant trap and advise you on the cost of remaining in such a relationship. If you are already in such a bond and want to make it work, this part will guide you through the process. By uncovering the specific needs and vulnerabilities of each attachment style (your own and your partner’s), and following tips and specific interventions that are tailored to the anxious-avoidant connection, you will be able to bring the relationship to a more secure place. Should you decide to leave, we discuss the pitfalls you’ll encounter that may stop you from going through with it and offer some useful pointers on how to survive the pain of a breakup.

Finally, we tap into the mind-set of people with a secure attachment style. We reveal a method for getting your message across effectively to your date or partner. Using this skill will not only convey your needs clearly and from a place of strength and dignity, but it will also provide valuable information about your partner. The quality of his or her response will speak volumes. We also explore the five strategies used by people with a secure attachment style to resolve conflict, and offer a workshop through which you can practice these techniques, so that the next time a conflict comes along, you’ll be better prepared. These chapters are a lifeline for those of you who have an anxious or avoidant attachment style—they coach you on how to keep a relationship healthy and fulfilling. Even if you are secure, you may learn a few new tricks that will ultimately lead to an increase in your overall satisfaction level in relationships. These are universal skills that help secure people navigate the world around them more smoothly.

We hope that learning about the powerful force of attachment in your relationships and ways in which to harness it will make a significant difference in your life, as it has in ours.