Then she met David, whom she fell for very quickly. David, an aspiring actor, turned out to be bad news. He gave her mixed signals about wanting to be together, and this really unnerved Emily. It changed her behavior until she appeared to have completely destabilized. We used to run together around the reservoir in Central Park, and she would bring both her work pager and cell phone with her (and in those days cell phones were relatively big and heavy!). She would alternate checking first the one and then the other every few minutes just to see if he had called. At work she would spend hours tracking David’s activities on the then-novel Internet, creating a false Internet persona and chatting him up in the chat rooms he frequented. In short, she became obsessed.

Her analyst could not make sense of this horrible transformation in his most promising candidate. From a resilient, together person, Emily began to change into someone with “masochistic borderline personality traits.” It now seemed that analysis would take many years.

To demonstrate how sensitive the attachment system of people with an anxious attachment style is, a study from Chris Fraley’s lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—he is the same researcher who designed the ECR-R attachment styles inventory—in collaboration with Paula Niedenthal from Blaise Pascal University in Clermont-Ferrand, France, found a unique way of measuring the vigilance to social cues of the anxious attachment style. They used a “morph movie” technique—a computerized movie in which a face initially displays a specific emotional expression (e.g., anger) and gradually evolves into one displaying a neutral expression. Participants were asked to stop the movie at the frame at which they believed the original emotion had dissipated. They found that people with an anxious attachment style were more likely to perceive the offset of emotion earlier than other people. Also, when the task was reversed—starting with a neutral face and gradually moving to a pronounced expression—more anxious individuals perceived the onset of the emotion earlier. These findings suggest that people with an anxious attachment style are indeed more vigilant to changes in others’ emotional expression and can have a higher degree of accuracy and sensitivity to other people’s cues. However, this finding comes with a caveat. The study showed that people with an anxious attachment style tend to jump to conclusions very quickly, and when they do, they tend to misinterpret people’s emotional state. Only when the experiment was designed in such a way that anxious participants had to wait a little longer—they couldn’t react immediately when they spotted a change, but had to wait a little longer—and get more information before making a judgment did they have an advantage over other participants. This is an important lesson for someone with an anxious attachment style: If you just wait a little longer before reacting and jumping to conclusions, you will have an uncanny ability to decipher the world around you and use it to your advantage. But shoot from the hip, and you’re all over the place making misjudgments and hurting yourself.

Once activated, they are often consumed with thoughts that have a single purpose: to reestablish closeness with their partner. These thoughts are called activating strategies.

Activating strategies are any thoughts or feelings that compel you to get close, physically or emotionally, to your partner. Once he or she responds to you in a way that reestablishes security, you can revert back to your calm, normal self.

Now Emily no longer finds herself stuck in the danger zone. Her husband is loving, caring, and most important, available. She is still very aware, however, of the powerful force of an activated attachment system. Were she ever to enter another relationship with someone who wasn’t consistently available, she would most likely revert back to her old “obsessed” self. The thought that something like that could happen again sends chills down her spine.

Ryan, who has an anxious attachment style, has a sixth sense for attachment-related cues; he is very much in tune with the small details related to his girlfriend’s availability: He paid attention to how many times the phone rang before going to voice-mail. He correctly concluded that Shauna hit the “ignore” button and then turned off her phone, cues that might have gone unnoticed by someone with a different attachment style. He was especially sensitive because he was used to having Shauna three offices down from his, and this was his first trip with his new firm.

Notice that if you feel unsettled in a relationship situation, all that is required is a minimal reassurance from your partner—one text message in Shauna’s case—to get back on track. But if you don’t get that reassurance, your worries about the relationship will quadruple, and it will take a lot more than a simple text to calm your attachment system. This is a very important insight for anyone in a relationship. The more attuned you are to your partner’s needs at the early stages—and he or she to yours—the less energy you will need to expend attending to him or her later.

In fact, had Shauna not reacted as she had, Ryan would have continued to find it hard to concentrate at work (activating strategies), and would probably have either acted distant or exploded on the phone (protest behavior) when she eventually did call. All of which would have been very destructive for the relationship.

Protest behavior and activating strategies can cause you to act in ways that are harmful to the relationship. It is very important to learn to recognize them when they happen. (In chapter 8, you’ll find the relationship inventory, which is designed to help you identify your protest behaviors and find more constructive ways of handling difficult situations.) These behaviors and strategies can also continue long after your partner is gone. This is part of what heartache is all about—the longing for someone who is no longer available to us when our biological and emotional makeup is programmed to try to win them back. Even if your rational mind knows you shouldn’t be with this person, your attachment system doesn’t always comply. The process of attachment follows its own course and its own schedule. This means you will continue to think about the other person and will be unable to push them out of your mind for a very long time.

It turns out that people with anxious attachment styles are particularly susceptible to falling into a chronically activated attachment system situation. A study conducted by Omri Gillath, Silvia Bunge, and Carter Wendelken, together with two prominent attachment researchers, Phillip Shaver and Mario Mikulincer, found fascinating evidence for this. Using fMRI technology, they asked twenty women to think about—and then stop thinking about—various relationship scenarios. Intriguingly, they found that when women with an anxious attachment style thought about negative scenarios (conflict, breakup, death of partner), emotion-related areas of the brain became “lit up” to a greater degree than in women with other attachment styles. What’s more, they found that regions of the brain associated with emotional regulation, such as the orbitofrontal cortex, were less activated than in woman with other attachment styles. In other words, the brains of people with an anxious attachment style react more strongly to thoughts of loss and at the same time under-recruit regions normally used to down-regulate negative emotions. This means that once your attachment system is activated, you will find it much harder to “turn it off” if you have an anxious attachment style.

We’ve divided our guidance for people with an anxious attachment style into two separate routes—the first is for those of you who are unattached. Finding a secure partner in the first place is the best option available for you if you are single. It can work like magic to prevent hardship before it even starts—but going secure might be trickier than you think. The rest of this chapter is dedicated to directing singles with an anxious attachment style toward a secure partner, avoiding pitfalls on the way. The second route is for anyone who has an anxious attachment style—both those currently in a relationship and those who are still on the lookout for the right partner. It entails reshaping your attachment working models—basically rethinking your attitudes and beliefs about relationships from an attachment perspective—as a segue toward retooling yourself with more secure relationship skills. Parts Three and Four are dedicated to this second group.

Pietromonaco and Carnelley believe that these attachment styles actually complement each other in a way. Each reaffirms the other’s beliefs about themselves and about relationships. The avoidants’ defensive self-perception that they are strong and independent is confirmed, as is the belief that others want to pull them into more closeness than they are comfortable with. The anxious types find that their perception of wanting more intimacy than their partner can provide is confirmed, as is their anticipation of ultimately being let down by significant others. So, in a way, each style is drawn to reenact a familiar script over and over again.

If you’ve been at it for a while, you become programmed to get attracted to those very individuals who are least likely to make you happy. Having a perpetually activated attachment system is the opposite of what nature had in mind for us in terms of gratifying love. As we’ve seen, one of Bowlby and Ainsworth’s most important insights is that in order to thrive and grow as human beings, we need a secure base from which to derive strength and comfort. For that to happen, our attachment system must be calm and secure.

Remember, an activated attachment system is not passionate love. Next time you date someone and find yourself feeling anxious, insecure, and obsessive—only to feel elated every once in a while—tell yourself this is most likely an activated attachment system and not love! True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind. “Still waters run deep” is a good way of characterizing it.

When you meet someone new, the probability that they have an avoidant attachment style is high—much higher than their relative size in the population—25 percent. Not only are they recycled back into the dating pool more quickly, but they are not dating one another (at least not for long), nor are they dating secure people, that much because secures are less available. Who are they meeting? That’s right: You and other potential partners with an anxious attachment style.

Not quite. Chloe met him once and was utterly uninterested. She conceded that he was very handsome and even attractive, but “the spark was missing.” At the time, Rachel was dumbfounded. She didn’t understand why she was turning him down.

In hindsight, we do understand: If you are anxious, the reverse of what happens when you meet someone avoidant happens when you meet someone secure. The messages that come across from someone secure are very honest, straightforward, and consistent. Secures are not afraid of intimacy and know they are worthy of love. They don’t have to beat around the bush or play hard to get. Ambiguous messages are out of the mix, as are tension and suspense. As a result, your attachment system remains relatively calm. Because you are used to equating an activated attachment system with love, you conclude that this can’t be “the one” because no bells are going off. You associate a calm attachment system with boredom and indifference. Because of this fallacy you might let the perfect partner pass you by.

Chloe had to go through terrible hardship because she assumed an activated attachment system was a prerequisite for love. Tony, who eventually became her husband, seemed confident and intriguing at first, but he never missed a chance to put her down.

Luckily, both Trevor’s and Chloe’s stories have happy endings. Trevor did not stay available for long. He quickly found a great partner and they have been together ever since. They traveled around the world, got married, and had a couple of kids. He is a wonderful father and husband. Chloe had a harder time, but after several years of agony with Tony, she got her act together and learned to appreciate the stability and love of a secure partner. She divorced Tony and later met Bruce, who is as loving and caring as Trevor.

Anyone can have a happy ending like that. It’s not entirely up to chance. The trick is not to get hooked on the highs and lows and mistake an activated attachment system for passion or love. Don’t let emotional unavailability turn you on.

Another problem is that if this type of game playing is only an act for you, it’s going to backfire in the long run. First, your avoidant partner will quickly catch on to you—they are good at detecting people who want to impinge on their autonomy. Second, eventually you’ll think it’s time to let your true colors show. After all, what you really want is to reach a high degree of intimacy, to spend a lot of quality time together, to be able to let down your guard. But you’ll find that when you do so, your avoidant partner will suddenly get cold feet and start to disengage. Either way, you lose, because you are attracting the wrong kind of partner for you.

Do we recommend that you do all the pursuing, fulfill your partner’s every wish, and call incessantly? Definitely not. We suggest a completely different approach. It stems from the understanding that you—given your anxious attachment style—have certain clear needs in a relationship. If those needs are not met, you cannot be truly happy. The key to finding a mate who can fulfill those needs is to first fully acknowledge your need for intimacy, availability, and security in a relationship—and to believe that they are legitimate. They aren’t good or bad, they are simply your needs. Don’t let people make you feel guilty for acting “needy” or “dependent.” Don’t be ashamed of feeling incomplete when you’re not in a relationship, or for wanting to be close to your partner and to depend on him.

Next, use this knowledge. Start assessing people you date on the basis of their ability to meet those needs. Instead of thinking how you can change yourself in order to please your partner, as so many relationship books advise, think: Can this person provide what I need in order to be happy?

The second step is to recognize and rule out people with an avoidant attachment style early on. This is where our questionnaire for deciphering the style of others comes in handy. But there are also other ways to tell whether you’ve met someone avoidant. Arthur Conan Doyle coined the term “smoking gun” in one of his Sherlock Holmes detective novels. A smoking gun has since become a reference for an object or a fact that serves as conclusive evidence of not just a crime but any type of undeniable proof. We like to call any signal or message that is highly indicative of avoidance a smoking gun:

As you’ll see in the next section, effective communication is an excellent tool for disarming these smoking guns.

The next step is to start expressing your needs. Most anxious people easily fall into the trap that relationship books—and society at large—set for them. They feel that they are too demanding and needy and so they try to accommodate their partner’s need for distance and boundaries (if they’re involved with someone avoidant). It’s simply more socially acceptable to maintain a cool, self-sufficient façade. So they hide their wishes and mask their discontent. In actuality, you are missing out when you do so, because by expressing those needs you achieve two goals. First, you are being your authentic self, which has been found to contribute to our general feelings of happiness and fulfillment, and being happy and fulfilled is probably one of the most attractive traits you can offer a partner. Second and no less important, once you are your authentic self, if your partner is incapable of meeting your genuine needs, you can determine that early on. Not everyone has relationship needs compatible with your own, and that’s fine. Let them find someone else who wants to be kept at arm’s length, and you can go about finding someone who will make you happy.

What do we mean by “being your authentic self ” and “expressing your needs”? Amir’s patient Janet can illustrate this point well. At 28, she had been going out with Brian for more than a year when he decided to end the relationship. He wasn’t ready to get serious and needed his space. She was absolutely devastated and couldn’t stop thinking about him for many months. She wouldn’t even consider dating anyone else because she still felt so connected to him. Six months later, as though in answer to her prayers, Brian called her and wanted to get back together again. Of course Janet was elated. A couple of weeks into the renewed relationship, Amir asked her how it was going. She said that they were taking things very slow and she was letting him set the pace, as she had in the past. She knew he was afraid of commitment, and she didn’t want to scare him away again.

Amir strongly suggested that instead of falling into the same pattern that Brian set the first time, this time she should make her wishes absolutely clear. After all, he was the one who wanted to get back together, and he had to prove he had changed and was worthy of her love. Amir suggested spelling things out point-blank, as in “I love you very much; I need to know that you are there for me all the time. I want to know I can talk to you every day and not just when it’s convenient for you. I don’t want to have to cover up my wish to spend time with you for fear of driving you away.”

But Janet believed that if she held out long enough, giving him his space and plenty of time, he would learn to appreciate her. That if she played it cool and self-assured, he would be more attracted to her. Perhaps not surprisingly, Janet’s relationship with Brian slowly deteriorated until it finally fizzled out completely. He called less and less, continued to do as he wished without taking her well-being into account, and finally disappeared without even a real break-up talk. If Janet had let her authentic self shine through and used effective communication to voice her feelings and needs, she would have ended the sad ordeal much earlier, knowing she had given it her best shot but that Brian was simply incapable of providing what she needed. Or else Brian would have understood from day one that if he was serious about getting back together, he was going to have to rise to the occasion and take Janet’s needs into account. He would know exactly what was expected of him, no guesswork required.

(For more about how to voice your authentic self using effective communication, see chapter 11.)

As we discussed earlier in the chapter, there are a disproportionate number of avoidants in the dating pool. Another useful step for successfully maneuvering through the pool is what we call the abundance (or “plenty of fish in the sea”) philosophy—understanding that there are many unique and wonderful individuals out there who may be superb partners for you. Try giving several people a chance, without settling on one person very early on, making sure to give a wide berth to those with potential smoking guns.

This calls for a crucial change in your anxious thinking. You tend to assume that meeting someone suitable is an unlikely occurrence, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are many charming, intelligent people out there who can make you happy, but there are also many who are not right for you. The only way to make sure that you meet potential soul mates is to go out with a lot of people. It’s a simple law of probability—the more you meet, the greater the chances you’ll find the one who is a good match for you.

But it’s much more than just a probability issue. If you have an anxious attachment style, you tend to get attached very quickly, even just on the basis of physical attraction. One night of sex or even just a passionate kiss and, boom, you already can’t get that person out of your mind. As you know, once your attachment system is activated, you begin to crave the other person’s closeness and will do anything in your power to make it work even before you really get to know him/her and decide whether you like that person or not! If you are seeing only him/her, the result is that at a very early stage you lose your ability to judge whether he or she is really right for you.

By using the abundance philosophy, you maintain your ability to evaluate potential partners more objectively. What you are actually doing is desensitizing your attachment system and tricking it into being easier on you. Your system will no longer get so easily activated by one person because it will be busy evaluating the availability of a lot of different people, and you won’t be as likely to obsess about anyone in particular. You can quickly rule out people if they make you feel insecure or inadequate, because you haven’t built all your hopes on them. Why would you waste time with someone who is unkind to you when you have several other potential partners lined up who treat you like royalty?

When you’re seeing several people—which has become very feasible in the Internet and Facebook age—it also becomes easier to make your needs and wishes clear; you’re not afraid that by doing so you’ll chase away a rare prospect; you don’t have to tiptoe around or hide your true feelings. This allows you to see whether someone is able to meet your needs before you reach the point of no return.

Nicky, 31, was an extreme case for whom this approach to dating worked like magic. Nicky was attractive, social, and witty, yet she rarely made it past the first few days or weeks of a relationship. She had a highly anxious attachment style; she craved intimacy and closeness but was so convinced that she would never meet anyone that being alone had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In romantic situations, she was very sensitive and got easily hurt and would act defensively, not returning phone calls and remaining silent (using protest behavior) until the relationship would reach a dead end. Later she would torment herself by turning things over and over in her mind (an activating strategy). It would be very difficult for her to let go and move on. Also, by keeping silent and not calling, Nicky seemed to attract a string of avoidant men who felt more comfortable with the lack of communication. But Nicky was not happy.

Finally, at our suggestion, she told all her friends to keep an eye out for potential prospects and also signed up for several online dating services. She started meeting lots of new people, thereby increasing her odds of meeting the right man—a secure man. Dating many people and not having time to get too anxious over any one particular prospect brought about a change in her attitude. Whereas before, she saw every man that she met and liked (and she was picky) as her last chance to find happiness, now prospects were plentiful. It’s not that she didn’t experience disappointments; some men didn’t even get past the first date for one reason or another. But what did change were her anxious thought patterns—her working model for relationships:

But the abundance philosophy loses its effectiveness if you fail to recognize a keeper when you find one. Once you’ve recognized someone you’ve met as secure, remember not to make impulsive decisions about whether s/he is right for you. Remind yourself that you might feel bored at first—after all, there is less drama when your attachment system isn’t activated. Give it some time. Chances are, if you are anxious, you will automatically interpret calmness in the relationship as a lack of attraction. A habit of years is not easy to shed. But if you hold out a little longer, you may start to appreciate a calm attachment system and all the advantages it has to offer.