Attachment Style Quiz

HOW DO YOU LOVE? The Attachment Style Quiz

Understand Your Relationship Attachment Style

I’m so happy that you’re interested in learning more about your attachment style! As a marriage counselor, I work with couples and individuals frequently to help them better understand their attachment style and how it impacts their relationships. I believe that this knowledge will help you make happier and healthier choices in your personal and love life. 

Before you jump into taking the attachment style quiz, first understand relationship attachment styles and how they impact your results in life and love. Then your attachment style test results will be meaningful and helpful to you as you seek to grow and evolve within yourself and in your relationships.

“All the statistics don’t matter. What matters is knowing what you need and being able to really follow that and stick to that.”

Where does our attachment style come from? Our childhood affects us in more ways than we imagine. Because everyone is raised differently, we all have varying styles of connecting with others, communicating, and seeking emotional fulfillment. While your experiences in your family of origin can certainly set the stage for your attachment style, your early-life friendships and your first romantic relationships can impact the way you relate to others too. Knowing our needs in terms of approval and attention — and understanding how others are seeking to relate to you — is crucial, if you want to maintain a healthy and secure long-term relationship.

In this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast, you’ll learn about different attachment styles, how they impact the way you relate to others, and how to figure out the attachment styles of people you’re in relationship with. 

You’ll also have the opportunity to take an attachment style quiz to better understand your own way of relating, through this relationship attachment style test.  

We all have different ways of relating to other people — are you curious about yours?

Tune in to this episode to learn how our attachment styles affect our relationships. Then get the attachment style quiz emailed to you so that you can take the relationship attachment style test and learn about yourself, and where your growth areas are.

On This Episode: 

1. Discover what an attachment style is and its different types.
2. Learn how we develop our personal attachment style and how it affects our relationships.
3. Get awareness about your patterns in relationships.
4. Receive tips for how to avoid emotionally unavailable partners.
5. Then, get the attachment style quiz to learn about the early experiences that shaped YOUR patterns.

What Is Attachment Style?

• Attachment styles refer to how we’re organized around relating and how our primary caregiver related to us as a child.
  • This comes from our early childhood, from the moment we are born to five years of age.
• There are four attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.

Secure Attachment Style

• Secure attachment means your primary caregiver was emotionally responsive as you were growing up.
• They also mirrored your feelings, which allowed you to understand your own emotions.
• Having a secure attachment style allows an individual to develop emotional intelligence and empathy.

Anxious Attachment Style

• Anxious attachment means your nervous system is often on high alert. You also have a tendency to put a lot of time and energy into relationships.
• This can stem from inconsistent parenting, wherein you sometimes received emotional attunement and sometimes did not. It can also happen when you’ve had negative experiences in other relationships — particularly when your trust has been broken.
• Anxiously attached people often worry about abandonment and can be jealous.
• They frequently question their relationships and have general distrust of their partners.

Avoidant & Disorganized Attachment Style

• Avoidant attachment stems from either neglect in terms of emotional attunement or engulfment and invasion of boundaries.
• This makes an individual self-reliant and self-regulatory when it comes to their needs in relationships.
• Disorganized attachment is a combination of both anxious and avoidant. Growing up, your primary caregivers were a source of panic and fear, as well as love.

Attachment Styles in Relationships

• Most people have a combination of all four, with two styles being predominant.
• Romantic relationships in adolescence and adulthood can also change or reinforce your attachment styles.
• People with anxious and avoidant styles have such different needs. When these two are in a relationship, it could trigger a cycle of pushing each other away. 
• You can become more secure in relationships by doing deep, healing work on yourself.

Why Understanding Attachment Styles is SO Important When You’re Dating

Some relationships can feel challenging from the start, when two people are coming together with very different needs and hopes for the relationship. For example, if someone with a more anxious attachment style is in a new relationship with someone who tends to be avoidant, a push-pull dynamic will quickly ensue. 

The more anxiously attached person will often experience their partner as being uncaring or distant, which increases their anxiety. Likewise, their avoidant partner will have difficulty in meeting their emotional needs and having compassion for them, and instead, will often experience them as being clingy, unreasonable, or demanding.

A much better pairing for someone who has a more anxious attachment style is a securely attached partner, who is better able to be emotionally responsive to them. Furthermore, a securely attached individual will be better able to tolerate an avoidantly attached individual’s desire for space, and difficulty with communicating.

“He is not everything on your list if he doesn’t want a relationship.”

How to Identify Attachment Styles Early

• To find a secure relationship that meets your needs, ask yourself first what you feel when you’re with this person and when you’re not.
• Because of Hollywood, people are looking for excitement in a relationship. However, the person who excites you can trigger your childhood wounds and trauma.
• Be with someone who makes you feel safe, peaceful, and calm.
• There are little moments where we bypass the red flags that we should pay attention to.

Things to Be Aware of on the First Date

• Pay attention to how they treat waiters and talk about their exes, parents, and childhood.
• Listen to what the person says they want in their love life right now. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to change their mind.
• Understand if the other person is ready for a serious relationship and wants to invest their energy in you.
• Keep your eyes and ears open and your blinders off.

How to Develop Security in Your Attachment Style

• The basis of being secure is knowing your own value and worth.
• We all want to be met. But when you are coming from a place of self-love and self-worth, it becomes easy to say no to the wrong fit and yes to the right fit.
• For people with anxious or avoidant attachment, having guidance and support helps you feel secure and let love into your life.

Understanding Your Own Attachment Style: Take the Attachment Style Quiz!

When you’re ready to take this to the next level, text “ATTACH” to 55444 in order to get your copy of the attachment style quiz, and deepen your understanding of your patterns in relationships. Note: this is not a “here’s-your-score,” superficial type of quiz, but rather an attachment style assessment that can help you uncover the early experiences that shaped you, and how your attachment style is impacting your relationships now. 

Disclaimer: This attachment style quiz invites you to consider early experiences, for the purpose of gaining self awareness. It may be most helpful for you to do this attachment style assessment under the direction of a great therapist or relationship coach who can help you use this activity as a part of your longer-term personal growth work. Self-awareness is often the first step of targeted work in shifting and changing old patterns, particularly when it comes to attachment styles.

5 Powerful Quotes from This Episode

“Something that I think is really significant that people don’t talk about as much as well is that in your adulthood, you have these different romantic relationships, and they can really impact your attachment style.”

“All the statistics don’t matter. What matters is knowing what you need and being able to really follow that and stick to that.”

“He is not everything on your list if he doesn’t want a relationship.”

“I think just listening, like just really keeping your eyes and ears open and not your blinders on. I think you have these blinders, which, again, are usually from our childhood.”

Healthy Attachment Mantra: “I can give and receive love freely, but I’m only going to do it with someone who is at my level of what I’m able to give and receive.”

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Have any questions? You can contact me through our website or find me on Instagram or Facebook. You may also reach out to us and inquire about online therapy and life coaching. Growing Self is also on Instagram and Facebook.

Thanks for listening! 

To finding love, happiness, and success,
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby