'Attached': Can a book make you a better partner?

I was a horrible dater. Turns out, all I needed was for a therapist to move in and observe me quietly — then hand me the right book

If, five years ago, I had heard myself say the words ‘This book changed my life’, I’d have given myself a good slap. But the more I think about it, the more that sentence is accurate. I have read approximately one self-help book in my entire life, but it feels like it was the only one I needed.

I always felt I was bad at dating. I’d often avoid getting intimate with someone, self-sabotage a relationship in the early days if it felt too precarious, or else the guy would end things with me for being ‘too much’ in some way or another. Too many feelings, too many needs. I had no patience to sit back and let things develop organically; I wanted to know weeks in whether they were in or out. (There’s a great Dawn French interview where she says she’s too no-nonsense for dating. She says she wants to just hand men a tick list, primary-school-style, saying: Do you A) Want to go out with me? B) Just be friends?… that was very me.)

In short, men made me feel needy, and I hated that, so after a few years, I essentially steered clear of men — or at least situations where I’d have to get close to one.

I am now in a pretty healthy relationship, and not feeling particularly needy. So what changed?

Well, it was simple really. First, a qualified therapist moved in with me and my friend Tom (I can’t help you with that part). She worked in a different area of therapy than relationships, but had studied a lot of psychology and had plenty of therapy herself. This new housemate unobtrusively watched me date for several months, in the normal way any housemate would — getting the post-date post-mortems, having heart-to-hearts on the sofa. I noticed that she seemed generally open and positive to new relationships; she could pretty much make it work with anyone.

Then, at the tail end of the pandemic travel restrictions, as I was about to head off on a solo Greek island-hopping trip, she offered me a book to read. It was called Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love. From anyone else, this might have felt judgemental, but given her professional background and her overall gentle nature, it felt more like a tailored gift. No pressure. Take it or leave it.

So, on that trip — with no dinner companion and lots of ferries to kill time on — I read the book. It delves into the theory of relationship attachment styles: the authors posit that there are three (Secure, Avoidant, Anxious) and map out descriptions, typical scenarios and quizzes to help you identify yours. Readers are usually a combination of two types; I was a high percentage anxious, with a decent dose of secure.

In broad terms with absolutely zero nuance, anxious daters are the ones who tend to overly worry about every move, step and comment in a relationship: they are sensitive to the mood changing and fear the inevitable end of things. (Partner having a stressful week at work and quieter than usual? They obviously hate you and want to break up!) Avoidant daters, broadly speaking, are put off by the restrictive nature of relationships, and tend to avoid intimacy or shut things down at the point a partner needs more structure from them. Secure types — which allegedly make up the biggest group, but where the hell were they my entire 20s — do not have negative associations with intimacy and commitment, and tend to jump in more wholeheartedly. They are not easily triggered by little things happening along the way.

(If all of this seems like overthinking to you, and you’ve never had to worry much about how your behaviour and communication could affect a romantic connection: congratulations! You are secure and probably don’t need to pay £7.99 for this book.)

One of the things Attached gets you to do is draw out a chart, write the names of all your exes in the left-hand column. (Pleasingly, the authors acknowledge that these don’t have to be years-long relationships; flings or short-term connections that impacted you in a substantial way are all valid). They have you break down negative scenarios or recurring rows that drove you apart; how you behaved and what that behaviour represented (using the terminology you’ve learned so far about your attachment style). Obviously, to do this, you have to be able to be somewhat critical of yourself. Was it really just them, or did you have a hand in the meltdown?

I found this equal parts horrifying and fascinating. Though I’d have said each of those relationships was wildly different, in fact I had an identical, recurring pattern. I’d be driven mad by the lack of clarity, fail to ask for any, then do a runner before they could. Or I’d drive them away by being erratic and causing fights. Those who lasted longest were the most secure partners, who weren’t thrown off by my anxious behaviour; those connections which blew up within weeks were the avoidants (oh god, so many avoidants), who I was both drawn to and wildly incompatible with. Worst of all, it seemed I’d gotten used to the rollercoaster of an anxious-avoidant dynamic, and now identified secure men as too safe, or boring.

-Sidebar-

I have a theory about avoidants in London. Having done the, ahem, field work, I suspect that there is a much higher concentration of avoidant daters in London (and all big cities) than elsewhere. In London, most of the secure people you meet settled down relatively young - they met someone, didn’t fight it, things moved on harmoniously. So what’s left on Tinder et al is all the anxious and avoidant daters — a huge pool of these polar opposites whose approaches to love are horribly incompatible. I would estimate that 90% of the people I was drawn to pre-book were avoidant. There seems to be something that goes hand-in-hand with being avoidant and being high achieving, moving to the big city and staying single. I’d suggest it’s where we get that feeling of “all the good ones are taken” from: the men already in relationships may not the ‘good’ ones, but instead the secure ones, with fewer negative associations to commitment. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I remember one conversation as a typical three-month relationship ended, where the guy said: “I think you’re very oversensitive.” Snapping back, I said: “I think you’re incredibly insensitive!” And that, my friends, is a 10-word play about what happens when an anxious attachment style meets an avoidant attachment style.

What I loved about this book is that it’s written by academics in the field of social psychology and psychiatry, so it isn’t an emotional, Oprah-like ego massage. It’s crisp, unfluffy science — it lays out the theory of each attachment style, the urges and behaviours you might experience, and emphatically does not judge you for yours. Instead, it equips you with tools. If you’re anxious, you might need to catch yourself in the act of “activation” (when something your partner does triggers your nervous system — what someone unkind might call overreacting). You might need to ask your partner to reassure you in certain ways. If you can do that, you shouldn’t experience the same roller-coaster you did, time and again, when dating an avoidant person. If you tend to clam up or walk away from confrontations, maybe you’re not “toxic”. Maybe you’re just avoidant, and could work on becoming more secure.

I felt strangely empowered and accepted, even having to wear the rather unsexy badge of “anxious”. When I got back on the dating scene, I not only went in being clear to people that I liked strong, regular communication and might sometimes react irrationally if things went quiet — in my opinion, this wasn’t just a childhood-formed attachment style. It was based on experience: lots of let-downs will make you a pessimist. As well as outlining my needs, I also found myself prioritising secure men. I’d give people more chances or make more of an effort to see them if they displayed secure characteristics than if they seemed avoidant.

Whether attachment theory is the be-all-and-end-all or not, this book fed into a new era of relationships for me, the era entitled ‘Ask for What You Need’. Don’t assume you’re a flawed person whose flaws are ultimately going to wreck each romance. Know what those issues are, and go in ready to tackle them. For anxious folks, that’s equal parts learning to soothe yourself when you’re ‘activated’, and asking your partner to be the most reassuring they can be. Granted, an avoidant who hasn’t addressed their own patterns may still run from you. You may still feel like too much for them. But — as this book clarifies — if it was never going to work anyway, that’s a good thing.

Whatever the science behind this book, it helped me put into words what I was feeling and where I was going wrong, and form a game plan for doing things better. That game plan is working out for me. And in that sense, yes — this book changed my life.

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