I Have Secure Attachment. So Why Do My Partner and I Still Fight?

Key Takeaways:

• Secure attachment doesn't mean you don't feel distress, it means you're able to be soothed when you reach out.

• If you and your partner keep having the same fight, the issue is often the cycle you're both stuck in, not your attachment style itself.

• Understanding the negative cycle, a core concept in Emotionally Focused Therapy, is often the missing piece for couples who look secure on paper but keep butting heads.

I've had this question come up as a couples therapist with some of my couples. They took an attachment style quiz, and behold, their overall attachment style shows up as predominantly secure, maybe with some anxious attachment tendencies, or possibly avoidant ones. If some of those anxious tendencies sound familiar, I've written more specifically about what anxious attachment looks like and what to do about it. But for now, you may be reading this and you identify with having secure attachment, but you're wondering, well, why aren't I perfect?

Secure Attachment Was Never About Being Perfect

If we look back at what attachment style science says, it goes all the way back to the parent-child relationship. The research of John Bowlby looked at mothers and their children and identified three attachment styles: secure, avoidant, and anxious. A lot of the time when we think about someone having secure attachment, we picture them as perfect. They have it all figured out, they must have had parents who gave them everything they needed, and now they're successful and probably have the best relationships. What a nice life, right?

Actually, when we look back at child-parent attachment research, we find that it wasn't that children with a secure attachment to their primary caregiver, in these studies mostly looking at the mother-child dynamic, didn't cry or didn't have a hard time. The babies who had a secure attachment with their primary caregiver did cry when their mom left the room, and then when they cried for their mom and she came back and tried to soothe them, the baby was soothed and primarily stopped crying. That indicated they felt safe when their primary attachment figure was responsive when the baby was hurting.

So you might be learning something new here. You may have assumed a secure baby would never cry, that they'd be independent from the start. Or maybe that's not surprising to you at all. Either way, this sets us up to understand secure attachment in adult romantic relationships. Secure attachment does not mean that you don't have distress in your relationship. If your attachment style is predominantly secure, you're able to reach out and ask for help, you're able to assert your needs, and when the person you're in a relationship with, whether that's a parent or a romantic partner, comes back and is responsive to your needs, you're able to feel soothed. You don't resent them for not being there for you because they couldn't read your mind, and you're also not staying silent about your needs because you're too anxious and feel like you have to do it all yourself. That would be a more insecure style. Secure attachment just means you can reach out for help, and when you get that help, you feel soothed. Of course, it's more complicated than one sentence, but that's the core of it.

What Secure Attachment Actually Looks Like

Secure attachment also means having a secure attachment with yourself. You're able to be open and honest about your own emotions, you're not afraid to reach out and ask your community for help, and you're also not afraid to self-soothe. That doesn't mean you can do it all yourself, but it means you try to rely on yourself for what you can, and you're also not afraid to rely on your community when you realize they're not able to meet your needs. You see that for what it is, and you try to reach out to someone who can actually meet your needs. Of course that's distressing, but people with secure attachment are less likely to hold onto false hopes and keep reaching toward attachment figures who genuinely can't show up for them.

To be clear, that doesn't mean ghosting people or going no-contact with everyone who can't meet your needs, though in some abusive relationships that could absolutely be the right call. It basically means that with yourself, you're able to stay flexible. In your relationships, you're not just living off survival, you're living in a way that's functional for you.

So the reason you're reading this post is to try to figure out why the heck you're still fighting in your relationship if you have secure attachment. Well, let's be honest, it takes two. It's a cliche to say, but it's the truth. You can have secure attachment and still fight in a relationship, and both you and your partner can have predominantly secure attachment styles. Though to be honest, if you're starting couples therapy or reading a blog post like this, you may be noticing more insecurity within an attachment dynamic, or your partner may be triggering a part of your attachment system, opening up attachment wounds that are creating behaviors that lead to butting heads or arguing.

The Negative Cycle Behind the Fight

This is where attachment science gets a little more complicated. It goes beyond individual attachment styles, and now we're talking about attachment and relational cycles that pop up in a lot of relationships. These cycles are usually rooted in insecurely attached dynamics. Based on the work of Dr. Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, we can see that insecurely attached relational cycles can be made up of a pursue-withdraw cycle. If you want the fuller picture of how this approach works, I break it down in how Emotionally Focused Therapy works for couples. Sometimes, when consistent arguing and misalignment continues, this can also turn into a withdraw-withdraw cycle, or an attack-attack cycle.

Within these dynamics, withdraw-withdraw is usually a cycle that's been curated over a long period of time, where the pursuer has become exhausted because the pursuit hasn't been effective, so their last resort is to withdraw too, hoping that will save the relationship. For attack-attack relationships, in my work I've found this can happen when two anxiously attached partners get together. Cycles like this usually don't involve Inherently securely attached people. A lot of the time within attack-attack cycles, there could have been some abusive tendencies present, or exposure to abuse early on, which normalizes this attacking dynamic within their attachment relationships and makes it easier for the cycle to persist. Naming your specific cycle out loud is actually the first real step toward changing it, and I walk through exactly how we do that in session in what it really means to track the cycle in couples therapy.

So Why Are You Fighting If You're Securely Attached?

Speaking to those of you who have a more securely predominant attachment style but are still getting into fights with your partner, here are a few reasons why this may be happening.

1. You're missing your partner's reaches for connection and internalizing them as things you're doing wrong.

A lot of us think that if we're being asked to do something, it must mean we're doing something wrong. If my partner is asking me to spend more time with them, they must think I'm not prioritizing them, right? Don't they know I'm working so hard and trying my best? This mindset leads to defensiveness and overall misunderstanding. You're misinterpreting your partner's reach for connection as an admission that things are disconnected, but that may very well not be the case. I tell my couples it's like your body's need for water. Just because you're thirsty and need a drink of water doesn't mean you haven't been drinking water, it just means you're thirsty. Same thing in your relationship. Just because your partner is asking to spend more time with you doesn't mean you haven't been spending time with them. It means they're wanting more time with you, for their own reasons and their own attachment needs. If you have a partner who's communicating their needs to you, that's actually a sign they trust that you can be there for them. Don't miss this. This is also the same dynamic underneath most criticism in relationships, which I unpack more in what your partner's criticism is really trying to say.

2. Your attachment wounds are being triggered, and you think your partner is the problem.

People with innate secure attachment often don't have severe attachment trauma. This isn't referring to people who have done the work on themselves to build secure attachment, this is speaking about their foundational attachment system. However, life isn't free from adversity, and depending on what you experienced, your romantic partner can trigger what you experienced in your first attachment relationship. For instance, you may be predominantly securely attached, but maybe when you were young you moved around a lot. For military families, this is a reality, and even though your parents made sure your needs were met and kept somewhat of an open emotional space, moving can still be difficult for children to cope with, since the world as they know it shifts every time they move. New culture, new norms, new relationships to adjust to, which is challenging. So cut to your relationship in adulthood. Your partner brings up moving, and some of that insecurity comes up. You didn't really have a say in moving or not moving with your parents, so now, when your partner brings up something similar, that conversation feels intimidating, since your opinion wasn't influential in where you ended up. This can lead to shutting down, or maybe doubling down that you don't want to move. This is an example of an attachment wound being triggered.

3. You're afraid to ask for what you truly need.

I work with couples who come in just for maintenance. They have a great relationship and want to make sure it stays that way. Not just with these couples, but with most couples I work with, it's scary to flat out say what it is you need and what deep emotions are informing that need. Let's be honest, it's a risk. It's a metaphorical trust fall, and you're hoping they catch you, but what if they get distracted? What if I'm too heavy, or what if I hurt myself letting them try to catch me? All of those questions sound a bit like anxiety, and even the most securely attached, healthiest people can experience those questions, which lead to some mild anxiousness. However, with each risk, with each fall that your partner catches, more and more trust gets built. But you have to ask, you have to tell your partner: I'm scared, honey, and I need you. I had a hard day and I want to give you my attention, but I'm tired, and I just need to be alone, can you give me some alone time? This can be difficult, but it's necessary, so that if there's a fight at all, you fight fair.

4. You and your partner are facing new life challenges that you haven't experienced before.

"We were so great when it was just us, but now we've got a one year old and another one on the way, and we're just not seeing eye to eye." This can very much be the reality for new parents, learning how to love each other not just as people but as parents to this new person who has emerged. You're both no longer the center of each other's universe, your child takes that spot, and there are growing pains in that. And it's not just new parents. I see this a lot with partners who have experienced loss and are grieving loved ones. Grief is messy, and in a lot of instances it can create post-traumatic stress symptoms and open up a new development in a person's psyche, an existential can of worms that can create distance between partners.

When You're Trying to Fix It Alone

With all this being said, it's so difficult to try to bring your relationship back to a secure foundation when you're already in a rocky place with your partner, especially if you're reading this alone and your partner isn't with you on the same pursuit to get your relationship back on track. This may mean you're over-functioning in the relationship, which can lead to burnout and some resentment. But just because you and your partner are looking for solutions in different places doesn't mean your relationship isn't meant to last. It just means you need a little help, and that's what couples therapy is good for.

Even though you're predominantly securely attached, like I said earlier in this article, securely attached people aren't afraid to reach out and ask for help. Even though you're used to managing and functioning in healthy relationships, healthy people have trouble too sometimes. Before things get worse and problems become permanent, it's important to reach out for professional help. Having outside eyes, a trained professional with years of training and education in helping couples get back on track, can help curate more secure attachment in your relationship — as well as within yourself.

 If you're not sure whether what you're experiencing rises to that level yet, I've laid out five signs it might be time to go to couples therapy.

If you're looking for online couples therapy in Florida or online couples therapy in Texas, working with an EFT-trained therapist can help you understand and shift the negative cycle keeping you and your partner stuck. Virtual couples therapy makes this work accessible wherever you both are.

References

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.

Johnson, S. M. (2004). The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Creating Connection (2nd ed.). Brunner-Routledge.

Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown Spark.