On Attachment Styles in Relationships
In romantic relationships, there’s a model that describes different attachment styles: you can be “anxious,” “avoidant,” “disorganized” (a.k.a. “anxious-avoidant”), or “secure.”
As the old joke goes, “And for some reason, we didn’t like little Sergei very much.” Guess which attachment style clearly doesn’t fit this beautiful lineup.
A person who operates from a secure attachment is like an elephant. A bit chubby, yes — but the elephant never tries to jump. Even if you hold an apple just above its reach, it won’t start hopping to get it — it simply can’t. Instead, it stands firmly on its four legs, impossible to topple.
People acting from other attachment types are more like bears. Bears are generally steady on four legs too, but sometimes they stand up on two — when they think there’s a treat nearby, or when they get scared and want to look bigger (though honestly, I’d love to see whatever could actually scare a bear). So, a bear is a creature that occasionally assumes an unstable position.
When two bears meet in a relationship, their mutual “two-legged dance” can sometimes support them both — and sometimes, they even manage to settle back down on all fours together. But much more often, what happens looks exactly like this funny TikTok (yes, there are three bears in it, and they’re presumably all dudes, but what are you going to do about it!):
In short, the bears keep knocking each other off their feet — even if each of them was more or less stable standing alone.
But if two elephants meet — or even an elephant and a bear — the elephant won’t fall. And over time, the bear will remember that it’s safe to stand on all fours… and might even grow a trunk of its own.