3 minute read
Reaching for reassurance, reaching for room
Anxious and avoidant leanings are strategies for protecting a bond, not flaws. The pairing is common and workable.
Attachment research describes two protective strategies. One leans towards reassurance: checking, reaching, reading the small signs. The other leans towards self-reliance: minimising need, going quiet, valuing space.
When they pair up, each strategy triggers the other. Reaching feels like pressure; space feels like abandonment. Neither is wrong. Both are trying to keep the bond safe.
Security is built by small, predictable responses, not grand ones. A text at the same time each day does more than a weekend away.
The work is to meet both needs explicitly: reassurance that is reliable, and room that is agreed in advance.
Agree one small, reliable signal of reassurance, and one agreed way to ask for space.
Where this comes from: Hazan & Shaver; Mikulincer & Shaver, Attachment in Adulthood.
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