this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
22 points (89.3% liked)
Explain Like I'm Five
22322 readers
1 users here now
Simplifying Complexity, One Answer at a Time!
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions.
- Share relevant content.
- Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
- Use appropriate language and tone.
- Report violations.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Attachment styles was a theory developed to explain psychological disorders in children, by describing how they interacted with their parents.
The styles are: secure, anxious, avoidant, and anxious-avoidant.
These were developed to describe patterns of behavior seen in children to communicate with other psychologists in a clinical context.
In recent years, it has been popular to apply the terms to adult romantic relationships. This has about the same utility as using Meyers-Briggs personality types, or a horoscope. If it is useful to you in troubleshoot your issues, then great! But it isnt good science - which we can tell from the fact that it divides people up into distinct groups. These sorts of groupings can be useful for scientists to communicate about population-level issues - but they are far less useful for the individual. To the extent that they are useful for individual categorization, they would be useful in categorizing the extremes - maybe 1% of adults could each be said to have anxious and avoidant attachment styles, and 0.1% with anxious-avoidant. Because we only care if this is causing real, significant issues in peoples lives - not just normal relationship (or lack-of-relationship) issues that everyone deals with.
The problem is that if you give an average person this framework, they will do a little online questionnaire and think to themselves "Oh no! Sometimes I do question my own worth!! And sometimes I do think that other people suck! I'm anxious-avoidant - I'm the worst, and no one will ever love me!!!" And of course, this now makes them a good target for a therapy course, or a new drug, or to watch your relationships youtube channel.