Is this like the booked Attached? There’s Secure, Anxious, and Avoidant types.
To put it basically:
Secure - someone who is secure in their feelings. They generally take others at face value. Not necessarily in a gullible sense, but to give an example: if your wife suddenly told you that she would have to work late tonight, you will respond back to this with a calm and rational demeanor. You don’t blow up and cause a scene over this. You may or may not accept this at face value. Your type is not that you do accept it. Some secure types of people have doubts, but what separates them is how they will handle it. Someone with a secure type will address this with their partner by being direct and not jumping to assumptions they may have, but being as logical as possible.
Anxious - someone who deals with a lot of anxious feelings and responds to those feelings with behaviors. Like in the previous example, if your wife suddenly told you she was going to work late at work tonight, if you have an anxious type, you will have doubts about the validity of this. And with those doubts, you are the type who be more likely to resort to acting out as a result of this in what they call “protest behavior”. Your protest behavior would be in the form of not directing and calmly addressing this with your wife. Instead you resort to passive aggression, such as texting something like “You can spend the night at your boss’ house after fucking him tonight.” or doing something rash like packing up your stuff and leaving the house because you’re sure that the marriage is over. In essence, you’re more likely to act out in this state over what you perceive as a threat rather than being direct and open to hearing more before making a decision.
Avoidant - someone who is more avoidant in how they interact with others. They usually are more likely to want space from others. This person may get annoyed with a partner who is seeking for reassurance. There was an example in the book of a man and his wife who were part of a game show. His wife was anxious and constantly wanting him to hold her hand. He, the avoidant type, preferred to not do this as he felt this was dumb to keep having to hold her hand and they should just focus on the games instead.
That is to say, you may have anxious or avoidant feelings inside, but the secure type is someone who manages them in a preferable way. They may have feelings about their wife staying longer at the office, but they will be more likely to address it appropriately with their partner and be calm and rational instead of being passive aggressive about it. The secure type is also one who can understand that something like holding their partner’s hand may be silly, but it’s what this person needs in this moment and it’s how they want to support their partner.
The book goes into detail about how these aren’t necessarily bad types, but tries to help guide people into navigating their actions and how to identify others you interact with and understand how they are as people with specific attachment types can behave in different ways and better explain something that may seem foreign to you. To explain that the way they interact may not necessarily be bad, but gives you better clarity. The book also talks about what attachment types are best with others and which aren’t which can greatly impact how feasible a relationship can be.
Edit: forgot to expand on the way it goes. The book addresses this and it says that scientists still aren’t sure how these develop. There are theories, but nothing definitive.
It all goes hand in hand with the “nature vs nurture” discussion in psychology. This tries to investigate whether you develop your personality traits because your parents were that way or is it because you developed it from your environment growing up? I remember my psychology textbook going over twins separated at birth and this being one of the most interesting cases for this. Even though they didn’t grow up together in the same environment, they still had very similar mannerisms into adulthood, things we would assume would develop as they grow up because of how their parents raised them.
It’s the same with attachments. It’s not entirely clear whether someone developed them from childhood environments or from biology.