Attachment styles are all the rage on TikTok but can they really doom your relationship?

By Anna Salleh, Sana Qadar, James Bullen and Rose Kerr for ABC's All in the Mind

Certain corners of TikTok and Instagram love talking about people's "attachment styles" - analysing and dissecting them and giving us dating advice based on them.

Looking at some social media comments you would be forgiven for thinking that if you can identify someone's attachment style, you can work out if they are a good prospect, or whether your relationship is doomed from the start.

Partners with a "secure attachment style" are seen as the holy grail.

"Do these people exist on the dating apps or are they all taken?" reads one comment next to a TikTok post describing this style of person.

And those with an "avoidant" style - who appear aloof and not interested in intimacy - are much maligned.

"How do u recognize the avoidants quickly????" asks one person seeking dating advice.

Meanwhile, a quick quiz will reveal your attachment style. Discovering you have an "anxious" style - associated with being overly clingy and afraid of being abandoned - can be distressing.

"Does that mean no-one will want to date me?" asks one person on TikTok.

Another laments: "I'm messing up my whole life with this curse."

But experts say this pop psychology is misusing legitimate concepts developed through decades of research, twisting it into unhelpful "nonsense".

So what are attachment styles and what can they really tell us?

The origins of attachment styles in child psychology

The concept of "attachment" is foundational in modern psychology and is used to help understand how we relate to each other in the world.

It can influence how secure or insecure we feel, how trusting we are of others, and how worthy we feel of love, comfort and protection.

Attachment theory originated over 70 years ago with UK psychologist and psychiatrist John Bowlby who was interested in how our first relationships - those with our primary care-givers - shaped us.

In one famous experiment, a collaborator of Dr Bowlby's - American-Canadian psychologist Mary Ainsworth - studied how small children playing with toys responded to mothers and strangers coming and going from the room.

As a result, Dr Ainsworth identified three different attachment styles in the children that reflected the bond they had with their mother. And after observing mothers and children in their homes for six months, she linked these styles with different approaches to parenting.

A child with "secure attachment" was upset when mum went away but was soothed by the stranger, and happy once mum returned. This attachment was associated with a caregiver who validated the child's needs and helped them to build their self-worth and trust in others.

In "anxious attachment" the child was harder to comfort when mum came back. In this case the caregiver was inconsistent in giving the child what they needed.

Finally, in the third style, the child appeared to be disinterested in whether their mum or the stranger came into or left the room. This "avoidant attachment" was associated with an effective rejection of the child's needs by the parent, teaching them not to trust others and to become very self-reliant.

Since the early days other terms to describe attachment style have been invented but they are all essentially variations on a theme.

Not black and white and not fixed in stone

For a long time, it was thought that the attachment style you develop as a child stayed with you for life, but research in recent decades shows it is way more complicated.

"A lot happens from the time we're born to when we get into adulthood," said psychologist Gery Karantzas, director of the Science of Adult Relationships Laboratory at Deakin University.

While our relationship with our parents is an important factor in shaping our attachment style as an adult, life events or our relationships with others also influence it.

"There is a core part of our attachment that can kind of stay the same, but there is also quite a bit of movement," Prof Karantzas said.

For example, you might start off as anxiously attached but become more secure after a long-term reliable relationship. Or your attachment tendencies could also evolve in a less secure direction.

Rather than being fixed categories, it is best to think of adult attachment styles as being on two broad continuums, Prof Karantzas said.

"One of those continuums is attachment anxiety, and the other continuum that they vary on is attachment avoidance. And you can sit high, low and anywhere else in between.

"That is something that is completely lost when people talk about attachment styles."

Not only can your attachment styles vary over time, but they can also vary between the relationships you have.

You may be secure in your relationship with your spouse, but more anxious with certain friends, or vice versa.

Social media's twist on attachment theory

Interest in attachment theory has exploded in the past decade with popular books and podcasts on the topic.

Hashtag #attachmentstyle on TikTok reportedly reached nearly a billion views last year - often in conjunction with #dating and #datingadvice.

Despite a wealth of research presenting a more complex picture, social media often encourages the idea attachment styles can predict the success of a relationship.

But the idea, for example, that your relationship was doomed if you were with an insecure person was "nonsense," Prof Karantzas said.

"I flatly refute that, that is idiocy at its finest.

"It's not as black and white as that."

Clinical psychologist Zoe Hazelwood, director of clinical psychology services at Queensland University of Technology, agreed.

Using the terms "style" rather than "dimension" could encourage a view that different forms of attachment were more fixed than they actually were, Dr Hazelwood said.

"They're tendencies that can be triggered by certain situations, certain people, certain experiences."

And she saw a lot of the social media dating advice based on attachment style as "ridiculous".

"It doesn't capture the nuance and the intricacy of the human experience to break [attachment] down to a category."

Dr Hazelwood believed our yearning for certainty drove these simplistic ideas.

"We will look for explanations we hope helps us to predict the future. But it's just so not that easy."

So what is attachment theory useful for?

So if we cannot use attachment styles to predict the success of our relationships, how can understanding them help us?

Dr Hazelwood said it was about gaining insight into one of the factors that make you tick.

While most of us had secure relationships, attachment issues could contribute to relationship problems.

In her couples therapy, which draws on attachment therapy, Dr Hazelwood helps people understand how their "attachment histories" have shaped the way they view what happens in their relationship.

"With knowledge comes power," she said.

While people could develop more secure attachment that did not necessarily have to be the aim of therapy, Dr Hazelwood said.

Simply understanding more about what your triggered you or your partner's behaviour could help improve your relationship.

For example, if you know your partner is likely to be anxious about you having a one-on-one lunch with someone else, it might mean you need to tell them in advance, and frame it in a way that is sensitive to their need for reassurance.

And, just because someone was insecure, it did not mean they did not have a bunch of good qualities, Prof Karantzas said.

"Yeah, the road is going to be a little more rocky, but the road can also be made really rocky by random life events that occur that take two secure people down a path of relationship difficulty that had nothing to do about what each of them brought to the relationship."

Overall, the message from experts is your attachment style is just one factor among many that influences your relationships.

They say how well you communicate with each other, and your commitment to work things through are also key in determining whether a relationship lasts.

"[Attachment styles are] a way for people to understand their relationships that has an important scientific backing," Prof Karantzas said.

"But again, it is one part of the jigsaw puzzle."

- ABC