BONUS: How your parents screwed your love life (and how to fix it)
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What is attachment theory and how does it explain our adult relationship patterns?
This is an ABC podcast.
Do you find you have repeated issues in your relationships? Negative patterns, like maybe you really struggle when your partner is away, or find you go out of your way to avoid having difficult conversations. Maybe you're a huge commitment phobe, or you get super clingy after one day. Well, it might have started way back when you were just a little baby, in response to how your parents treated you. This is attachment theory, and it's become a popular way of understanding our adult relationships. But is it legit, really? And how could you use it to actually help find better quality love? I'm Nat Tancic, and in this bonus episode, we are taking a very close look at what attachment theory can do for you.
Doctors Stephen Andrew and Zoe Krupka are psychotherapists who work closely with attachment theory and the role it plays in relationships. And they use it to help their clients with their relationship issues. And they're here to help you work out your attachment style and apply it to your own dating habits. They're two of our faves on the hookup, and they're also a married couple who have taken the attachment theory lens to their own relationship. So I started right at the top. Give us the brief. What the heck is attachment theory?
Well, attachment theory is really a developmental theory, right? So it's a it's a theory about how we come to be how we are. Um, so you know, if you did high school psych or whatever, you'll have Piaget in there, for instance. So attachment theory is really trying to explain how we come to relate to other people and the world. And we learn that by Uh, our relationships, our first primary relationships. So with whoever took care of you when you were tiny and vulnerable. Um, helped set your expectations about how trustworthy the world was and how you felt about your own needs and being close to other people by the way they responded to you. So in a nutshell. That's attachment.
Okay. So very like very informative about how we form relationships as we get older. Totally. Totally.
Well it cuts right into our identity, net who we are, is formed in large part by How we are raised, particularly in those pivotal six to thirty months. They're the key months for attachment theory. That period of time really forms uh the basis of our identity.
I guess like attachment theory really makes me think about, I guess, the constant nature versus nurture conversation, and would I guess argue or posit that nurture is. more important? Like how accurate is attachment theory, I guess, considered in um the psychological world? Like, does it hold a lot of water?
It's uh well, probably like um climate change or the efficacy of vaccination. The the idea that your first thirty months are formative in terms of your identity and your way of being in the world, I think is pretty incontrovertible. In terms of um Nature versus nurture. I mean, I think one of the criticisms of attachment theory is really that we tend to kind of blame the parent, right? It's it's your mom particularly, it's her fault. And the problem with that is, of course, everyone's parenting in a context. Everyone is parenting nested in kind of a family, a society, all and all of those things impact how your parents treated you when you were tiny. It gets criticized a lot because it's so much like a conspiracy theory, right?
It explains everything. And the reality is of course I'm gonna have a genetic makeup. Um, and that's going to impact to to a certain extent how I am. But what happens with that genetic makeup is really hugely influenced by environment and definitely my way of being close to other people and how good I feel about being close to other people is, you know, fundamentally and primarily affected by how someone felt about being
close to me
when I was a baby.
Wow. And so, you know. It means that it really is like informing the relationships that we have now. Um how does it actually impact the relationships we have as adults if we haven't um examined um these patterns.
How do the four main attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized) differ?
I like the word patterns being used here.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is attachment theory and how does it explain our adult relationship patterns?
0:02–4:49
2
How do the four main attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized) differ?
4:49–9:59
3
Why do anxious and avoidant partners often end up attracted to each other?
9:59–13:24
4
What are common relational patterns like the pursuer‑distancer dynamic and how do they originate?
13:24–17:04
5
How can you identify your own attachment style by reviewing past relationship histories?
17:04–20:52
6
What practical steps can help shift an insecure attachment style toward a more secure one?
20:52–24:29
7
How can friends, therapists, or supportive relationships serve as corrective attachment experiences?
24:29–28:12
8
What final takeaways and actionable advice do the hosts give for listeners wanting healthier love lives?
28:12–31:31