Attachment Styles and Ideal Dates
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment The Last Show with David Cooper Have you ever gotten this relationship advice? You need fireworks. You need new experiences, new restaurants, new positions, new passport stamps. Well, that might not be right for everyone. The best date night might depend less on spicing things up and more on your partner's attachment style. And we'll get to what that is in just a moment. But I'm here with someone who's done research in this area. Her name is Amy Mews. She's a psychology professor at York University. Amy, welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
So the attachment styles, this is sort of how you're wired to form relationships. But you want to give us a quick overview before we get into how they affect what your best date might be?
Yeah, exactly. So these are how we kind of think about emotional connection and intimacy and relationships. And we think about like two types of attachment insecurity. So one is attachment avoidance. So this would be someone who's uncomfortable with too much closeness, who really values- Me, me, me. Sorry, keep going. Are you already digging for you?
It is.
Value independence and like intimacy in your relationship can sometimes feel smothering. So that's the attachment avoidance. And then another type of insecurity is the attachment anxiety. So this is more of a fear of abandonment, really wanting reassurance from a partner and being worried about being rejected from a partner, having your partner not be there for you. And both of these things, as you might imagine, can be linked with lower overall relationship satisfaction. And these are not uncommon. About 50 percent of the population would be at least somewhat high on one or both of these things.
At the risk of derailing slash soliciting free psychology advice, if I'm avoidant and my girlfriend is attachment anxious, can we does it will it work? Can it work between two people like that?
Yeah, sure. I mean, that's not an uncommon pairing, right? Because some of the ways that you might find intimacy smothering would sort of be exactly what an anxious person, you know, might want, right? They might want sort of more intimacy. So it kind of confirms for you that, you know, relationships maybe involve a lot of intimacy that you're not totally comfortable with. And then for her, it might kind of confirm that, you know, partners aren't always available for all the type of intimacy that you might want. But in this study, we sort of try to talk about activities that you can do together that relate to your attachment styles and might be most helpful for your satisfaction. Good. Yes, exactly.
What are attachment styles and why are they important in relationships?
And in a relationship where there might be different attachment styles, it might just be varying these activities to sort of focus on one partner's emotional needs at one time and the others at another time.
Which is what we do. Okay, enough about me. We are told though, like the best relationship advice generally is kind of like try new things, right? Yes. Talk to me about when that doesn't work.
Yeah. So what we found is that both trying new things and doing things that are more like familiar and comfy, they're both good for relationships. So overall, we see positive effects on relationship satisfaction. So neither of these things are bad. But what we found is that they might be particularly beneficial depending on the person's attachment style. So for people who are more avoidant, like we just talked about, these novel and exciting activities are actually particularly beneficial for them. So this would be doing new things, trying something or learning something together, going somewhere unfamiliar, something that maybe feels like a little bit expanding or out of your comfort zone. And it seems like the reason for this is it's kind of like a side business.
intimacy right it's not an overly intimate you know you're not really digging deep into these vulnerable feelings it's something that feels more fun rather than heavy so this seems to be something that kind of buffers the lower relationship satisfaction that's more typical for people who are avoidantly attached
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:03–2:44
2
What are attachment styles and why are they important in relationships?
2:44–5:57
3
How do attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety affect relationship satisfaction?
5:57–8:13
4
Can an avoidant and anxious attachment pairing work in a relationship?
8:13–9:24
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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