There’s a conversation happening across social media that needs addressing. Scroll through any relationship advice forum, and you’ll find countless posts dissecting attachment styles—anxious partners clashing with avoidant ones, secure people navigating insecure dynamics, and endless analyses of why relationships fail based on these psychological categories. While attachment theory offers valuable insights into how we connect with others, we’ve reached a concerning point where these labels are being weaponized to excuse, explain away, or invalidate genuinely harmful behavior.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth we need to face: sometimes your partner isn’t behaving badly because they’re avoidant. Sometimes they’re behaving badly because they’re unkind, disrespectful, or downright toxic. And that distinction matters enormously.
Understanding Attachment Styles: A Brief Overview
Before we dive deeper, let’s establish what we’re actually talking about. Attachment theory originated with psychiatrist John Bowlby’s groundbreaking work in the 1950s and 60s, which explored how early childhood relationships with caregivers shape our capacity for forming bonds throughout life. It was developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth who later expanded this work by identifying distinct attachment styles through her famous “Strange Situation” experiments with infants and mothers.
The attachment styles that have become part of our cultural vocabulary include:
Secure attachment: characterized by comfort with intimacy and independence, healthy communication, and the ability to trust and be trusted.
Anxious attachment: marked by a strong desire for closeness, fear of abandonment, and a tendency toward reassurance-seeking and hypervigilance about relationship status.
Avoidant attachment: distinguished by discomfort with emotional intimacy, a strong emphasis on independence, and difficulty expressing needs or relying on others.
Disorganized attachment: a combination of anxious and avoidant patterns, often stemming from trauma or inconsistent early caregiving.
These patterns can offer genuine insight into our relationship behaviors. They can help us understand why we react certain ways in moments of conflict, why intimacy feels comfortable or terrifying, and what emotional needs we bring to partnerships. This self-awareness can be incredibly valuable for personal growth and building healthier relationships.
When Useful Guidance Becomes Rigid Rules
The problem emerges when we transform attachment styles from descriptive frameworks into prescriptive diagnoses. Attachment styles were never meant to be rigid categories that define us, nor were they designed to serve as relationship compatibility tests or excuse generators. They’re meant to be guidance—loose patterns that can help us recognize behaviors and work toward healthier ways of connecting.
Yet increasingly, people are using attachment language as definitive explanations: “He can’t commit because he’s avoidant.” “She’s too needy because she’s anxious.” “We broke up because our attachment styles just weren’t compatible.” These statements reduce complex human beings to psychological labels and strip away personal accountability.
Mary Ainsworth herself would likely be troubled by how rigidly her research is being applied. Scientific frameworks are meant to illuminate possibilities, not create boxes that confine human experience. When we treat attachment styles as immutable diagnoses rather than dynamic patterns that can shift and evolve, we do ourselves and others a profound disservice.
The Dangerous Comfort of Labels
There’s something seductive about attachment style explanations. They offer a neat, psychology-approved reason for relationship pain. If your partner stonewalls you emotionally, dismisses your feelings, or disappears for days without explanation, it’s strangely comforting to attribute this to their “avoidant attachment” rather than confronting a harder truth: they might simply be treating you poorly.
This is where attachment theory becomes genuinely dangerous. When we reduce someone’s harmful behavior to an attachment style, we risk:
Invalidating our own experiences: Your hurt feelings become pathologized as “anxious behavior” rather than recognized as reasonable responses to being mistreated.
Excusing unacceptable behavior: Emotional unavailability, manipulation, dishonesty, and cruelty get reframed as attachment wounds rather than choices someone is making.
Staying in harmful situations longer: If you believe your partner’s behavior is just their attachment style, you might persist in trying to “fix” things rather than recognizing you deserve better.
Avoiding accountability: People can hide behind attachment labels rather than taking responsibility for how they treat others.
The reality is that plenty of people with avoidant attachment patterns are still capable of kindness, respect, consistency, and care. Plenty of people with anxious attachment can communicate boundaries and maintain their dignity. Attachment styles might influence how we express love or navigate conflict, but they don’t determine whether we choose to be decent human beings.
Behaviour Is Still a Choice
This is the crucial point that gets lost in all the attachment discourse: regardless of your attachment style, you still have agency over your actions. You still make choices about how you treat people. You can have an avoidant attachment and still show up for your partner, communicate honestly, and work on your relationship. You can have an anxious attachment and still respect boundaries, manage your emotions maturely, and avoid manipulative behavior.
Attachment styles might explain the why behind certain tendencies, but they don’t excuse the what of harmful actions. If someone consistently makes you feel small, disregards your needs, violates your trust, or treats you with contempt, their attachment style is irrelevant. What matters is the impact of their behavior on you and whether they’re willing to recognize and change it.
Dating the Person, Not the Pattern
Ultimately, you don’t fall in love with an attachment style. You don’t build a life with a psychological category. You connect with a specific human being who has values, character, communication skills, and a capacity (or incapacity) for growth and change.
Before you attribute your partner’s behavior to their attachment style, ask yourself these questions: Are they kind? Do they respect you? Do they take accountability when they hurt you? Are they willing to work on themselves? Do they make you feel valued and secure? Can they show up consistently, even when it’s uncomfortable?
These are the questions that matter. These are what determine whether a relationship can be healthy and sustainable. Someone’s attachment style might color how they express love, but their character determines whether that love is actually good for you.
Attachment theory is a valuable tool for understanding ourselves and others. It can guide us toward greater self-awareness and more compassionate relationships. But it should never become an excuse for tolerating treatment that diminishes you. Sometimes the most psychologically informed thing you can do is trust your gut, honor your experience, and walk away from someone who simply isn’t treating you well—regardless of what attachment style they might have.
You deserve better than to be someone’s emotional punching bag, their inconsistent afterthought, or their project to fix. You deserve a partner who shows up for you, not a label that explains why they don’t.
