Attachment styles and attraction

Where does attachment end and attraction begin or does it even work like that?

I am a big fan of Daniel Siegel’s books (info. about him and them below) and in general of attachment theory. I think that attachment to other people, how we attach, if our attachments are secure and healthy or not, and our attachment style is the big picture that attraction, sexuality, and states of autonomy and enmeshment fit into. And it is primarily attachment theory that makes me wonder where attachment ends and where attraction begins. And of course makes me wonder if I have experienced being attached to people or actually attracted. Attachment can feel pretty intense, needful, and embodied since it starts with bonding and nursing with your mom and the intimateness of holding and eye contact that happen in infancy.

A brief overview of basic attachment styles from a paper I wrote on it once is this. Secure attachment comes from having a parent who is emotionally available, perceptive, and responsive. Insecure-avoidant attachment (also sometimes called dismissive), comes from having a parent who is emotionally unavailable, imperceptive, unresponsive, and rejecting. Insecure-anxious or ambivalent (another word used is preoccupied) attachment, comes from having an inconsistently available, perceptive and responsive; and intrusive parent. And finally insecure-disorganized attachment comes from having a parent who is frightening, frightened, disorienting, and alarming.

Attachment styles like much of life should be seen on a continuum. Most people are likely a mix of secure and insecure attachment. I think I am a mix of secure and insecure-anxious (ambivalent) attachment styles.

Those with an ambivalent attachment find themselves overly aware and excessively responsive to their inconsistent attachment figures, but equally unable to soothe themselves. Those attachment figures are your parents when you are young, but as you get older from what I can tell, you take your attachment style and might apply it to any relationship.

Attachment feels very emotionally intense and can feel almost overloading in a way that I think could be confused with attraction. I think the similarity between them is so close that I often want to write a Ph.D dissertation on it. Often I do not know whether I am attached or attracted to people. Probably every relationship has some form of attachment energy or negotiation going on in it. Attributes of people with various insecure attachment styles are that they are either overly enmeshed with someone or not connected to people at all.

The people I have been most attracted to are also the people who I experience attachment issues with. Ultimately can I be attracted to someone with out any attachment getting in the way so I can be sure it's just attraction. Or is that just too much to ask from life?

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Daniel J Siegel is a graduate of Harvard Medical School with post-graduate work at the University of California in Los Angeles. He has written two books Parenting from the Inside Out and The Developing Mind.