A major development in the understanding of human relationships took place in the last few decades of the 20th century. “Attachment theory” originated from the study of child-caregiver interactions and the ways that the behaviour of the caregiver influenced the developing psychology of the child. In the 1980s the field expanded into adult relationships, including romantic attachments. Nowadays, a lot of the “talking therapies” centre around developing an understanding of the attachment types of the patient (and their partners), and working to identify formative childhood experiences that may have steered an individual towards their adult patterns of attachment and bonding. This is a big part of why FOO (family of origin) issues dominate many discussions of people struggling with romantic love.
There is no doubt that attachment theory has been enormously influential in psychological and therapeutic circles, as well as helping many people understand themselves and their drives more deeply. Given the focus of this blog, an obvious question is: can limerence be understood within this explanatory framework? Are certain attachment types more likely to experience limerence? Are other types more likely to be non-limerent? Let’s try and find out!
Attachment styles
For those interested in this weighty and detailed topic, the wikipedia article is a good starting point. There are also lots of online tests to find out what your own attachment style is (this is a good one), but most people quickly recognise themselves in the basic descriptions:
1) Secure
These attachments are characterised by stable, lasting relationships. Secure attachment types tend to have good self-esteem and a good opinion of others, and expect that partners will respond in a positive, supportive way to their distress or expression of emotional need. They are able to express their own emotions openly.
2) Anxious-preoccupied
These folks are insecure in their attachments, worry that partners may abandon them or respond negatively to their distress, and are emotionally distraught when relationships end. They can be possessive, and seek a “fantasy bond” rather than a balanced, mutually supportive attachment. Low self-esteem is often the underlying issue that results in this attachment style.
3) Fearful-avoidant
This style is characterised by volatility, and a disruptive approach to attachment. People with this style can seek emotional comfort, but then react badly and feel stifled when it is offered. There tends to be a swing between neediness and coldness. A need for intimacy, but a fear of it. This is thought to reflect disordered bonding in childhood.
4) Dismissive-avoidant
These are the emotionally aloof people. They are adept at shutting down emotionally, and use this as a strategy to protect themselves from pain. As the name suggests, they are dismissive of the importance of intimate relationships, and take pride in self-sufficiency and independence. They neither seek nor give support to their partners.
This model is useful, but, of course, an oversimplification. Any one individual can have different attachment styles to different people in their lives, attachment styles can change, and there is obviously a grey area at the boundary of the four broad types. A nice way of understanding this is to think of a foundation type that is the kind of default approach to relationships (how you are likely to act in the early stages of a new relationship), which is built on in specific cases by a mental model that becomes more specific as you get to know a person better. Everyone has a default mental model that is modified by experience.
Limerence and attachment
From the basic descriptions above, the obvious, easy hypothesis that jumps out is that anxious-preoccupied attachment maps to limerence. The obsessive thoughts, the central role of uncertainty, the desperate need for reciprocation – they all point to someone with an insecure attachment and excessive need for validation. So, case closed?
A problem with this simple association is that limerence is not a feature of all of the relationships that a limerent forms. In fact, for most limerents, LOs are a minority of the people that they bond with. Plenty of limerents have secure (or avoidant) bonds to other people in their lives – family, friends, SOs – that are not characterised by the symptoms of limerence. It seems that the “limerent-bond” attachment style is unique to only LOs. Limerents do not generally, necessarily, exhibit anxious attachments – only a subset of people in their lives trigger them.
Another confounding factor is that limerence is transient. Once the initial mania has passed, attachment style is likely to revert to type. Longer-term bonding is likely to follow the foundation style, not the initial limerent style. People can be besotted, but then relax back to a secure or avoidant attachment style.
Another issue is that the different attachment styles of LOs will exacerbate or neutralise limerence symptoms. If anxious-preoccupied are more prone to limerence, then fearful-avoidant types are the perfect LOs – unpredictable, emotionally hot-and-cold, variably available or unattainable. In contrast, becoming limerent for a secure LO would seem the likeliest route to short-lived limerence, as uncertainty would be minimised in a relationship with someone who is comfortable expressing their emotions honestly.
Finally, the attachment style of the limerent will also determine their ability to moderate their behaviour in response to the symptoms of limerence. If self-esteem and secure attachment are solid, then the ability to mentally and emotionally detach from an unstable LO is enhanced.
So, what I think at this early stage of investigation is that limerence makes us all a little anxious-preoccupied for a specific person for a certain period of time, but the default style of attachment is reinstated once limerence expires. If a limerent is inherently anxious-preoccupied they are likely to suffer the worst, but a secure or dismissive-avoidant style helps with managing unwelcome limerence.
There is a huge literature on attachment out there, so this is only scratching the surface. Plenty more to explore.
After we’d been dating awhile, LO #2 told me that her greatest fear was to grow old and die alone. I told her that there was nobody I couldn’t live without; all the people I really cared about either left or had been taken from me. It wasn’t a question of if they’d leave, it was only a question of when they’d leave. It took my wife to prove me wrong on that one.
LO #2 was a nurse and kept a copy of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ book, “On Death and Dying” on her nightstand. She said I had the most callous attitude toward death of anyone she’d ever met, and after one conversation, considered removing all the guns from my house. My family has 2 suicides in the family and probably came from a comment I made that if I ever did decide to check myself out, the hardest decision would be what weapon I’d use.
After we broke up, LO #2 told me, “I can’t control you. You don’t need me. You’re only with me because you wanted to be. There’s nothing to bind you to me. I was afraid that one day you’d wake up and not want to be with me. If I gave myself to you and you left, I’d be devastated.”
I told that to the therapist. Her reply, “That’s definitely fearful-avoidant.” Later, the therapist said, “You’ve convinced me she’s a borderline. Quit trying to convince yourself she isn’t.”
That was 30 years ago. To this day, I think LO #2 understood me to a depth that no other person ever has and likely never will.
I’ve always struggled to identify which attachment style I generally have, but as I have been with my husband 10 years I’m leaning towards secure! Until my daughter was born 2 years ago the marriage was good and when this current LE started 6 months ago it was the first symptom of things really going awry. We had been drifting apart and kept putting it down to tiredness etc.
Before him I had a brief relationship but it is probably generous to call that a relationship – there was more wrong with it than right with it and it only lasted a few months!
However my “friendship” with LO sometimes it was a classic limerent anxious- preoccupied, but at other times it may have seemed more like fearful-avoidant, more because of the circumstances. Being acutely aware of the inappropriateness of the relationship going anything beyond a friendship meant that whenever we started getting too needy with each other, I would back off (e.g. steer conversations onto neutral topics, have a friend meet me for lunch or request a different break time) so probably came across cold.
Trouble is the more I read about attachment the more I really question my parenting and worry if I have messed my kids up!!
It’s a good point about the limerence dance – the anxious-preoccupied/fearful-avoidant swing. I’m sure that’s common with mutual limerence when both people have SOs; oscillating between seeking bonding and then guiltily pulling away. Classic pattern for strengthening the limerence too!
As for kids: I know what you mean. You can drive yourself nuts trying to second guess how every decision will screw up their development. I’ve settled on keeping them safe, showing them love, and hoping for the best…
“Trouble is the more I read about attachment the more I really question my parenting and worry if I have messed my kids up!!”
That’s a dance where you let the kids lead you (a bit). Some kids are a bit more clingy so you give them a bit more time while also letting them know when perhaps they are going a bit too far. Also don’t inflate their fears.
Example: kid falls off the jungle gym. Don’t rush over with fear on your face. Let the kid come to you. Tell her she’s fine (if she’s fine – obviously a broken limb is different), give her a quick kiss and send her back to play. Encourage her to climb it again – but higher this time. Etc.
Provide kids with opportunities to just go play in the dirt, or the woods, without you hovering. They need to learn how to amuse themselves too. Plus unstructured play is good.
Teach them that the phrase, “I’m bored!” leads to chores. Nothing like spring or autumn cleaning to cure them of looking at their parents like they are social directors or something.
It’s really weird to see little kids who don’t know how to play alone with other kids – no adults to lead them. Too many don’t know what to do with themselves or how to interact peer-to-peer.
If you’re worried and they’re in school, you can always ask their teachers what they’re seeing.
“Until my daughter was born 2 years ago the marriage was good and when this current LE started 6 months ago it was the first symptom of things really going awry. We had been drifting apart and kept putting it down to tiredness etc. ”
Don’t discount tiredness! Get a sitter. Go out. Take a class together. Zip-lining. Spelunking. Anything where both of you are relative novices and have a chance to bumble along together. Keep the affect flat and dull with the person who you’re focusing on at the moment.
Remember: love isn’t a noun. It’s a verb.
Ever hear the expression, “All the good ones are taken?” When viewed from the perspective of Attachment Theory, the older you get, the truer it is.
The literature says that the breakdown is roughly 50% Secure, 25% Anxious, & 25% Avoidant. As a function of age, it’s not a “dating pool,” it’s more of a mixer-settler tank. When you’re young, there are more suitable candidates. Over time, people with secure attachments are more likely to bond with other secure people and settle out of the market. People with anxious attachments can be thought of having unstable bonds and may settle out and re-enter the stream periodically. What that leaves as a function of age is more avoidants with a few anxious thrown in. People with secure attachments are unlikely to re-enter the stream voluntarily and may find themselves surrounded by avoidants and anxious.
The literature says that it’s unlikely that two avoidants can maintain a lasting bond. Actually, two avoidants could craft a totally delightful relationship but they’d have to meet some very specific criteria and that would be a matter of luck or fate.
This is spot on, I feel. Particularly the part about feeling mostly secure in my attachments, but then going over to the anxious style with regard to LO’s. Current LO is absolutely fearful avoidant…he oscillates hot and cold, one moment telling me I’m special and important to him, but then pretty quickly pulling away and giving me the cold shoulder as if those other conversations never took place. It absolutely drives me crazy and keeps me 100% hooked and obsessing over him. Right now I am debating whether to say something to him or not about his cold and distant behavior over the past few months. But I do not want to seem needy, or to give him the power of knowing how much his actions hurt me. I definitely feel that if he was just dismissive avoidant, I would never have fallen for him in the first place. It’s that love/intimacy bombing that draws me in, followed by inexplicable and cruel withdrawal of the affection which triggers my anxious fear of abandonment. Looking back now over previous limerent episodes, I definitely see this as a recurring pattern. I guess I initially felt that the current LO was different, more stable and more genuine in his emotions. Now after several months of this, I realize that he is definitely not. Why do I get drawn into these toxic cycles with this sort of person? Somehow I feel that I have to prove something – that I have to finally win over one of these fearful avoidant types. That until I do that, I haven’t really succeeded – that this elusive prize is the only one that counts. I see their brokenness and I feel a need to fix it. But of course, I never do – I never fix them, I never win them over, they always break my heart and abandon me. And the more times that happens, the more I feel like a failure. The more times that story repeats, the more that little voice in the back of my head says “See, all the bullies in your life were right, you aren’t good enough – not pretty enough, not thin enough, not feminine enough…you’re annoying, you’re irritating, you’re off-putting, no one wants you. That’s why these guys treat you this way, because inherently, you deserve it.”
“For Dutton and colleagues, both fearful and preoccupied attachment, as assessed by the RQ and RSQ in abusive men, were predictive for borderline personality, but fearful attachment was so strong a predictor that the authors concluded that having borderline personality was the prototype for this particular attachment style. ” – “Attachment Studies with Borderline Patients: A Review” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1857277/)
It’s an interesting article. I have two profession opinions that LO #2 was a Borderline. If he’s truly fearful-avoidant, get away from him and stay away from him.
I recommend you head over to Shari Schreiber’s site and start reading her stuff. https://sharischreiber.com/articles-and-forums/ . Start with the first article. After that, you can pick and choose.
Thanks Scharnhorst, for your perspective and the interesting material. Certainly plenty of food for thought here…
Interesting article, although it puts a lot of blame on the toddler for having a deviant attachment pattern and only briefly mentions the reason why the toddler does this, ie a survival mechanism to cope with the unbearable fact that one’s primary caregiver is also one’s biggest threat. In general anyway.
Events in early childhood are at the root of enduring poor attachment styles in my understanding – but this can heal! Limerent Limerick, it’s possible you are attracted to these sorts of people due to your own patterns laid down in childhood – perhaps for you something about these hot and cold LOs is ‘normal’ and represents love. The question ‘why do I do this’ is the hardest first step, it represents you beginning to come out of the pattern. But like I said, healing is possible. Full disclosure I’m writing this for my own encouragement as well as a recovering codependent, learning about attachment and the possibility I might have bpd.
My husband is diagnosed with BPD (years after we wed and he “mimicked” me long enough for us to get married). RUN AWAY NOW. Your life will be far more miserable than the median. RUN.
This study shows the association between attachment and limerence:
Feeney, J. A., & Noller, P. (1990). Attachment style as a predictor of adult romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(2), 281–291. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.2.281
It is a bit difficult to read because they name it differently (anxious-preoccupied is “anxious-ambivalent”) but they also show that anxious attachment is related to limerence.
Maybe you should get counseling to become more securely attached.
I might prefer the fifth attachment style most of all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuV3ElYHYe4
Oh thank you. https://youtu.be/ceV62E-c86g is also a apt for us limerents. Until it fades, of course.
For a somewhat different take on Avoidants, check out Martin Kantor’s “Distancing – Avoidant Personality Disorder, Revised and Expanded.” You can read it free at http://admin.umt.edu.pk/Media/Site/SSH/SubSites/cp/FileManager/Ebooks/DCPe-26.pdf
Some of the more recent posts reminded me of it. I encountered it when I was trying to understand my relationship with LO #2. She came across as a Kantor Type III avoidant. The preface, chapters 1, 4 and 11 are really good. The discussion on dealing with criticism at the end is pretty good, too. Kantor’s discussion of Passive – Agressive behavior on pages 130-137 is fantastic! The book is divided into 2 parts, one is the description of AvPD and the second discusses therapy techniques. Since I’m not a clinician and had long given up the idea of fixing LO #2, I skipped it.
Kantor isn’t mainstream but some parts make sense to me and I can port it over to limerence. Like limerence, none of the therapists I talked to about AvPD knew about it. Most of them didn’t know a lot about personality disorders and the few that did stayed in the realm of DSM-IV Axis II Cluster B.
Kantor’s book received a fair amount of criticism for his lack of empiricism but if you’re looking for a different take on things check it out.
Idk if cheating and being clumsy are specific to avoidant types, perse.
This author seems to think on a very linear level, whereas these “types” are different versions of the DAs and FAs specifically. There aren’t this type, and this type, then this type.. it’s all intertwined in a web. One of two types, with tendencies towards other sides (like the FA that swings AP).
Interesting read, however, a lot of it is unnecessary and doesn’t specifically apply to avoidants.
Article of the Day: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mysteries-love/201505/if-you-love-something-set-it-free
I like this article. I really like this part:
“Though anxious types tend to form longer and more committed relationships compared to the avoidant types, their relationships rarely last a lifetime. They may even be quite short, as it’s only a matter of time before their partner will be sufficiently fed up with the controlling aspect of the anxious person’s behavior and will want out.” – https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mysteries-love/201505/if-you-love-something-set-it-free
LO #2 told me to my face, “I can’t control you.”
Good article, and I wholeheartedly agree with the “set them free” principle in love.
In my late twenties I had an LTR with an anxious attacher. It led to some of the worst stress I have ever experienced. I foolishly believed my kind, consistent, secure, faithful, committed love would be enough to satisfy him. I was wrong. I remember on the way home after spending an evening out with friends, I used to rehearse the details of my evening in my mind over and over. This was to ensure I was prepared for the detailed and very pointed interview about my evening that awaited me when I got home. If I couldn’t answer a question instantly and smoothly, he wouldn’t believe me and a week or two of dark cold moodiness would be my punishment – and that is if I was lucky.
Never again.
I remember those days! The good thing for me was we weren’t living together so I didn’t have to put it with it if I didn’t want to.
tldr
How To Train Your LO:
One Saturday morning, I went to her place. She was in a particularly petulant mood. It only took a few of these episodes to realize it was a power game. Control and power struggles may have been the defining features of our relationship. I have great stories about her stereo and a battle over a bottle of wine. The thing is that I’m way better at those games than she was. I was a Naval Officer on a nuclear submarine. I dealt with petulant, Passive-Aggressives (PPAs) for a living. Compared to her, they were experts. Oh, and her unique wrinkle was to let things fester awhile. 2-3 weeks was not uncommon.
So, what was I willing to put up with to get laid later? That morning, not much.
I told her she had until the next ferry to get over it or I was leaving. She was in her bedroom watching TV. I told her I was going to make coffee and read the “Seattle Weekly.” She said ok.
You could see the ferry terminal from her apartment. She never came out of her bedroom so I left without saying goodbye. We’d planned on going to the mall (we did that in the 80s), grab a late lunch, and catch a movie. I went to a different mall, had lunch, and went home. I hadn’t planned on having free time so I started doing laundry.
This was pre-answering machine days. She called and asked where I’d been all afternoon. I told her I did the same things we planned to do except I did them without her. She asked if I wanted to come back over. I told her I’d written the day off and was doing my laundry. We could try it again tomorrow but if it happened again, she’d get the same result.
She asked about coming to my place. I asked her if she was going to be a pill. It wasn’t the word I wanted to use but it was the one I went with. She said no. I told her that if she wanted to come over, she could drive over or we could just wait until tomorrow. I wasn’t going pick her up at the ferry. She said, “Fine.” She told me what ferry she’d be on. I told her to stop on the way and grab a pizza. I’d call it in. She didn’t have a washer and dryer in her building. She asked that since she was driving, was it ok for her to bring her laundry over. That was fine and, looking back, may have been one of the closest things we ever did to play house together.
When she got to my place with the pizza and her laundry, she asked if all this was really necessary. I asked her if she learned anything. I’d ask her that question more than once. I ask my wife and kids that question. LO #2 said she learned that I could be a real a–hole. I told she started it and I gave her plenty of time to reconsider her position. I told her that I wasn’t going to put with that kind of crap.
Old habits die hard. She would go through those phases periodically but they became less frequent and didn’t last nearly as long.
I admire your patience! I just have no inclination for power or mind games whatsoever. Even when someone tries to play one with me.
Thanks,
It was my first adult relationship and I had lousy relationship role models growing up.
I had to learn on the fly. It took my awhile but I eventually figured it out.
Thank you for this article. It was helpful and confusing at the same time — because, as you say, attachment theory has more depth than covered here.
I cannot say my marriage has been good or strong for most of its 19-year duration: my husband and I both from chaotic upbringings and disordered bonding. Our life has been coloured by the dance of the fearful/avoidant – anxious/preoccupied attachments.
And at one point he experienced limerence. Though our cocktail of attachment seems to have kept us connected during that turbulent time. And for the decade that followed our relationship was plagued with addictions from him and codependent behaviors from me.
I’ve spent a great deal of time working through a steamer trunk of emotional garbage until I was no longer willing to sacrifice my own needs to cater to his demands. He’s been 6 months sober. And life is as close to being what I always wanted as it ever has, while also being still so far from what I need now. In part related to my own struggle to actually express my needs in a healthy way he could (theoretically) receive.
Though, the pressures of life that have followed — including me working full time, starting/running a small business, and working a part-time job simultaneously to catch us from the financial spiral that followed the period of addiction/codependency, he is not supportive in the way I was when he was the primary earner. He’s not codependent 😉
And that has fed a resentment that seems to have triggered limerence for me in an unexpected place: someone who loved me 20+ years ago for whom I had no attraction. And now I live in a special kind of hell. That mix of ecstasy and anguish — that has me catching myself toeing the line of what is dangerously nearing an emotional affair.
And the muddiness of it all has me constantly questioning my own mind. Though I suppose, now recognizing a decade of codependency demonstrates that I never could trust it in the way I thought I could, anyway.
And tracing this torturous feeling back, I see that I’ve been limerent before — though rarely if ever for someone who was either mutually limerent or available. So it always dwindled in the torturous way it does. Like churning, bound and gagged in a pit of howling anguish.
I see how the experience with my last LO (mutually limerent but unavailable), who was my direct superior at a previous job, eroded my self-esteem and eventually affected my job until I left, feeling a lot of betrayal and bitterness. And a lot of stuff to work through before I had the confidence again to be able to get another job.
Though, the unexpected, torturous, and crazy-making attraction for this current LO has also revealed the likely connection between each LO and my fractured relationship to my own father.
Tracing each of these experiences back, my LO is always accomplished and respected in some way (academically or in his career) and has demonstrated a subtle nurturing kindness I have never experienced with my emotionally unavailable father (who is accomplished and respected). And, I have rarely had more than a glimpse of that with my husband (because after all this inner scrutiny and work I see I’ve married an excellent stand-in for my father and repeated that cycle of trying to get the man to see me).
And that alone leaves me reasonably sure that should I fall for my brain’s best attempts to convince me my LO is “the answer”, that he in fact actually has a hidden box of painful experiences (he’s likely unaware of) to dish out to me. :/
Thus further reinforcing my propensity towards fearful/avoidant attachment.
(eye roll)
Thanks for sharing your story Shelley, I enjoyed reading it. It sounds like you have been on real journey of self discovery… I admire your self awareness. I think, to a large degree, we are who we are and accepting that real self is key to being able to unfold into our best self.
Well done with your starting your own business! I suspect the lack of work supportiveness from SO might in part be a gender thing… our subconscious cultural scripts can still be a little old fashioned.
Wishing you the strength and wisdom to ride your limerent storm out.