Insecure Attachment in Relationships

People that grew up in a dysfunctional family environment and have an insecure attachment style are more susceptible to falling into a pattern of abusive or toxic relationships.

Having attuned, affectionate and attentive caregivers is a basic need for healthy social and emotional development, and a lack of which tends to produce adults that have difficulty processing and regulating their emotions and a low sense of self-worth.

They also often hold harmful beliefs about themselves and relationships, how they deserve to be treated and what love should look like, as unhealthy relational behaviors were modeled and normalized to them while growing up.

When is it Abuse?

It’s important to distinguish between an abusive and a toxic dynamic. There’s no such thing as being “mutually abusive”, in a relationship that brings out the worst in both people and there’s no clear power dynamic, that is just toxic, although you can certainly say that there are abusive behaviors on both sides.

Abuse is unilateral, in that there is an abuser and a victim, and there is a clear power dynamic involved, influenced by factors such as age difference, social status, physical and intellectual attributes and financial dominance/dependence. The more marginalized a person’s social and cultural identity is, the more at risk they are of abuse.

In some relationships the external factors of power are more or less balanced but one person has a greater need for control, which manifests as abusive and manipulative behaviors that establish and maintain their dominance.

The victim may well retaliate and fight back in a bid to regain some power, which the abuser might use as evidence that they are equally at fault, and it might look from the outside like it’s just a toxic situation, but where there is a clear imbalance of power, it is abuse.

Abuse can come in many forms, it begins subtly but gradually develops a deep hold, and its psychological impacts are such that the person on the receiving end begins to doubt their own experience and version of reality and often doesn’t fully recognize or acknowledge that they are being abused until things are well advanced, and even then it takes time to unpack everything.

Abusers tend to not acknowledge their behavior as abusive, they are blindly operating from their norms, beliefs, stories and triggers. They might even interpret their own triggered state as feeling like they are the ones being abused. With the proliferation of therapeutic terms on social media, people can warp and weaponize language and concepts they don’t fully understand due to a lack of self-awareness. This can make things feel very confusing, but it’s actually very clear cut what kind of behavior is abusive and what is not.

Abuse is about power, the subjugation of another person to strip them of their power and identity to make them captive and controllable.

It is the most warped and extreme manifestation of the fear of intimacy and abandonment.

Types of Abuse

Physical: Any form of non-consensual physical aggression, using physical advantages to intimidate, enacting violence on inanimate objects, harming pets, intentionally doing things that put someone in danger of harm, driving dangerously, restricting or controlling someone’s access to essential goods and services.

Medical: Restricting or controlling another person’s bodily autonomy regarding how they access healthcare and medical treatment.

Psychological/emotional: Gaslighting, guilt tripping, passive aggression, insults, manipulation, stonewalling, threats of suicide or self-harm, attempting to isolate someone from their friends and family.

Financial: Using financial dominance as a tool of subjugation and control.

Sexual: Any non-consensual or coerced sexual act, holding explicit photos and videos as blackmail, knowingly giving someone an STI or otherwise endangering their sexual health, abuse and misuse of BDSM and kink for coercion and control.

Abuse Across the Different Attachment Styles

Anxious Attachment

People with a severely anxious attachment struggle with emotional dysregulation, meaning they can experience big mood swings and emotional meltdowns. They often find themselves in triggering relationships with avoidant partners, and if they consistently take no responsibility for working through their own emotions and triggers, but expect their partner to tiptoe around them instead, this is abusive.

Their insecurities can make them prone to jealousy and suspicion, and they can resort to invasive behaviors like demanding to know their partner’s location at all times, making their partner sever ties with certain people, and looking through their devices - this is controlling and abusive.

Their low self-esteem and fear of abandonment can make them test their partner’s loyalty, engineering situations just to see how they react - this is manipulative and abusive. They can also manufacture distress over something to make their partner feel bad and guilty and put them in a position where they feel like they have to compensate. When this is a frequent and one-sided occurrence, it is abusive.

Some of these behaviors can equally present when they are the victims of abuse, so it's important to consider context and power dynamics.

Avoidant Attachment

People with an avoidant attachment need and are entitled to space to regulate, but silence can be weaponized and used to avoid accountability, vulnerability and intimacy. Holding silence can be self-protective and necessary sometimes, but it can also be used to manipulate and create a power dominance, and when this is a consistent pattern of behavior it is abusive.

Sex and affection can also be withheld and weaponized by those with an avoidant attachment to punish their partner, to erode their self-esteem, or to control their behavior. It’s one thing to not feel like having sex when issues in the relationship have thrown the intimacy off or to just need space sometimes, and certainly a victim of abuse may withhold sex as a form of protest or for self-protection, but when one person regularly withholds physical intimacy as a tool of manipulation, this is abuse.

Avoidants can feel contempt for their partner at times, they are used to being islands of self-sufficiency and have a tendency to numb themselves from emotion, and on some level they can see their anxiously attached partner as weak. This can come out in behaviors like belittling comments, open irritation, scornful looks, being disengaged and disinterested and not responding to their partner’s bids for connection. When this is one-sided and persistent, it is abuse.

Disorganized/Fearful Avoidant

People with a disorganized attachment tend to be more anxious with an avoidant partner and more avoidant with an anxious partner, and because of this internal struggle between desperately craving love but being wildly terrified of rejection and abandonment, they flip between anxious and avoidant behaviors depending on what is triggered.

This inconsistency is usually very confusing and destabilizing for their partners, while also being addicting at some level, particularly for those with an anxious attachment as it plays to their low self-esteem and makes them crave the intermittent approval and validation. This delivers a significant power advantage to the fearful avoidant, who can use it as a tool of manipulation, which is abusive.

Unpacking Cultural Relationship Norms

Most cultures have normalized and romanticized some abusive relationship practices because of the prevalence of toxic monogamy with its inbuilt assumption of ownership; your partner belongs to you and they are there to meet your needs and to be an extension of you in the public sphere. This sets up entitlement and expectations, trying to control and change the other, resentment, conflict and power struggles.

Healthy monogamy, in contrast, requires respecting that your partner has needs, capacity, preferences and opinions different from your own, that they are a sovereign being whom you cannot dictate to or control. It means accepting and embracing all parts of them as they are, appreciating and supporting their individuality. Healthy partners are mindful of the impacts that their words and behaviors have on each other and take care to not cause harm, they take responsibility for managing their own emotions and triggers, and they talk through issues in a collaborative and constructive way.

Healthy relationships are built on healthy relationship philosophies, and it’s important to unpack your perspective to understand the assumptions and expectations you’ve been carrying and consider whether these actually align with the values you want your relationship to be built on and how you want to be treated.

Creating Safety

Relationship abuse is hugely destructive as it strips the victim of their power, autonomy and identity, and cripples their self-worth. It is endemic to society as we live in a fundamentally violent system that has normalized and even romanticized abusive relationship practices, and institutional discrimination keeps some people vulnerable and marginalized.

The psychological impacts of abuse can make it difficult for the victim to know that they are being abused, but if a relationship has detrimentally impacted your mental health, please talk it through with someone, a trusted friend or family member, or a domestic abuse helpline.

Knowing the warning signs can help you spot red flags early on, and when someone shows you who they are through their behavior, you’d best believe them. It can be too easy to fall into the same patterns over and over again, as your nervous system and core beliefs are primed to recognize these patterns as love and attraction. Compatibility is important, but people with an insecure attachment can chase “chemistry”, which is actually the tingle of attachment wounds being activated and the familiarity of a toxic pattern playing out yet again.

Stability and consistency can feel boring in comparison, and someone showing you healthy romantic behaviors can clash with core beliefs around self-worth and what love looks like. Unpacking these core beliefs and developing practices to help you process and regulate your emotions will help you shift those beliefs and recondition your nervous system over time.

You deserve a love that makes you feel safe and respected, a place to grow and thrive. Build self-worth, find community, be comfortable alone, set healthy boundaries and make wise choices in your partners.