Anxious Attachment, Conflict & Communication
This blog post is based on an episode from my podcast, On Attachment. To subscribe, click here.
If you are reading this and you're an anxiously attached person, you will know from experience that communication can be really hard in relationships. And conflict? Well that’s even harder (read: panic-inducing).
So why do anxiously attached people struggle so much with conflict and communication in relationships?
The Relationship Comes First
It's important to set the scene here and establish upfront that for anxiously attached people, the relationship comes first.
What does that mean? Well, basically that the health of the relationship is the utmost priority: keeping things stable, making sure that everything feels okay between you and your partner, making sure that your partner is happy… the list goes on.
In the vast majority of cases, these behaviours stem from a fundamental need for the relationship to feel secure, which in turn links back to the abandonment wound that lies at the heart of anxious attachment. Essentially, there is a lurking fear that something bad is going to happen and that if the relationship isn’t okay, you won’t be okay. It’s this sense of “I don’t know how to feel safe in the world without you."
With that as the starting point, we can see that the relationship is essentially synonymous with safety, and thus that any threat to the relationship feels very distressing.
A Battle of Competing Needs
And therein lies the struggle.
We see an ongoing tussle between (a) the need for safety (which, of course, we all have — but for anxious people looks like needing to be close to their partner at all times), and (b) all of the other needs of the anxiously attached person — things like the need for connection, to feel seen & understood, to feel supported, to feel included, and so on.
Another key piece of the puzzle is the chronic people-pleasing and peacekeeping behaviour of the anxiously attached person. In short, owing to their fear of abandonment, the anxious person often convinces themselves that to ask for something means they're needy or “too much” and going to be rejected, and that to set a boundary means that people won't like or accept them, and they'll walk away.
So a lot of the time, the anxious person is effectively boundary-less, and doesn't tend to express their needs and preferences very much at all. Instead, they tend to defer to others — others’ comfort. others’ boundaries, others’ preferences.
They often operate (consciously or otherwise) on the mantra of “If you’re happy, I’m happy”.
But unfortunately, that's just not true, right? Because in actual fact, you do have needs of your own. And it's an unsustainable strategy to be chronically deferring to other people.
Communicating Needs & Expectations (Or Not)
One of the ways that anxiously attached people really get themselves into trouble is that they tend not to be very direct in their communication — be it of needs, of requests, or of concerns. To make matters worse, their lack of communication tends to be coupled with unrealistic expectations of their partner and of the relationship.
For example, the anxiously attached person will often expect their partner to prioritise the relationship above all else in the same way that they do. They will often expect that their partner should know how they are feeling and what they need, and give it to them without them having to ask. It’s the “If you really cared about me, you would just know” kind of energy.
If you’re nodding your head in guilty recognition, let me tell you: while of course we all wish our partners were mind-readers who were constantly at our beck and call, these are not fair or realistic expectations of another person or relationship. And ultimately, they don't really get you any closer to what you want — but rather, you’re left with a lot of hurt, resentment and disappointment.
The Rumbling Volcano of Resentment
So what happens when we have an anxiously attached person not being very proactive about voicing their needs, while simultaneously having unrealistically high expectations of their partner and the relationship? Those unmet needs begin to pile up, creating a mounting hurt and pressure under the surface of the “don’t-rock-the-boat” facade.
The tension between Team “I can't cause a fuss because this person will leave me” and Team “all of my unvoiced needs are going unmet” becomes increasingly acute. And from that state of stress springs the story that your partner doesn’t care, that they don’t love you, that you’re the one doing all the work, that you’re always giving and caring and supporting and they never reciprocate.
Eventually, this inner storm will reach boiling point — a moment where it all comes to a head. Often this will be in response to something really disproportionate, but because you’ve been brewing in emotional hurt and tension behind the scenes, it takes on a whole new magnitude. For example, your partner might be 10 minutes late for dinner and you erupt into a huge outburst about how they don’t respect you, how they don’t care about you, how selfish they are, how you can’t do this anymore, and so on.
The Quest for Reassurance
So why would the anxious person behave like this when they so value the relationship?
Well, in the mind of the anxiously attached person, these criticisms are designed to elicit reassurance from their partner. By shouting “You don’t even care about me!”, they’re hoping their partner will jump in with “Of COURSE I care about you, you’re the most important thing in the world to me!”.
Sometimes that works (if you have a very patient and very secure partner). But more often than not, it doesn’t — and instead, you will be met with defensiveness and shutdown. Because here’s the thing: if you attack someone, they will defend themselves. It’s like a reflex. If someone throws a soccer ball at your face, you’re not likely to stand there calmly and allow yourself to be smacked in the nose. You duck. You cower. Same goes for emotional attacks.
And of course, if your partner defaults to defensiveness instead of giving you the reassurance you were seeking, your distress only intensifies — because now you feel like they are abandoning you when you need them most.
The Pendulum Swings Back
Obviously, this isn't a very nice dynamic. If you’ve experienced it, you’ll know how very out of control it feels. Even in the moment — a part of you knows it’s not a very good strategy, and yet you feel so desperate and so scared that you don’t have any other tools at your disposal.
So what happens next? Well, usually around this point — when the anxiously attached person is becoming increasingly inconsolable and their partner is becoming defensive and disengaging — the anxious person’s switch flips and they start to panic that the relationship is under threat. That tussle we spoke of earlier between needing the relationship to be secure and all the other needs, swings back in the other direction. The need to smooth things over and repair the rupture trumps all the other grievances that the anxious person was so troubled by moments earlier.
Typically, this comes at the expense of an actual productive repair conversation. Rather, the anxiously attached person will seek to appease and apologise and grovel, saying things like “I don’t want to fight with you, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said those things”. They basically give up all the other needs so that some semblance of harmony can be re-established.
Unfortunately, this is a band-aid solution. It may bring down the heat temporarily, but the underlying issues remain and will bubble away until the cycle repeats and the next rupture occurs. And what’s worse, is that the dynamic reinforces the anxiously attached person’s story that it’s unsafe to express needs and emotions to their partner.
The Path Forward
This kind of conflict pattern is very damaging to relationships, and will typically end in the relationship falling apart — either by parting ways, or becoming so disconnected and disengaged that you might as well not be in a relationship at all. There's so much fear and threat baked into that dynamic it's simply not sustainable — or desirable, frankly.
Both people have to take responsibility here. But for the anxious person, your work is to take some responsibility for identifying your own needs, and voicing them proactively.
Now, that’s not going to be easy or comfortable — your inner voice will tell you it’s not safe to have needs, to be difficult, to be demanding. That if you’re not “easy” and low maintenance, they’ll leave you.
But here’s the thing: 9 times out of 10, that’s a fear story that you’ve created in your head. And in the unlikely scenario that someone were to walk away after you expressed a need, then I would query whether that’s the kind of relationship you want to be holding onto.
Secure relationships are about healthy interdependency. That means you are both responsive, attuned to and interested in each other’s inner world.
What’s Underneath Your Complaints?
The first step for the anxiously attached person is to start identifying their needs — which in itself can be a challenge, when you are so accustomed to tending to others’ needs and prioritising their comfort and emotional stability.
If you do struggle with knowing what your needs are, a really great starting point can be to examine the things you often complain about. Almost always, when we look underneath a complaint or criticism, we will land upon a need or desire. For example, if you frequently pester your partner about the amount of time they spend on their phone, you might be needing more presence, connection and quality time. If you get really angry at your partner when they don’t answer their phone or call you back, you might be needing greater reliability and clearer communication.
When we flip the complaint and find the need or desire, we’re much more likely to get what we want. Asking someone “Would you be open to us having a regular phone-free date night?” is going to be received with so much more openness and enthusiasm than “Can you get OFF your phone for once? I’m right here and you’re just ignoring me”. Because as previously mentioned, if you lead with the complaint or criticism, you’re going to be met with defensiveness.
You also have to be prepared for the possibility that you might get some pushback. Interdependency is about meeting in the middle. It's about compromise. And that means finding a rhythm and a balance that works in your relationship.
Learning to Meet Your Own Needs
In addition to getting better at asking your partner for the things that you need, part of your work as an anxiously attached person is learning how to meet some of those needs yourself (or looking outside of the relationship).
As we’ve talked about, for the anxiously attached person, the relationship typically takes up your whole field of vision. Part of your growth edge is therefore to expand your field of vision to take in other things — to build out the pillars of your life so that the relationship is not the only thing propping you up. This is key to becoming a more resilient and well-rounded person. Plus, it carries the added bonus of taking some pressure off the relationship meeting all of your needs, which will be in service to you to your partner and relationship.