People are always talking about power in relationships. People usually agree that the person who does the chasing has less of it, but lately, I’m not so sure. There are many different ways to assume autonomy over situations in one’s love life. There are likewise many different subtle ways of being emotionally unavailable. 

Defining one’s attachment style has been popular lately in the Gen-Z zeitgeist. Understanding how you love, and why you are attracted to certain things, can help contextualize your feelings. 

With psychological validation, and maybe reflecting on childhood experiences, a person can better recognize why they are the way they are and even begin to notice and resolve certain problematic patterns. 

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The two primary insecure attachment styles are anxious and avoidant. The avoidant attachment style is notoriously — sometimes detrimentally — nonchalant. 

Central to this style is a fear of commitment, or perhaps a fear of anything long term, serious or vulnerable. Avoidants sabotage relationships or refuse to get too close to someone. The potential for heartbreak is simply too painful. 

Anxious attachment, on the other hand, is characterized by a desperate longing to win the desire of another — it’s marked by self-sacrifice, difficulty setting boundaries and often intense, all-consuming crushes. 

Questions like, “Why aren’t they calling me back? What can I do to make them like me? Do you think about me as much as I think about you?” may all be familiar to an anxious attacher. 

Despite the ardent dedication to love, and the seemingly perpetual, determined pursuit of romance, in a perverse way, anxious attachment style breeds just as much emotional distance as avoidance. 

Anxious attachment isn’t just a painful crush or disproportionate feelings, it’s a practice of power — an ironic form of self-preservation. 

Because anxious attachers often associate a relationship with fulfillment, love becomes this monumental goal, and those who offer the promise of said love become the subject of tremendous idealist projection. I think of the Richard Siken quote here: “Love for you is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.”

In forming larger-than-life crushes on often avoidant people who fail to reciprocate their feelings in the same way, anxious attachers become so focused on having their affection returned that important questions become eclipsed. 

For example, what about this person is actually appealing? What do you like about them other than the fact that they offer you a challenge to complete? In essence: Do you want love or do you merely want proof that you are lovable?

Anxious attachers aren’t so much ready for a relationship as they are ready to fantasize about one. In chasing a feeling rather than a person, and allowing that person to stand in as a mere representation of said feeling, this attachment style purposefully keeps love at an arm’s length. 

As painful or as agonizing as anxious attachment may feel, those who practice it feel only a false, protected layer of vulnerability. 

In aspiring to emotionally unavailable partners, or else partners not interested to the same extent, anxious attachers are safe. The relationship they are fighting for usually isn’t real; otherwise, they wouldn’t have to fight so hard for it.  

The anxious attacher maintains autonomy over the situation because it is entirely a result of their efforts. They’re also free to project whatever fantasies they wish, thus leaving true romance at a comfortable distance.

In the same way that avoidants fear the potential for heartbreak that lies beyond true intimacy, anxious attachers may fear the opposite: getting everything they want only to realize it isn’t what they wanted at all, only to realize that a fantasy offers more idealistic romance than an actual relationship.

There is so much love to be found when one stops fighting for it. Maybe spend less time asking why someone doesn’t like you and more time asking if you truly like them. 

While it is easy to get caught up in a dream or spend our time fantasizing about what could be versus what is, I urge any insecure attachers to try and get out of your own head.

In the end, the most meaningful relationships, the most lasting fulfillment, will find us not when we are agonizing over potential, but when we focus on surrounding ourselves with the people who feel like coming home.