You know that feeling you get when you anxiously wait by the phone for days after an amazing first date or the rollercoaster of emotions you go through when your lover didn’t text you “right back?” What if I told you that you’re not completely cuckoo and how you respond in situations like these can be traced back to your childhood? When someone you're interested in doesn’t show up or communicate consistently, it can be triggering AF. We begin to play out all types of scenarios in our heads. These feelings of abandonment can be linked back to our relationship with our parents in our formative years. I present to you: attachment styles.
Attachment styles are characterized by different ways of interacting and behaving in relationships. During early childhood, attachment styles are developed based on how children and parents interact. Many psychologists believe that our adult personalities are unconsciously planted in our childhood experiences. The way we relate to others is believed to have been established in our very first relationships—typically with our parents.
Our attachment style is thought to be based on how well our parents met our emotional needs in early life, as a result, we developed social coping habits that determine our interactions. The concept of attachment styles emerged throughout the 1960s and 1970s from the work of John Bowlby, who studied infant responses to their mothers’ leaving and babies’ reactions upon return. The theory suggests that the emotional bonds between mothers and infants influence emotional bonds in adult intimate relationships.
Sex and Attachment Styles
In adulthood, attachment styles are used to describe patterns of attachment in romantic relationships. Understanding the push and pull of the dating world is made a million times easier once we understand how we relate or "attach" to others. Attachment styles can be a useful tool in helping us understand why we feel and act the way we do in relationships. There are four attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant, and fearful-avoidant/disorganized) that predict how we show up in relationships.
Understanding our attachment styles can also be extremely beneficial in predicting how we show up in our sex lives as well.
Sex With an Anxious Attachment
Individuals with the anxious attachment style are fear-driven. They are the ones who worry about their partner leaving, falling out of love, or finding someone “better.” They also tend to seek approval and make decisions based on making the other person happy as a perceived way of keeping them from leaving. Anxious types usually have lower self-esteem and carry a fear of abandonment with them into many of their relationships. This low self-esteem often translates to the bedroom as well.
Anxious types often overthink their partner’s actions and sometimes get caught in obsessive thoughts, so sex can actually be overwhelming for them. Even though anxious types crave intimacy and fear abandonment, they often struggle to actually reach true intimacy because they rarely show their authentic selves.
They are so preoccupied with trying to please the other person that they struggle to let who they are shine through. These individuals are also more at risk for STIs, sexual assault, romantic obsession, and compromises in their sexuality, such as allowing people to cross previously set boundaries, or not being clear about their need for self-protection.
Adene Sanchez/Getty Images
Sex With an Avoidant Attachment
Unlike those with anxious attachment, avoidant types have higher self-esteem and don’t look for outward approval, but have difficulty trusting people or asking for help. Avoidant attachment folks are uncomfortable with opening up out of fear of becoming emotionally close to people, especially romantic partners. They avoid intimacy and therefore tend to pull away from people who want to be intimate with them. Because the avoidant type finds intimacy uncomfortable, they are great at compartmentalizing sex as something that is purely physical.
Avoidant attachment individuals also use sex as a way of avoiding conflict or emotional conversation within a relationship. One study found this attachment style to have poor communication when it comes to discussing sex with a partner. Having conversations about sex requires a level of vulnerability and emotional intimacy and they avoid that at all costs. Avoidant attachment types are less interested in long-term relationships and may act impulsively when it comes to sex. They are more likely to seek casual sex out of fear of intimacy.
Sex With a Fearful-Avoidant Attachment
Fearful-avoidant, or disorganized, attachment is the combination of anxious and avoidant attachments so they basically have a hard time trusting partners and operate out of fear in their relationships. Similarly to anxious attachment, fearful-avoidant types long for intimacy but fear it. They fear abandonment and rejection from their partners, but their fear causes them to sometimes pull away or close themselves off.
When it comes to sex, individuals with a fearful-avoidant or disorganized attachment struggle with low self-esteem and sometimes don’t feel they’re deserving of love and intimacy. This can lead to a back and forth of wanting to keep a partner from abandoning them, but then pushing them away if they ask for intimacy because of the belief they aren’t deserving of it.
They often look to sex to meet their needs of feeling loved, but they may seek out sex that lacks emotional intimacy as a way of avoiding it. This type longs for sex within the context of a long-term relationship, but their negative beliefs of themselves often keep them from pursuing this. Individuals are less likely to connect on an intimate level. They may steer clear of demonstrating affection or responding to a partner’s needs. Sex, therefore, is more of a transactional experience, removed of its emotional intimacy, and serving personal needs such as stress relief.
LaylaBird/Getty Images
Sex With a Secure Attachment
People with secure attachment have the healthiest levels of trust within relationships and find peace in being intimate with those they trust. They often have high levels of self-esteem and a high sense of self-worth. They can appreciate affirmations and assurance from their partners, but they don’t feel the need to use this validation as the foundation for how they feel about themselves.
When it comes to sex, securely attached people feel comfortable in who they are and can enjoy sex in the present moment. They don’t find their minds becoming as preoccupied with trying to keep their partner interested, and they feel as though they can pursue intimacy comfortably.
Whether they’re engaging in sex in a committed relationship or casually, secure types feel a strong sense of who they are that allows them to fully enjoy the moment and communicate with themselves and those they have sex with.
It’s easy for people with secure attachments to obtain intimacy. They can respond to a partner’s sexual preferences without compromising on their own needs and desires. They often have a confident approach to sexuality, allowing for exploration and play that fosters longevity in a relationship. Their secure sense of self allows them to express their emotions with others and facilitates emotional bonding.
How to Develop a Secure Attachment Style as an Adult
Not everyone is secure with themselves or in the bedroom, but that doesn’t mean you can’t develop a secure attachment over time. Even if you didn't have an upbringing that fostered a secure attachment style and you have an anxious or avoidant attachment style, it's still possible to develop a secure one as an adult. Access your current attachment style and its effects on your current relationships and develop emotional awareness of how you feel about yourself.
The first step to having a secure attachment style is to actively work on the relationship you have with yourself. Work on healing from past traumas or negative experiences in therapy. Therapy can assist with helping to purge toxic relationships and build healthy habits that will give you the necessary tools to help you be more secure in relationships.
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for daily love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Featured image by svetikd/Getty Images
RELATED
While speaking to xoNecole, Eva shares that she’s a lot like the beloved 1994 character in many ways. “Lyric is so me. She's the odd flower. A flower nonetheless, but definitely not a peony,” she tells us.
“She's not the average flower you see presented, and so she reminds me of myself. I'm a sunflower, beautiful, but different. And what I loved about her character then, and even more so now, is that she was very sure of herself.
"Sure of what she wanted in life and okay to sacrifice her moments right now, to get what she knew she deserved later. And that is me. I'm not an instant gratification kind of a person. I am a long game. I'm not a sprinter, I'm a marathon.
America first fell in love with Eva when she graced our screens on cycle 3 of America’s Next Top Model in 2004, which she emerged as the winner. Since then, she's ventured into different avenues, from acting on various TV series like House of Payne to starring on Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Je-Caryous Johnson Entertainment
Eva praises her castmates and the play’s producer, Je’Caryous for her positive experience. “You know what? Je’Caryous fuels my audacity car daily, ‘cause I consider myself an extremely audacious woman, and I believe in what I know, even if no one else knows it, because God gave it to me. So I know what I know. That is who Je’Caryous is.”
But the mom of three isn’t the only one in the family who enjoys acting. Eva reveals her daughter Marley has also caught the acting bug.
“It is the most adorable thing you can ever see. She’s got a part in her school play. She's in her chorus, and she loves it,” she says. “I don't know if she loves it, because it's like, mommy does it, so maybe I should do it, but there is something about her.”
Overall, Eva hopes that her contribution to the role and the play as a whole serves as motivation for others to reach for the stars.
“I want them to walk out with hope. I want them to re-vision their dreams. Whatever they were. Whatever they are. To re-see them and then have that thing inside of them say, ‘You know what? I'm going to do that. Whatever dream you put on the back burner, go pick it up.
"Whatever dream you've accomplished, make a new dream, but continue to reach for the stars. Continue to reach for what is beyond what people say we can do, especially as [a] Black collective but especially as Black women. When it comes to us and who we are and what we accept and what we're worth, it's not about having seen it before. It's about knowing that I deserve it.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Feature image by Leon Bennett/WireImage
Fortunately, five simple words have simplified my dating process and ushered in clarity faster: “Would my husband do this?”
A couple of years ago, I met an entertainment lawyer who was tonguing down a twenty-something-year-old woman for breakfast while I slurped my green smoothie and chomped on a flatbread sandwich. Okay, Black love, I grinned and thought as I sauntered out of the Joe & The Juice. As soon as I stepped down from the front door, a torrential downpour of Miami summer rain cascaded and throttled me back inside to wait out the storm.
I grabbed a hot green tea and vacillated between peering out the wet door and anxiously checking my watch. My lengthy agenda started with attending the Tabitha Brown and Chance Brown’s “Black Love” panel, and I was already late. That’s when the lawyer introduced himself to me, after he made a joke about neither one of us wanting to get soaked by the rain. His female companion had braved the storm, leaving us to find our commonalities.
We both lived in L.A. and had traveled to the American Black Film Festival to expand our network. He represented various artists, including entertainment writers, while I was working as a writer/creative producer in Hollywood.
While there is no shortage of internet advice on how to strategically meet a prominent man at conferences, if I spend my hard-earned funds on career growth, I have tunnel vision, and that doesn’t include finding Mr. Right. So, I stowed his contact details away as strictly professional.
Keep It Cute Love And Hip Hop GIFGiphyAs the humidity and mosquitoes were rising around L.A., two months later, another suitor-turned-terrible match cooled off after three unimpressive dates and a bevy of red flags. I posted what some of my friends called a thirst trap, but it was really me wearing a black freakum jumpsuit with a plunging neckline to my friend’s 35th birthday soiree despite feeling oh, so unsexy and bloated on my cycle.
I’d been waiting to post a sassy caption and finally had the perfect picture to match: “You not asking for too much, you just asking the wrong MF.”
That’s when the entertainment lawyer swooped into my DMs and asked me to dinner. I was quite confused. Is he asking me on a date? Or is this professional? Common sense would’ve picked the former. Once it clicked that this would in fact be a date, I told my mentor, who’s been happily married for over twenty years and has often been a guiding light and has steered me away from the wrong men.
Upon telling him about how we met, he emphatically stated, “He ain’t it.” He followed up with a simple question, "You have to ask yourself: Would my husband do this? Would you tell others that you met your husband, tonguing down another woman, and later married him?"
Aint It No Way GIF by UFCGiphyOuch. The thought-provoking question cleared any haze. Prior to going out with the lawyer, the first thing I inquired about was the woman.
“You saw that?” He said, taken aback that I’d witnessed his steamy PDA. Surely, anyone with two open eyes peeped him caressing her backside as he kissed her in the middle of the coffee shop.
He brushed her off as a casual someone he’d gone on a couple of dates with but had since stopped talking to. He said he hadn’t been in a serious relationship in over three years. Though I was still doubtful, dating in L.A. is treacherous and ephemeral. Making it past three months is considered a rarity.
With my antennae alert, I dined with him at a cozy beachside steakhouse restaurant where we were serenaded by a live jazz band. I’d emphasized forming a platonic friendship first.
Break Up Friendship GIF by TLCGiphy“I’ll come to you,” he obliged. I liked that he had made me a priority by driving over 50 miles to see me. I also liked the effort he made to check in with me daily. But I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that he initiated on a professional pretense and then alley hooped through the back door on a romantic venture, which bombarded me with confusion.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my dating life, God is not the author of confusion; any man who brings confusion, rather than clarity, is simply not The One. It doesn’t matter how many boxes he checks–eventually, that confusion will manifest itself into bigger problems, in time.
After diving into deeper conversations on the phone, post our first dinner date, I quickly realized this man was indeed not The One for me. But I’m grateful for the valuable lesson I learned.
I don’t expect some unattainable fairytale of a husband; we all have our own flaws and conflict is inevitable, but after dating for two decades, through failure and success, I’ve realized that the person I ultimately marry must mirror the values I exert into the world. He must reciprocate kindness, patience, and respect. He must be quick to listen and slow to respond. He needs to be forgiving and trustworthy, practice healthy communication, and be a man of his word at the bare minimum.
If I’d had “Would my husband do this?” in my toolbox when I was dating and floundering in stagnant relationships, in my twenties, it would’ve saved me a lot of precious time. But now that I’m equipped with the reminder, it’s allowed me to ground myself in my non-negotiables and set/maintain the standard for the special person, I’ll one day say, “I do,” to.
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Featured image by stockbusters/Getty Images