In a recent study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers discovered intriguing connections between partners’ feelings of attachment insecurity and their marital satisfaction and stability. The study found that the interactive dynamics of both partners’ attachment insecurities can significantly predict the future of their marital satisfaction and even the potential dissolution of the marriage. This suggests that understanding each partner’s attachment style could be crucial in fostering more resilient relationships.
Attachment theory posits that humans have an innate need to form strong emotional bonds with others. According to this theory, the nature of the bonds established in early childhood, particularly with caregivers, influences an individual’s emotional and social development. This foundational relationship forms an “attachment style” — a pattern of expectations, emotions, and behaviors that affects interpersonal relationships throughout life.
Among the various attachment styles that researchers have identified, anxious and avoidant attachments are two that significantly impact adult relationships. Individuals with an anxious attachment style often fear abandonment and may doubt their worthiness of love. They typically exhibit high levels of emotional expressiveness, neediness, and a strong desire for intimacy, but they also experience intense fears that their partners may leave them.
Those with an avoidant attachment style value their independence to an extreme, often equating intimacy with a loss of autonomy. They tend to pull away emotionally when a relationship becomes too close or intimate. Avoidantly attached individuals often dismiss the importance of relationships and may avoid deep emotional connections with others.
The researchers conducted this study to examine how these attachment styles interact within romantic relationships, particularly marriages. Prior research has shown that attachment insecurity — both anxious and avoidant — can negatively affect relationship satisfaction and stability. However, the dyadic nature of romantic relationships suggests that the interaction between partners’ attachment styles could play a crucial role in determining the relationship’s trajectory.
“I am broadly interested in how the characteristics that both couple members bring into their relationship can dynamically interact to influence both of their outcomes,” explained study author Sierra D. Peters, a doctoral candidate in social psychology at Florida State University.
“I think sometimes people assume that particular traits or individual differences are inherently harmful (e.g., neuroticism = bad) or beneficial (e.g., agreeableness = good), but a lot of my work (and others’ work) suggests that it’s not quite that simple. How one partner’s traits influence the relationship often depends on the traits of their partner.”
“Attachment orientations are such an important individual difference (‘from cradle to grave’), and so I was really interested in how the association between one partner’s attachment and their relationship outcomes might crucially depend on their partner’s attachment.”
To tackle these questions, researchers pooled data from five longitudinal studies involving 539 newlywed couples. Data collection occurred initially and then at regular intervals—every four to six months—over a span of up to three-and-a-half years, depending on the specific study. This periodic assessment helped capture the dynamics of marital satisfaction and any changes over time.
The researchers found that both forms of attachment insecurity — attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance — individually had negative effects on marital satisfaction. This was consistent with previous studies, where higher levels of these insecurities were generally associated with lower satisfaction within marriages. However, the more novel aspect of the findings was how these insecurities interacted between partners.
Specifically, Peters and her colleagues found significant interactions between the attachment styles of the spouses. For couples where both partners exhibited high levels of attachment insecurity (whether anxiety or avoidance), there was a marked decrease in initial marital satisfaction. Over time, this low level of satisfaction led to steeper declines in how they rated their marriage quality, which in turn significantly increased the likelihood of the marriage ending in dissolution.
On the other hand, in couples where one partner’s attachment insecurity was buffered by the other’s security, the negative impact on marital satisfaction was less severe. This suggests that a partner’s attachment security can mitigate the detrimental effects of insecurity in their spouse, providing a form of emotional support or stability that prevents the downward spiral often seen in doubly insecure relationships.
“Although attachment insecurity is associated with poor relationship outcomes like lower satisfaction and an increased likelihood of divorce, our research shows that the synergistic combination of both partners’ attachment insecurities determined the extent to which such effects manifested in a particular relationship,” Peters told PsyPost. “Specifically, for individuals with higher attachment insecurity, their partner’s attachment security helped buffer both couple members from negative outcomes, at least to some extent.”
Interestingly, the findings highlighted specific dynamics between different combinations of attachment styles. For instance, relationships where one partner had high attachment anxiety and the other had low avoidance (or vice versa) tended to fare better than those where both partners were high in either anxiety or avoidance. This supports the idea that a secure attachment style in one partner can act as a protective factor, not just buffering the partner’s insecurities but also contributing positively to the relationship’s resilience.
“It was really interesting to see that whether the interactive effects were consistent with a weak-link or buffering pattern depended on the particular combination of attachment, with combinations involving attachment anxiety in both partners following a weak-link pattern and combinations involving attachment avoidance in one partner and attachment avoidance in the other partner following a buffering pattern,” Peters explained.
“Thus, couples in which one partner experiences higher attachment anxiety may inadvertently undermine their partner’s lower attachment anxiety, leading to worse outcomes for both of them. In contrast, a partner relatively low in attachment anxiety (or avoidance) may be able to successfully quell the attachment concerns of their relatively more avoidant (or anxious) partner, leading to better outcomes for both of them.”
But the study, like all research, has limitations. “Despite the longitudinal nature of these studies and our control of neuroticism, all data are correlational and thus we cannot speak to causal effects of attachment on relationship satisfaction or stability,” Peters noted.
The study opens several avenues for future research.
“First, I am hoping to continue exploring the dynamic interaction of both couple members’ individual differences beyond attachment orientations, such as benevolent sexism, sociosexual orientation, and personality traits,” Peters said. “Second, although attachment is a relatively stable construct, I am also interested in examining how attachment orientations might change within and between relationships, due at least in part to interactions between couple members (e.g., conflict, communication, support provisioning).”
The study, “Own and Partner Attachment Insecurity Interact to Predict Marital Satisfaction and Dissolution,” was authored by Sierra D. Peters, Andrea L. Meltzer, and James K. McNulty.