Attachment Styles at the Coffee House

Observing Interpersonal Relating Capacities in Plain Sight (Vol. 6; Issue 9)

The idea of attachment styles in adult interactions emerged from studies of mother-infant interactions in the 1950s (Bowlby, 1980abc) and has become increasingly popular with every passing decade. Contemporary psychoanalytic researchers have identified two basic attachment types: secure and insecure. Such dichotomous distinctions, like between introversion and extraversion, betray greater levels of complexity. In truth, capacities for intimate relating exist on a spectrum from competent at one extreme to inept at the other.

People with secure attachment (if they actually exist) feel comfortable with intimacy, easily trust others, and balance independence and dependence in relationships. The rest of us, victims of parental neglect ranging from inevitable to extreme, develop insecure attachment styles. These fall into three broad categories: anxious/preoccupied, avoidant/dismissive, and disorganized.

That first category, my personal favorite, features a high need for intimacy, a tendency to base self-worth on relationship status, and deep-seated fears of abandonment. Those with avoidant/dismissive qualities avoid intimacy, fear vulnerability, and tend to consider emotional dependency on others as a weakness. They prioritize autonomy and typically withdraw when relationships become too intense for them.

The third category, disorganized, is the most primitive. It results from significant childhood trauma, abuse, or neglect. Individuals with disorganized attachment styles have extreme difficulty trusting others, suffer from mood instability, and fear emotional intimacy. In their relationships, they typically display a “push-pull” dynamic characterized by a paradox: They desperately desire intimacy but equally fear it. As a result, their relationships tend to be chaotic and unstable.

Before observing attachment styles in coffee houses, consider a few presuppositions:

First, and pathetically, we live in an era that enables, if not encourages, the avoidant/dismissive style. If observing behaviors in coffee houses since, say, 2010, you’d find individuals in isolation, with vision locked into screens, hearing blocked by noise-cancelling headsets, and other senses numbed. Technology invites us to avoid the universal dilemma poetically posed by psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott (1971):

It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found.

That concise sentence captures our struggles with intimacy. On the one hand, we’d rather retreat, evading the judgment we fear when others see our vulnerabilities; on the other hand, we desperately need to be seen and understood, to have our lives witnessed. Difficult, second-by-second decisions, like determining whether we feel welcome or how long to maintain eye contact with strangers in social settings, vanish when we retreat into narcissistic oblivion.