We don't choose how we love. We learn it, long before we have any real say in the matter.

Ask someone why they keep being drawn to a certain kind of partner, or why the same difficulty keeps showing up in different relationships, and most people shrug. It just happens. Attachment theory offers a more specific answer: it happens because we learned how to love, and how to expect to be loved, a very long time ago — and most of us are still, quietly, working from that first draft.

Where attachment styles come from

As infants and small children, we depend entirely on caregivers for safety, comfort and emotional regulation. We can't yet manage big feelings alone, so we borrow a caregiver's steadiness until we can build our own. How consistently that steadiness was available — how reliably our distress was noticed and soothed — becomes, without our knowing it, a template. A working idea of what closeness feels like, what happens when we need someone, and how to keep a connection safe.

That template rarely gets examined. It simply becomes how relationships feel normal, or unsettling, or frightening, or safe — and it travels with us, largely unconsciously, into adult romantic relationships, friendships, and even the therapy room.

Four ways of relating

Attachment researchers generally describe four broad patterns:

• Secure — comfortable with closeness and comfortable with independence; able to ask for support and trust that it will generally be there.
• Anxious (sometimes called anxious-ambivalent) — a strong need for closeness paired with a persistent fear of losing it; often hyper-alert to small signs of distance or disinterest.
• Avoidant — a preference for self-reliance and emotional distance; closeness can feel intrusive or unsafe, and needing someone can feel like a risk in itself.
• Disorganised (sometimes described as fearful-avoidant) — a push and pull between wanting closeness and fearing it, often because a caregiver was, at different times, both a source of comfort and a source of fear.

Reasonable adaptations to unreasonable situations

None of these patterns, aside from security, are flaws. Each developed for a reason, shaped by how well a child's environment met — or didn't meet — their needs.

Anxious attachment often develops where care was inconsistent — warm and attentive sometimes, distracted or unavailable at others. In that environment, vigilance made sense. Watching closely for signs of withdrawal, and working hard to hold on to connection, was a sensible strategy for securing care that couldn't be relied on to simply be there.

Avoidant attachment often develops where emotional needs were consistently dismissed, minimised, or met with impatience. Learning to want less, to manage alone, and to present as fine rather than in need wasn't coldness — it was the safer, more adaptive option available at the time.

Disorganised or ambivalent attachment often develops where the caregiver themselves was the source of both comfort and fear — perhaps loving, but also frightening, unpredictable, or overwhelmed. Wanting closeness and dreading it at the same time made complete sense when closeness itself was where the danger lived.

Seen this way, none of these are character flaws to be corrected. They're reasonable adaptations to unreasonable situations — intelligent responses to the environment a person actually grew up in, not evidence of something wrong with them.

Why familiar isn't always healthy

These early patterns don't just shape how we feel in relationships — they shape who we're drawn to. We tend to find genuinely secure, steady love oddly unfamiliar, sometimes even a little dull, while dynamics that echo our early experience — however painful — can feel like home. An anxiously attached person and an avoidant partner often find each other with uncanny regularity, each one's pattern intensifying the other's, in a cycle that feels enormously significant precisely because it's so familiar.

You're not choosing badly. You're choosing familiarly — and familiar isn't the same as good for you.

Can this change?

Yes. Attachment style isn't a life sentence. Researchers call it "earned security" — the gradual shift toward a more secure way of relating, built through consistent, trustworthy relationships and conscious attention to old patterns as they arise. This can happen in a good relationship, in solid friendships, and often in therapy itself, where the relationship between client and therapist becomes a place to practise a different kind of closeness — one that's steady enough to lean on and doesn't disappear when things get difficult.

What this looks like in therapy

Much of this work is simply noticing: recognising a pattern as it plays out, in real time, rather than being swept along by it. Over time, this makes room for something new — the chance to experience closeness that doesn't require constant vigilance, or distance that doesn't require constant defence. Not a different person, but a steadier one, more able to let people close and more able to trust that closeness won't cost them themselves.

If any of this resonates, I offer both in-person sessions in Shoreditch and online sessions. You're welcome to get in touch.