Love Attachment Styles and Longevity

Love attachment styles and what it means in longevity.

I recently saw a post showing statistics about how much time you spend with yourself and other people throughout your life span.

First, it shows that the longest relationships throughout the course of your life that you have is with yourself. Meaning you have to really cultivate a loving relationship with yourself otherwise you will be unhappy.

The second one is with your partner. Basically, you will spend more time with your partner than with your children, friends and colleagues. This is for those who choose to be in a partnership, of course.

If you spend a lot of time with yourself and your partner throughout your entire life, those two relationships have to be worked on in order to be happy as you get older.

The Science

One of the longest-running studies on happiness, shows that the Number 1 thing that helps us live longer and happier, is good relationships.

Furthermore, not only does the science prove it, we feel it on a deep level too. When we are in love with ourselves and our partners, we feel unstoppable. When we are in a fight with our loved ones or in an unhealthy relationship, we feel the stress. It bleeds into all areas of our lives.

My Personal Story

For me personally, marriage is the hardest area in my life. I have to work really hard on it. It does not come natural to me at all and I have to really make an effort each and every day.

I come from a lot of trauma. Both of my parents traumatized me in one way or another. They were not safe caregivers and did not show me what real healthy love is.

My baseline and what I was role modeled: love is scary, love is conditional, love is not safe, love is unpredictable and you can be abandoned and hurt at any moment. Protect yourself at all cost.

As a result, I formed a disorganized love attachment style. Which is the hardest one of them all because it is both anxious and avoidant. I also married and attracted a partner who has a disorganized love attachment (we attract the same level of trauma and healing in partnerships). Which makes our marriage extra hard, but we are making it work because we both love each other so much, are aware of our traumas and how it shows up in our marriage. Well, at least most of the time we are aware, not all of the time.

Let’s break down the love attachment styles and then talk about how to move forward in order to have a healthy loving partnership, therefore, adding quality years to our lives.

Love Attachment Styles

• Secure
  • Can trust fairly easy
  • Attuned to emotions
  • Communicates directly
  • Cooperative and flexible behavior in relationships
  • Comfortable with intimacy
  • Comfortable being close and being alone
  • Can regulate emotions and feelings
  • Empathetic and compassionate
• Anxious
  • Deep fear of abandonment
  • Clingy behavior
  • Sensitive nervous system / highly emotional
  • Hungry for validation
  • Feels insecure in relationships
  • Fears being alone
• Avoidant
  • Intimacy is uncomfortable
  • Difficult to trust
  • Don’t believe their needs can be met in relationships
  • Emotionally unavailable
  • Preferring to be alone and rely on themselves
  • Difficult to ask for help and be vulnerable
  • Disconnected from their needs
• Disorganized
  • Unpredictable or intense relationship patterns
  • Desperately craves affection and avoids it all cost
  • Dire need to feel loved by others and reluctant to develop a close relationship
  • Difficulty regulating emotions
  • Increased risk of violence in relationships
  • Heightened sexual behavior
  • Lack of empathy
  • Tendency to dissociate
  • Negative self-talk and self-image
  • Unresolved trauma

Oooof as I type this, I just had this sense of “ugh no wonder it’s so hard to love me.” Even after years of work on myself! My heart is obviously still bruised after the abuse and feeling like I was never seen by my parents for over 20 years, so here we are.

How To Move Forward

No matter which one you are, you can heal and create secure attachment habits.

1. Healing the relationship with yourself: Create healthy habits, understand your needs, and prioritize yourself. This will help you fall in love with yourself, learn who you are, and realize all of the wounds that need to be healed. The more you feel complete with yourself, the less of a need to have somebody else complete you. The more you can communicate, the more of a loving relationship you can have with others. There is a balance though. Doing too much work on yourself and not balancing out with prioritizing your relationship, can start to show up as avoidant attachment behaviors.
   • The Live Well Longer Membership helps you do just that. It teaches you about meditation, mantras, nutrition, exercise, boundaries, habits, breathwork and how to master yourself and your mind which then helps tremendously in partnerships.
2. Therapy: I always recommend therapy. Specifically trauma therapy. I did a lot of talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy and I didn’t feel like it did much for me at all. Individually and as a couple.
   • EMDR changed the trajectory of my life and how I started to show up in my marriage.
3. Mantras: Mantras if you have an anxious, avoidant or disorganized love attachment (I am literally telling myself this at the moment, the work never ends LOL), for when you start to feel those low self-worth feels or thoughts:
   • “God has chosen me”
   • “My soul finds joy in God”
   • “I love myself”
   • “I am perfectly made by God”
   • “God sees me”
4. Communicate: Have those hard conversations that you are scared to have the most. No matter what you think their reaction will be (unless it’s violent then that’s another conversation). If done respectfully and lovingly, you can say anything you want to say to have your needs met. You are only in charge of your feelings and how you react, not anyone else’s. I used to be so scared of communicating because I didn’t want to upset anyone (childhood trauma). Now, I’m like if I don’t communicate, it’s going build up inside of me and explode in a very unloving way. It doesn’t do anyone any good.
5. Vulnerability: It’s okay to be vulnerable. It is okay to share your deepest fears. Think of the worst case scenario and then ask yourself, “so what?” Everything will always be okay in the end.
6. Parents: If you are a parent, ask yourself, what kind of love attachment do I want my child to have? Embody those qualities because our children are constantly watching and learning.

Lastly, learning about love attachment styles and which type of attachment I had, gave me so much insight about myself and how I needed to heal. I hope it does for you too.

Until next time!

Xoxo,

Alejandra at Living Well Co.