01/21/2026
This is an epidemic.
What is often labeled “anxious attachment” in one partner is frequently a reactive response to the inconsistent emotional availability and “vulnerable presence” of the other. When a partner is sometimes present, warm, and vulnerable, but at other times distant, closed off, or emotionally unpredictable, it creates a “hot and cold” dynamic that triggers anxiety, confusion, and a frantic need for reassurance, mimicking a deeply rooted anxious attachment style.
It’s not always a true anxious attachment, but rather anticipatory attachment anxiety which is totally different. Anxious attachment is characterized by behaviors or impulses coming from fear even if no fear is present. This can include hyper vigilance, jealousy, codependency, a frequent need for reassurance (every day), mood changes depending on a partners and struggles with trust.
Secure people can react in anxious ways and often can be dubbed “anxiously attached” in counseling scenarios and this oversight comes into play often when the other partner can explain themselves but are not connecting emotionally and vulnerably.
It’s then very easy to mistake the anxious tendencies as irrational, but even those who are secure can develop anxious attachment as a result of emotionally inconsistent or unavailable partner. Often it’s not out of malice, rather the avoidant tends to struggle with emotional presence and feelings, so they often talk around them, distance themselves, shut down or intellectualize their emotions.
This leaves all the emotional weight on one partner and this imbalance long term is what breaks relationships. It dismantled trust and interdependence which healthy relationships need. Relationships where one partner (or both) avoid feelings, shut down during emotional conversations and show up physically but not mentally starves the relationship of the nurture it needs. You cannot have and build a healthy relationship without mutual vulnerability, emotional safety, presence and attunement, especially in harder conversations and tougher times.
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