being, together with Stephen Read of the University of Southern California,
who studies the neural network models of social reasoning and behavior,
found that people with a secure attachment style seem to function as
effective-communication coaches—they report being good at getting others
to open up and talk about personal things. But what happens if you’re not
secure?
IF YOU’RE ANXIOUS...
When you start to feel something is bothering you in your relationship, you
tend to quickly get flooded with negative emotions and think in extremes.
Unlike your secure counterpart, you don’t expect your partner to respond
positively but anticipate the opposite. You perceive the relationship as
something fragile and unstable that can collapse at any moment. These
thoughts and assumptions make it hard for you to express your needs
effectively. When you finally talk to your partner, you often do it in a way
that is explosive, accusatory, critical, or threatening. Rather than giving you
the reassurance you’re seeking, your partner may withdraw. In fact, Collins
and Read confirmed this in their study: Men who dated anxious partners
reported self-disclosing less often and rated their general level of
communication as lower than others. The result is that after expressing your
needs in a way that pushes your partner away (instead of using effective
communication), you then resort to protest behavior—expressing your need
for closeness and reassurance by acting out. By doing so, you miss out on
all the benefits of this powerful tool—unlike effective communication,
protest behavior never gives you the opportunity to unequivocally address
your concerns. Your partner may respond negatively, but you’re never sure
if he or she is responding to your need or to your protest behavior.
Say, for example, that you call your partner’s cell phone incessantly
because you fear he’s cheating. He decides that he’s had enough and breaks
up with you. You’re left second-guessing, wondering if you actually pushed
him away by acting so clingy or if he decided that you really just weren’t
right for him. You don’t get an answer to your original concern, which is