Attached

although studies have shown that they are more likely to do so than
other attachment types. Phillip Shaver, in a study with then University of
California-Davis graduate student Dory Schachner, found that of the
three styles, avoidants would more readily make a pass at someone
else’s partner or respond to such a proposition.
But even when avoidants do stay faithful, they have other ways of
using sex to push their partners away. While people with an anxious
attachment style prefer strong emotional involvement during sex and
enjoy the intimate aspects of lovemaking like kissing and caressing,
avoidants have very different preferences. They might choose to focus
only on the sexual act itself, forgoing holding and cuddling, or to put
rules into place like “no kissing” in order to make sex feel less intimate.
Others might have sex only rarely—or never—with their partner, or
fantasize about others while doing so. (Long-term couples may use
fantasy to spice up their sex life, but they do so as a way to get closer.
With avoidants, fantasy is not part of a mutual adventure but rather a
deactivating strategy to keep them isolated.) In fact, in a study of
married and cohabiting couples, Canadian scientists Audrey Brassard
and Yvan Lussier, along with Phillip Shaver, found that avoidant men
and women had sex less with their partners than did people with other
attachment styles.
Intriguingly, they also found that avoidant men and women were
more likely to engage in less sex if their partner had an anxious
attachment style! Researchers believe that in relationships like
Marsha and Craig’s, there is less lovemaking because the anxious
partner wants a great deal of physical closeness and this in turn
causes the avoidant partner to withdraw further. What better way to
avoid intimacy than by reducing sex to a bare minimum?
What’s more, it’s been found that the anxious partner uses sex to
achieve a sense of affirmation and as a barometer of attractiveness in
the eyes of his/her mate. We can see that a clash is almost inevitable
when the anxious person ascribes so much importance to the sexual
experience and the avoidant person wants to avoid physical intimacy.
Of course there are anxious-avoidant relationships in which sex is
not an issue. In that case, the emotional detachment will take on a
different form.