thoughts take over, how they can stay calm and collected and assume
the other person will react positively. In fact, this attitude can be
infectious. Nancy Collins of University of California-Santa Barbara,
whose main research interests include the social and cognitive
processes that shape close relationships in adulthood and the impact
that these processes have on health and well-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