ROSES ARE RED, OUR LOVE IS DIVINE... YET YOU LIKED SIX POSTS FROM "@YOGAJEN9"

This article isn’t really about Valentine's Day specifically, but let’s get it out of the way: V-Day was definitely a journey for me.  When I was a teenager, I fully bought into the Hallmarkian version: candy hearts, charm bracelets, cupid-themed cards[1], the whole cheesy shebang.

Then in my 20s, I grew this deep philosophical opposition to the whole thing: we love each other every day of the week.  We show each other that we’re special when the mood strikes us.  We don’t need no stinkin’ holiday to tell us when to appreciate one another!

And now, in my 50s, I’ve landed on: it’s just another opportunity to celebrate each other and go have fun together.  Why would I pass that up?  To have less fun in my life?  So I’m back on board.  Your journey may have been similar or different.  It’s all good.  There is no federal mandate[2].

Either way, underneath all of that Hallmark gloss is something real and primal: the human need for attachment.  And that need is not a personality quirk, or partner jealousy, or a modern effect of growing up watching too many Rom-Coms.

It is, quite literally, wired into our nervous systems.

 

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Human beings are not built to be independent, self-sufficient lone wolves. We like to imagine we are -- especially in American culture -- but biologically, we're more like extremely anxious pack animals.

Consider the contrast: a baby giraffe can walk within an hour of being born. Meanwhile, human babies spend their first year as adorable potatoes who can’t even hold up their own heads.  Without caregivers, a baby doesn’t stand a chance.  It’s completely dependent upon others for its survival.  So over hundreds of thousands of years, evolution built us with a powerful internal alarm system with one job:

Do whatever it takes to stay close to the people who keep you safe. Your life depends on it.

This is the foundation of attachment theory, first developed by psychiatrist John Bowlby (1969/1982) and psychologist Mary Ainsworth (1978). And it wasn't originally about dating. It was about those cute, dependent potatoes: babies.

 

THE “STRANGE SITUATION”

In the 1970s, Mary Ainsworth invited a bunch of Moms to come to her lab with their babies, leave the babies alone with a stranger for 2-3 minutes, and then come back.  End of experiment. The point was to test the ideas of Bowlby’s attachment theory.  How did the baby react to mom’s departure, to being in the presence of a stranger, and to her return a few minutes later?  Three distinct patterns emerged:

Some babies got upset when mom left, but were easily soothed when she returned. They clung for a moment, then went back to gurgling and playing with blocks like nothing had happened. You left. That was scary. But now you're back, and I'm okay again. These were the securely attached babies.

Other babies became intensely distressed. When the caregiver returned, they clung, cried, and didn't calm down easily. Part of them wanted comfort; another part didn't quite trust it. You left. That was terrifying. I'm not sure you can actually make this better. These were the anxiously attached babies.

And then there were the babies who barely reacted at all. When the caregiver left, they seemed fine. When the caregiver returned, they avoided contact and focused on toys instead. But this is the part that always got me: their heartrate spiked even though they looked totally chill.  They were actually stressed out the whole time but didn’t show it.  I learned not to rely on you. It's safer if I don't show my needs. These were the avoidantly attached babies.

Any of this sound familiar in your own relationships?

 

THREE MONTHS GOING ON THIRTY

If so, it’s because our attachment systems don’t simply disappear when we grow up. Instead of crying when mom leaves the room, we get anxious when our partner pulls away, forgets to text back immediately, or follows someone on Instagram. The nervous system running that old alarm doesn't much care whether we're three months old or thirty; it's working the same code (Hazan & Shaver, 1987).

I once worked with a couple -- let's call them Laura and Beth.*

Laura felt constantly vigilant in the relationship. If Beth didn't text back for a few hours, she instantly conjured up worst-case scenarios: maybe she's mad at me. Did I do something wrong?  Maybe she’s already lost interest in me.  Maybe she’s on a date with that gal from the office!  By the time Beth finally replied with something like, "Sorry, long meeting," Laura was already halfway into figuring out who got to keep their Pekinese and their friends Greg and Amy.

Beth isn’t the calm, reasonable one here in the relationship, by the way.  She’d learned her own lesson growing up: needing people leads to pressure, criticism, or disappointment.  So when Laura got upset, her nervous system didn’t realize “my partner needs comfort,” it said “this is too much for me – get out before it gets worse!”  And she’d get quiet, shut down, retreat into work or her phone. To Beth, it felt like nothing I do will ever be enough and to Laura, it felt like when I need you, you disappear.

And so the dance would begin. Laura would reach out harder. Beth would pull back further. Laura would feel abandoned. Beth would feel trapped. Round and round they went, arguing about texts and dishes and tone of voice, while the real question – the one neither of them was quite saying – sat underneath it all:

Are you really there for me?

This is sometimes called the pursue-withdraw cycle, and it's one of the most common patterns I see in couples therapy. It looks like a fight over texts or dishes or tone of voice but it never is.  It’s about fear of losing attachment.

 

INSTAGRAM FEED…S INSECURITY

It’d be hard enough just navigating relationships as it is, but social media has weaponized our attachment systems in ways that would make Mary Ainsworth sob into her research notes. The alarm system evolution built to keep us close to our caregivers doesn't know the difference between "my partner left the cave and might have been eaten by a saber-toothed tiger" and "my partner hasn't texted me back in 47 minutes but I can see they've been active on Instagram."

If you lean anxious in your attachment, social media is basically a 24/7 anxiety buffet. You can see that your partner viewed your story but didn't reply to your text; you can watch them like someone else's posts; you can notice they're online but not talking to you. You can compare your relationship to the carefully curated highlight reels of everyone else's perfect partnerships -- the beach sunsets, the surprise flowers, the couples who apparently never fight about whether you’ve come to a complete stop at the corner of Victory Blvd. and Topanga Canyon.

And if you lean avoidant? Social media offers the perfect way to stay connected without actually being present. You can "like" your partner's post instead of having a real conversation; you can maintain the appearance of a relationship while keeping everyone at arm's length; you can doom-scroll for three hours instead of dealing with the difficult discussion your partner wants to have about moving in together.

In fact, studies show that even secure people behave more anxiously when they use social media heavily in their relationships (Marshall et al., 2013; Drouin et al., 2014)!

 

DON’T GET ATTACHED TO YOUR ATTACHMENT STYLE

In the age of TikTok psychotherapy I need to pump the brakes here a little, because I don’t want anyone to take away the wrong message from this.

Attachment theory is incredibly useful. Attachment labels, however, have taken on a life of their own. Somewhere along the way, the internet got hold of them, and now people talk about attachment styles the way they talk about zodiac signs or Hogwarts houses:

"I'm anxious."

"I'm avoidant."

"I'm a fearful-avoidant with disorganized tendencies on weekends and a Virgo rising."

But attachment isn't a fixed personality type; it's not like being introverted or extroverted. It's a set of expectations about closeness that formed in early relationships.  And expectations, like all learned patterns, can change.

Think of it less like a part of your identity and more like a dance you learned as a child. If you grew up with caregivers who were mostly responsive and safe, you learned a dance where closeness felt natural. You step forward, the other person steps forward, and the music keeps playing. If you grew up with inconsistency, you might have learned a dance where you have to chase your partner around the floor, sometimes falling all over yourself in the process. If you grew up with emotional distance, you might have learned to keep a careful swath of space between you and everyone else on the dance floor, because getting too close felt dangerous.  You can’t step on anyone’s toes (and nobody can step on yours) if you’re 13 feet apart.

The good news is that we can always learn new dances.[3] New partners bring new steps. Therapy can introduce new rhythms. The music you dance to doesn’t have to stay the same.

So you are not "avoidant." You're a person whose nervous system learned that closeness was suffocating or scary. You are not "an anxious type;" you're a person who learned that people you depend on might abandon you if you don’t keep your eyes on them. Those are very different stories, but they’re stories that can be intentionally rewritten.  Or character arcs with happy endings after a montage of scenes set to “Build Me Up, Buttercup.” 

 

WHY COUPLES HAVE DUMB FIGHTS

Most couples don't actually fight about what they think they're fighting about.

They think they're arguing about having forgotten to get strawberries at the grocery store, how much to spend on vacation, whether one person is "too sensitive" or the other is "too distant." But underneath those surface topics is the same attachment question, repeated in a hundred different ways:

When I reach for you, will you be there?

The anxious partner gets louder and louder, trying to get reassurance. The avoidant partner backs away, trying to get breathing room. Each person's solution becomes the other person's problem. Both are trying to solve the situation!  But both are making it worse. Nobody is trying to be difficult. They're just following the emotional rules they learned long before they ever met each other.

In couples therapy, we work around a core idea: people calm down when they feel securely connected, not when they win arguments. This is worth repeating: being right is not the same as being happy.  Couples calm down when they can consistently have faith that their partner is emotionally there for them.

In practice, this means the partner who tends to chase learns to express fears and needs directly and vulnerably instead of acting out; the partner who tends to retreat learns to tolerate tough emotions and stay present and emotionally available instead of withdrawing. Both partners start to experience each other as a safe base rather than a source of threat.

In the best of moments, I get to watch couples go from years of mistrust and coldness to tears of understanding – not because we solved the issue of who was right in that particular fight, but because the emotional message finally gets through and gets heard. In one session, the wife (who’s Dad had left when she was a kid and never returned) said quietly, "When you walk away in the middle of a fight, it feels like I'm ten years old again and nobody's coming back for me."

And the husband, who had spent years insisting he just needed space, suddenly understood what his silence meant to her. He didn't defend his actions or try to be right, he just said, "I don't ever want you to feel alone with me."

That moment did more for their relationship than a hundred arguments about who was right.

Over time, repeated experiences of I reached for you, and you were there start to genuinely rewire the attachment system. The relationship itself becomes the healing environment.

If you want to start shifting these patterns at home, try this small experiment: next time your partner is upset, resist the urge to defend, fix, or withdraw.  Instead, try this simple sentence: “I can see this is really hard for you.  I’m here with you.”  It may feel awkward at first.  That’s normal.  It’s hard learning the steps to a new dance.

 

WHAT DOES LOVE, ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE?

Not necessarily candlelight dinners. Not grand gestures. Not perfect communication.

It looks like turning toward your partner when they're upset instead of turning away. Like saying "I understand" instead of "you're overreacting." Like repairing after a fight instead of pretending it never happened. Like reaching for each other, again and again, even when it's awkward (especially when it's awkward).

If relationships feel confusing, painful, or stuck in the same loops, you're not broken. Your attachment system is doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you from losing the people you depend on. Sometimes it just uses strategies that maybe worked in childhood but cause real trouble in adult relationships. The good news is that these patterns aren't immutable destinies. With the right kinds of conversations, and sometimes with the help of therapy, people can create new emotional experiences and more secure bonds.

Which in the end, is what Valentine's Day should really be about. Not dinner reservations. Connection.

If you find yourself stuck in the same relationship arguments, feeling too anxious or too distant, or wondering why love feels harder than it's supposed to, therapy can help. I work with individuals and couples using an attachment-focused, emotionally grounded approach to help create more secure, connected relationships. You don't have to sort it out alone.

FOR FURTHER READING on attachment in relationships, read “Hold Me Tight” (Johnson, 2008) and “Attached” (Levine and Heller, 2010).

*Composite example with identifying details changed to protect client confidentiality.

[1] Nothing says “true love” like a bald flying infant with a crossbow.

[2] Despite what the Target chocolate aisle is trying to tell you.

[3] Even that guy with the cowboy hat from Footloose learned to dance, so I don’t want to hear it.