Single and Securely Attached

People who stay single aren’t avoiding closeness

“Single people — they are insecurely attached, right?” “Don’t they have an avoidant attachment style?”

I’ve been studying single people for decades, and variations of those questions come up over and over again. People with just a passing interest in psychology seem sure that single people have “issues” with attachment. Alarmingly, so do some mental health professionals.

As I will explain, research casts considerable doubt on that disparaging view of single people. But how did so many people become so sure that people who are single are insecure? The answer to that question explains a lot.

At the end of this article, I’ll tell you about two very different ways of thinking about sources of comfort and security. One asks whether there may be advantages to turning to different people in different situations rather than looking to the same one person all the time. The other asks whether you can be your own source of comfort and security.

First, though, a word about what scholars mean when they talk about attachment.

What Is Attachment?

At first, attachment scholars were interested in the bond between an infant and the infant’s mother. Only in the last several decades have they turned their focus to the study of attachment relationships between adults. One of the most eminent attachment scholars of all time, Mary Ainsworth, described an attachment bond as one kind of affectional bond. An affectional bond, she said, is:

“a relatively long-enduring tie in which the partner is important as a unique individual, interchangeable with none other…there is a need to maintain proximity, distress upon inexplicable separation, pleasure or joy upon reunion, and grief at loss.”

Attachment bonds meet one more criterion: the attachment figure is a source of security and comfort.

Here’s how scholars from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, described secure attachment, as well as two kinds of insecure attachment — anxious and avoidant:

“People who are securely attached are comfortable depending on others as well as having others depend on them. People who are insecurely attached, however, have negative expectations about their relationships. Insecure attachment may take different forms. For example, individuals with an anxious attachment style fear rejection and abandonment, yet their cravings for closeness may inadvertently drive others away.

“On the other hand, avoidant attachment is characterized by feeling uncomfortable with closeness in relationships and a desire to maintain emotional distance. A person high in avoidant attachment would find it difficult to depend on others.”

What the Research Shows

Single people often have relationships that meet all the criteria for a secure attachment

Single people who have no romantic partner often feel strongly connected, emotionally, to other adults in their lives, such as their friends, their siblings, and their parents. It is not unusual for those relationships to meet all the criteria for genuine attachment relationships.

Here are examples of the kinds of questions that have been used to see whether single (and coupled) people have attachment figures in their lives:

· Who do you feel will always be there for you if you need them?

· Who do you turn to for comfort when you are upset or down?

· Who is it important for you to see/talk to regularly?

· Who do you not like to be away from?

A study that included more than 200 single people (people with no romantic partners), ranging in age from 16 to 68, found that single people sometimes have people in their lives they name in response to all of those questions. Sometimes they have more than one such person.

The dominant story about single people is a deficit narrative, portraying them as just not as good as those married or coupled people.

The primary attachment figure for single people was most often either a friend (37%) or their mother (37%). For others, it was a sibling (10%) or their father (5%). For single parents, sometimes their primary adult attachment figure was a grown child.

For people who do have a spouse or romantic partner, that partner is typically their primary attachment figure. In the study, that was true of 77% of the 525 coupled people. Yet even for them, sometimes their mother (8%), a friend (7%), a sibling (3%), their father (1%), or a grown child (5%) filled that role.

Scholars tried to show that single people were more likely than coupled people to be insecurely attached — and mostly failed

In another study I discussed in detail here and here, researchers seemed to have quite a dim view of single people who were likely to stay single (defined as people “not in a committed relationship for the past three or more years and not likely to become committed in the near future”). They studied 69 single people and 73 coupled people, ages 25 through 55.

Wouldn’t those single people be more likely to be anxiously attached, the researchers wondered. Agreement with statements such as “I worry about being abandoned,” was used to determine the degree to which the participants were anxiously attached.

Single people who have no romantic partner often feel strongly connected, emotionally, to other adults in their lives, such as their friends, their siblings, and their parents.

Wouldn’t the single people have a more avoidant attachment style? Disagreement with statements such as “I feel comfortable depending on others” was used to assign scores on avoidant attachment.

Surprise! The single people were just as likely as the coupled people to be securely attached. They were no more likely to be anxiously attached or avoidantly attached.

When the researchers looked separately at the women and the men, they found, once again, that the single women did not differ from the coupled women in any way. The single men did report more anxious attachment than the coupled men. But that avoidance that is so often ascribed to them? Didn’t happen. The single men were no more likely than the coupled men to feel uncomfortable depending on others.

That was just one study. It is possible that other studies will show that single people, on the average, are more likely to have an avoidant attachment style or an anxious style — or that coupled people are! What is highly unlikely to happen is for some study to find that most single people have attachment issues. Typically, in studies of relationships, many more people score as securely attached than insecurely attached.

Why Were So Many People So Sure That Single People Have “Issues” with Attachment?

The belittling view of single people that sees most of them as insecurely attached and avoiding closeness is part of a much broader set of beliefs. The dominant story about single people is a deficit narrative, portraying them as just not as good as those married or coupled people. Those beliefs are so powerful, so pervasive, and so rarely questioned that I think they qualify as an ideology that people are invested in.

Wendy Morris and I first described the Ideology of Marriage and Family in our article, “Singles in society and in science.” From our North American perspective, we identified what we saw as three key tenets:

First, just about everyone wants to marry, and just about everyone does.

Second, adults who marry are better people than people who don’t. They are worthier and more valuable. They are happier, more mature, and less lonely. Their lives are more meaningful and more complete.

Third, married people are better people because they have that one peer relationship that is more important than any other.

None of those claims are true, as I have been demonstrating in my research and writings for many years. But belief in those claims is highly consequential.

If you believe that single people don’t have the one peer relationship that really counts, then it follows that they are alone and unattached. They don’t have anyone. After all, those very words and phrases — “alone,” “unattached,” “doesn’t have anyone” — are used to refer to single people, as if they are synonyms or definitions, rather than demeaning mischaracterizations.

That way of thinking erases all the people who matter to people who are single. Ideologically speaking, no matter how close you are to someone, no matter how long you have known them, no matter what you mean to each other, that relationship simply does not count if it is not with a spouse or other romantic partner. How can you be securely attached, or attached at all, to someone who doesn’t even count?

Surprise! The single people were just as likely as the coupled people to be securely attached.

The ideologically minded are baffled by single people who embrace single life, such as those who are single at heart. The ideology maintains that just about everyone wants to marry or at least have a committed romantic relationship. Where does that leave people who want to be single? Aren’t they just fooling themselves? They are just avoiding closeness because they have issues, right?

I’ve heard those kinds of singlist arguments, and I find them condescending and regressive. That mindset is a way of pathologizing single people just for being single.

People who think that way, without giving equal credence to alternatives, are oblivious to the ways in which single life can be a full, authentic, and meaningful life. They are probably not being deliberately demeaning, but they are undercutting the lives of single people who have close relationships (including, for example, friendships that have outlasted many marriages), who are doing important and meaningful work, and who are passionately pursuing important goals such as scientific advancement and social justice. They are not getting it about the real appeal, and power, of solitude. They are being dismissive of the single people who may or may not be accomplishing anything that would meet conventional standards of great achievements, but who are living the lives they choose, even though most of them realize that other people think there’s something wrong with them — “you poor thing, you must have an avoidant attachment style.” I think it takes a lot of guts to live single when you know you are at risk for that kind of disparagement.

I’m not saying that there are no single people who have avoidant attachment styles — or anxious attachment styles. Of course, there are. I’m objecting to the pathologizing that is specific to single people, when so many coupled people have the same issues. And I’m objecting to that way of thinking when it leaves no room for single people to have healthy, secure, deep relationships — and profoundly satisfying lives.

Two Different Ways of Thinking about Sources of Comfort and Security

I think attachment scholars have made tremendously important contributions to our understanding of human psychology. And yet, when I think about what it means to have a full-blown attachment relationship with another person — you turn to them for comfort, you want to be in touch with them all the time, you don’t want to be away from them, you feel like they will always be there for you — I sometimes get a “you are my everything” kind of vibe.

It makes me wonder about how we think about people who are not securely attached to one primary person in all those ways. Is being insecurely attached really the only alternative to being securely attached?

Could there be advantages to having a variety of people in your life who are important to you in different ways? And are there people who are their own sources of comfort and security — and if so, might that actually be a strength rather than a deficit?

Turning to different people in different situations

A team of researchers wanted to know whether it would be advantageous to have different people in your life to help you with different emotions. To find out, they did a series of studies, beginning with one in which they asked participants to name someone who would be good at helping them in these situations:

· Cheering them up when they are sad

· Calming them down when they are anxious

· Calming them down when they are angry

· Sharing their happiness over good news

· Amplifying their anger

They found real benefits to having emotion specialists (“emotionships”). Even beyond what you might get out of having one or more persons you are close to, it is good to have different people to help you with different emotions.

If you and someone else have the same number of people who are close to you, and if you feel the same depth of closeness to those people, you are probably more satisfied with your life than the other person, if you have different people to help you with different emotions.

I wrote more about this intriguing research in an article with a title that captures my conclusion: “Finding ‘The One’ is Overrated: Emotionships Matter More.” Take a look if you are intrigued, too.

Can you be your own source of security and comfort?

In a small study with big implications, Carol S. Kahn talked to 14 people ranging in age from their late 40s to their late 80s who had been single their whole lives and had no kids. She asked them a series of questions relevant to attachment, including, for example, “If you got really good news or really bad news right now, what would you do?”

In response to that question, 8 of the 14 people said that the first thing they would do would be to sit with the news on their own.

After that, they reached out to all sorts of people. They often had not one attachment figure, but an attachment community — or as I like to say, not The One, but the ones. For some, their pets were important to them, too.

Kahn did not think that turning to yourself first was a deficit. Instead, she suggested that lifelong single people may have gotten to know themselves in particularly deep ways. She sees that self-knowledge not as an alternative to turning to other people but as an enhancement of the attachment process:

“The attachment community is made fuller and more meaningful by the interdependence of turning inward for self-care and connection to self with turning outward for connection to others.”

Scholars of adult attachment have focused overwhelmingly on coupled people and their attachments to their romantic partners. There is so much more to learn from people who are single.

[Want to learn more? Take a look at this collection of articles on all sorts of topics relevant to single life. Watch my TEDX talk, “What no one ever told you about people who are single.” Check out my website. Disclosure: Links to books may include affiliate links. Finally, my “Single at Heart” blog that I have been writing for Psych Central since 2011 is ending in 2020; I am updating many of those posts and moving them to this blog on Medium.]

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