Anxious Attachment Style and the Masculine and Feminine: According to Ecstatic Intimacy

Living with anxious attachment style patterns and habits often feels destabilizing, regardless of whether you happen to have that style yourself, or someone you love does. Too often the presence of this attachment style leaves one, or more commonly both, partners feeling as if they walk on eggshells. The one with the anxious attachment style doesn’t want to “screw up” and lose connection. The other feels as if their beloved’s hypersensitivity to any sense of distance, can create an avoidance in themselves – the very thing their anxious attachment partner fears most. Yet still, when the attachment style gets triggered, the partner can feel a “not this again“ response. Of course, if both partners develop a consciousness and a compassion for the anxious attachment style patterns, they can be healed through their love. 

What the anxious attachment style partner most wants to feel is safe and secure. That drives them to constantly remain on the lookout for anything that could indicate that they are, in fact, not safe and secure. It means they find it difficult to relax and be themselves. In turn, depending on their own attachment style, the partner may struggle in response to their beloved’s perceived lack of security. If the partner has a secure attachment style, they will find it much easier to flow with and embrace their beloved’s ebbing sense of security. If, on the other hand, they have an avoidant or disorganized attachment style, the two partners may continually trigger each other’s wounding. This too can be shifted.

Here we’ll start by exploring the answer to the question: what is anxious attachment style? Then we’ll continue with an understanding of what causes anxious attachment style, and how it shows up in relationships. Next we’ll address the all important masculine and feminine dynamics of an anxious attachment style and finally conclude with how to heal this painful pattern.

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What is an anxious attachment style? 

To set the foundation for our exploration, let’s start with a clear definition of anxious attachment style. In their book, Attached, Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, titled their chapter on anxious attachment style “Living with a 6th Sense for Danger.”¹ While we clearly know that all attachment styles, other than healthy secure attachment, have their roots in fear, an anxious attachment style has its roots in a fear of loss, loss of connection in particular.

That means that anyone with an anxious attachment style pattern stays alert, often hyperalert, to any threat to its sense of connection. Whenever they perceive a potential threat to connection, they automatically respond, if even ineffectively, to preserve it. They will do anything, including abandon and pretzel-twist themselves, in order to maintain the union they so highly value. Unconsciously, most anxious attachment style people believe the source of love lives outside themselves. Therefore they seek the experience of love from others through sustained relationship. So while we agree with Levine and Heller’s chapter title, we might also call the pattern of anxious attachment “Longing for Love in All the Wrong Places.”  

Going deeper, those with an anxious attachment style tend to perceive themselves through the lens of inadequacy or incompleteness. They commonly fear themselves as not good enough, unworthy and unlovable. They believe they are not whole, complete or safe in the absence of connection with another, particularly a romantic partner. Yet, they imagine and hope that if they can maintain connection with a beloved it will disprove and alleviate their internal fears. 

Yet, no other human can love us that fully and perfectly so as to never trigger our fears and wounding. This is why, if we’re seeking information on how to heal anxious attachment style, we must find a willingness to look within ourselves, because no other being can ever give us what we haven’t given ourselves. 

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What causes anxious attachment style 

We develop our attachment styles in childhood, directly influenced by our experiences with our caregivers, and our internal interpretation of those experiences. MissionConnection.com tells us that “Inconsistent caregiving is one of the most well-documented roots of anxious attachment. When a caregiver is inconsistently responsive, sometimes attentive and loving, other times emotionally unavailable, the child learns that connection is unpredictable.” ²

The unpredictability of caregivers can have many causes from their own depression or inexperience, to trauma and emotional neglect.³ Of course traumas, illnesses, and accidents of the child could also create an unexpected and painful separation. Initially for the child and then for the adult, these experiences of unpredictable and unwanted separation turn into a lack of trust in connections, and drive fears that those connections will once again be lost.

Additionally, AttachmentProject.com identifies “emotional hunger” from the caregiver as a cause of anxious attachment style. In this case, the adult caregiver inappropriately misplaces their needs for emotional support and closeness on the child. This child may then experience the caregiver as needy or intrusive rather than supportive and caring for their own young emotional needs.⁴  

The AttachmentProject.com goes on to note that many adults with anxious attachment style commonly had parents with anxious attachment style, where the patterns and behaviors get handed down generationally.⁴  

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Anxious attachment style in relationships

Now that we understand what anxious attachment style is as well as what causes it, let’s investigate what it looks like in relationships. Here we’ll explain common dynamics to expect as well as signs of anxious attachment style. These can help you recognize it as it plays out, and respond appropriately and supportively. 

To paint a picture of the inner world of an anxious attachment style person, Amir and Levine tell us what happens when an apparent threat to connection arises. “Even a slight hint that something may be wrong will activate your attachment system, and once it’s activated, you’re unable to calm down until you get a clear indication from your partner that he or she is truly there for you and the relationship is safe.”⁵ 

In our experience, a partner can absolutely offer this kind of support, indication, and reassurance – especially if they themselves have a secure attachment style. Yet it doesn’t always prove to be that easy. Levine and Heller further describe the anxious attachment person: “Once activated they are often consumed with thoughts that have a single purpose: to reestablish closeness with their partner.”⁶

This puts immediate pressure on the partner to resolve the trigger at hand. If the partners can stay aware and conscious of what’s happening, the love between them can definitely serve to quickly and effectively acknowledge and reaffirm the connection. Repeated over time, this assurance can contribute to the healing of anxious attachment style, turning it into secure attachment. However, if the two partners have not each developed their capacities for conscious communication, and even conscious conflict, this repair process becomes more challenging. 

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Relationships with Avoidant Partners

An anxious attachment style person, partnered with an avoidant attachment style person, only exacerbates the challenges the relationship faces. An avoidant attachment style person, faced with their partner’s anxious attachment style trigger and its associated reach – or shall we say “grasping” – triggers their own attachment style’s protective dynamics. This tends to cause the avoidant style partner to genuinely pull away. That retreat then drives the anxious attachment style partner to feel more desperate and grasp more. In response, the avoidant partner pulls further away. The couple ends up in a downward spiral, devoid of the love they actually hold for each other.

This demonstrates for us how much learning to consciously recognize the patterns of our attachment styles matters. We ideally need to see the signs and attend to them before fears get triggered and activated. This will serve the couple and their healing well. Interestingly, and maybe not surprisingly, we often see an anxious attachment style people paired in relationship with avoidant attachment style partners. The challenging aspects of that are obvious, yet most don’t see and capitalize on the accompanying blessing. This kind of partnership holds huge potential for healing, if both partners find themselves up to it.  

In short, self awareness and conscious compassion matter in relationships that successfully navigate both avoidant and anxious attachment style patterns. Of course, having good mentors and therapists along with healing tools and programs also make a big difference.  

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Signs of Anxious Attachment Style 

To aid in the process of navigating and healing an anxious attachment style you’ll want to be able to recognize the signs. Seeing these common signs invites you onto a healing journey – individually for the one with the anxious attachment style, and collectively as partners in a relationship. 

The signs… 

1. People pleasing – Trying to keep the other person happy so they don’t leave. 
2. Self abandonment – Making the other person’s need more important and a higher priority than your own. 
3. Lack of boundaries – Going along, at almost all cost, to keep the peace (and the connection). 
4. Over apologizing – Attempting to return to connection as quickly as possible, without resolving the real issues at hand. 
5. Insecurity around lovability and worthiness – Questioning one’s own innate value and desirability as a result of the past. 
6. Difficulty trusting love – Fearing unexpected, unpredictable loss. 
7. Wanting to do everything together – Spending time separately feels uncomfortable and risky. 
8. Getting upset with lack of communication – Interpreting quietness or slow response as an indicator that you did something wrong and your partner is upset with you. 
9. Selling out oneself rather than feeling separate  – Anxious attachment style people will seek connection over all else, especially their own needs and desires.   
10. Inability to relax and trust – Needing to stay on alert for potential threats to the connection.
11. Hypersensitive to possible upsets – Similarly, it feels important to ward off potential disconnection before it happens.
12. Co-dependency – Struggling to exist as a person independent of the relationship. 

As you reflect on these anxious attachment style traits and signs, notice that every single one of them happens and unfolds for the purpose of sustaining, or quickly reinstating, connection. 

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What triggers it? 

As we look at the signs of anxious attachment style, we can clearly see their painful and sabotaging impact on the person themselves as well as on the quality of their relationship. Now let’s identify the usually normal, and therefore unconscious, ways a partner can trigger an anxious attachment style reaction. Again the presence of these triggers can feel amplified when used by an avoidant attachment style person as protective strategies against their attachment pain. 

1. Pulling away unexpectedly – This happens normally in the course of any relationship and if the partner has an avoidant attachment style, it may happen much more frequently. This will in turn more frequently trigger the anxious attachment style partner. 
2. Not fully resolving an upset – If a couple doesn’t know how to consciously complete a conflict so that both partners feel it as truly resolved, the hyperattunement of the anxious attachment style person will leave them feeling almost constantly activated. 
3. Going to bed mad or upset with each other – Again, this can happen in any normal relationship, yet what helps an anxiously attached person is firm reassurance that they are still loved and that you will resolve the hurt feelings the next day. 
4. Lack of seeing / validation – When an anxious attachment style person doesn’t feel seen for who they are, nor validated for their experiences and emotions, it can leave them feeling distant and separated, even if the two of you find yourselves sitting side by side.
5. Criticism – The anxiously attached person has particular sensitivity to anything that might make them less desirable or lovable in their partners eyes. Criticism that isn’t surrounded by a great deal of love and affirmation can hit directly on their worst fears.
6. Reduced communication – Again, of course, this happens in relationships depending on dynamics and cycles of life. Yet, any time the level of communication decreases it will likely trigger anxious attachment style reactions. 
7. Taking alone time – Everyone, regardless of whether they are more masculine or feminine, requires alone time. Those with anxious attachment style will have less contact with that need within themselves and will often react adversely when their partner acts on their need. 

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How to handle anxious attachment style triggers

All of these triggers will likely happen in any normal, healthy relationship. They will simply appear much more problematic in a relationship with someone who has an anxious attachment style. The path to healing the anxious attachment pattern is not for the partner to avoid doing anything that might trigger that anxious reaction. That would create the walking on eggshells experience we discussed earlier and will always damage the relationship. Instead, being aware of the triggers allows us to realize when we might, or when we have triggered, our beloved. That does not mean that anything has been done wrong. It simply means the pattern is activated and is calling for love and compassion. Ideally, with love, awareness, and consciousness, the person with the anxious attachment style can tend to themselves while their partner interacts kindly with reassurance, not trying to fix anything. 

Again, this is easier when the other partner has a secure attachment style, and is much more difficult when the partner has an avoidant attachment style, or a disorganized attachment style that combines both anxious and avoidant patterns and behaviors. 

If you want to know how to love someone with an anxious attachment style, or interact with them in dating, begin by finding your own secure attachment, if you haven’t already. Then bring kindness, compassion and understanding to your partner or date’s triggers. At the same time, refrain from being overly reassuring and praising, as this may only serve to reinforce the need of the anxious person to seek outside validation. Alternatively, if either of you are personally still struggling with healing a non-secure attachment style, whatever it might be, then know that the two of you will need to remain genuinely conscious of yourself and each other in your fears and triggers. If you can stay present and meet yourselves and each other, you have great healing potential together.  

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The feminine and masculine dynamics of anxious attachment style

You might wonder, is anxious attachment style more common in men or women? According to a Behavioral Sciences article published in 2022, women more commonly experience anxious attachment while men more commonly experience avoidant attachment.⁷ We see that this directly correlates with the most common masculine-feminine dynamics in romantic relationships. 

Women commonly hold more yin or feminine energy, while men commonly hold more yang or masculine energy. It is the opposite, or polarity, nature of masculine-feminine energy that builds and sustains both attraction and passion in relationships. Most don’t realize the positive impact these opposite energies have on a relationship, nor do they realize the more challenging aspects. When it comes to understanding the masculine and feminine in attachment styles, we must first understand that yin, or feminine energy, represents and stands for connection and unity. Masculine or yang energy, on the other hand, represents individuality and sovereignty. Every human being has, and needs, masculine and feminine energy within themselves. Every strong relationship needs both yin and yang energy to remain alive and passionate over the long term. 

Typically, for most people, one of these two opposite energies feels predominant or primary in their authentic constitution or self expression while the other energy feels secondary and supportive. Some people, however, have a true balance of both yin and yang energy. Yet most do have a primary energy.

With all this in mind, it makes complete sense that because more women hold feminine energy and therefore seek connection and unity first, that they would have a higher prevalence of anxious attachment style. Similarly, because avoidant attachment style behaviors seek separation, distance, and freedom that would of course correlate strongly with masculine, sovereign, and independent energy. 

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The “battle” of masculine and feminine attachment

Again, anxious attachment style patterns, whether displayed in men or women, are driven by the feminine, or yin, energy within us. Avoidant attachment style patterns have their roots in the masculine aspect of ourselves. The feminine part of us wants to get close. The masculine part seeks its independence. If someone fears losing connection, they will over-express their feminine aspects. If someone fears losing themselves or their independence they will over-express their masculine aspects. If they fear both their attachment patterns and dynamics will be of a “disorganized” style. Hence, you can obviously see the relational problems that get presented – as well as the inherent opportunity for healing. 

We all need connection and we all need sovereignty. The feminine needs connection more than sovereignty. The masculine needs sovereignty more than connection. Therefore masculine beings will tend to pull away more, triggering and activating anxious attachment style patterns in the female or feminine partners. Simultaneously, feminine beings will tend to lean into and even grasp for connection more frequently, triggering and activating avoidant attachment style patterns in their male or masculine partners. 

This calls for healing and integration of healthy – and therefore secure – patterns of relating within all of us. Women and feminine beings can lead men and masculine beings towards a conscious and safe relationship to connection. Men and masculine beings can guide women and feminine beings toward a healthy and safe relationship to sovereignty. This understanding of the health and safety of both sovereignty and unity serves to harmonize relationships by creating both inner strength and relational resilience.

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How to heal anxious attachment style 

If you’re wondering how to fix anxious attachment style pain and patterns, the masculine-feminine interplay of anxious and avoidant attachment styles have already begun to reveal a path to healing. In either person, our anxious attachment style patterns and behaviors fall into the category of the shadow or unconscious feminine. When anxious attachment style patterns play out in men, they will tend to embody and display the nice guy syndrome, which happens when they overuse their feminine energy. In men or women, their anxious attachment dynamic will bring out the people-pleasing and self abandonment patterns of the unconscious feminine. 

To resolve the anxious attachment style patterns we are called to strengthen our relationship with ourselves. We must come to know our self worth. We must realize our innate lovability. When we do, we automatically become better romantic partners. 

At the same time, to heal anxious attachment style, we must also come to realize that we are ok on our own. We must begin to see that it’s safe to say no and set boundaries and that no relationship is worth settling, selling ourselves out, or twisting ourselves into a pretzel to keep. When we know our worth, value and lovability, when we realize true love comes from within and not from another person, we have the capacity to turn our anxious attachment style into a secure attachment style. That shift, in and of itself, will make our old relationship patterns and ways of being seem archaic and painful. We will step into healthy conscious and sustainable relationships that uplifts both partners.  

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As you explore your relationship to anxious attachment style, in yourself or your partner, be patient. Be compassionate. Be tender. Letting go of and resolving the patterns of this attachment style requires feeling safe. Development of that internal sense of safety, of trust in oneself and in life, allows and supports a shift to a secure attachment style where you no longer “need” a partnership. Instead you choose one. As this desperation and dependence on having a relationship dissolves you will find yourself able to rebuild an existing relationship in a way that feels expansive, healthy, and thriving, as well as deeply passionate and loving. If you’re single, you’ll stop settling for “better than nothing” relationships and finally choose the partner you deserve. 

We encourage you to go slowly on this transformational path of healing and to stay the course even when it gets hard. There are plenty of ways to get support to land firmly in the authentic self love and ecstatic authenticity that always transforms anxious attachment style. It just takes one step to start the journey to wholeness and security. But will you take it?

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Since 2006, highly conscious men and women, with a commitment to extraordinary relationships, have chosen Ecstatic Intimacy to find and cultivate Soul Partnershipsfrom their bedrooms to their boardrooms. Ecstatic Intimacy believes in coveted relationships, for all. 

You too, are invited…

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References: 

1. Levine, A., & Heller, R.  Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find–and keep–love. Jeremy P. Tarcher, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2010 p. 77
2. Meenai, Eilaf, MD. “Anxious Attachment Style in Adults: How it Affects Relationships and Mental Health.” Mission Connection, 9 July 2025, https://missionconnectionhealthcare.com/mental-health/attachment-disorder/anxious-attachment-style/ 
3. Levine, Hallie. “What is Avoidant Attachment?” WebMD, 17, January 2025. https://www.webmd.com/parenting/what-is-avoidant-attachment 
4. The Attachment Project. “Anxious Attachment: Causes and Symptoms.” 2 July 2020. https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/anxious-attachment/ 
5. Levine, A., & Heller, R. p. 79
6. Levine, A., & Heller, R. p. 80
7. Weber, Rainer. Eggenberger, Lukas. Stosch, Christoph. Walther, Andreas. “Gender Differences in Attachment Anxiety and Avoidance and Their Association with Psychotherapy Use—Examining Students from a German University.” Behav Sci (Basel). 2022 Jun 22;12(7):204. doi: 10.3390/bs12070204