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

In romantic connections, the presence of a secure attachment style offers the highest potential for sustainable love and happiness. Interestingly, even if only one partner has a secure attachment style, the relationship still has an equal likelihood of success.¹ If you desire to set your romantic life up for long-term happiness, love, and joy, then spending time developing a secure attachment style will serve you and your partner, or future partner, well.

Studies indicate that 55 to just over 60% of the adult population has a secure attachment style.^2,3That’s good news for everyone. It means that you have a good possibility of meeting a partner that can create sustainable love with you. At the same time, we also see how common it is for those with the less secure attachment styles to date and mate with each other. In this case, their relationship will improve if they each, or even one of them, chooses to heal their attachment patterns. 

It’s also worth noting that If you’re currently single and don’t have a secure attachment style, you have, right now, a great opportunity. If you choose to take this time to shift your attachment patterns, the changes within you will attract and create a very different relationship next time. 

In this article, we’ll first explore the meaning of secure attachment style. After that we will outline the characteristics of this attachment style, followed by how to develop one. Finally we’ll conclude with the positive impact a secure attachment style has on romantic relationship relationships.

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What is a secure attachment style?

One of the three primary attachment styles, secure attachment style is the healthiest, most integrated, and hence, obviously, the most “secure” of the types. To give the concept of secure attachment style meaning we went directly to those who originally named the styles in relationships. In their book Attached, Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller describe those with secure attachment style as follows, “They’re attuned to their partners’ emotional and physical cues and know how to respond to them. Their emotional system doesn’t get too riled up in the face of threat (as with the anxious) but doesn’t get shut down either (as with the avoidant).”⁴

The Attachment Project further describes those with this style, “People who have developed this type of attachment are self-contented, social, warm, and easy to connect to. They are aware of and able to express their feelings.”⁵ 

Secure attachment style can develop in childhood through nurturing and supportive parenting and environment. It can also be developed as an adult through the healing of the other less secure attachment styles, most commonly anxious or avoidant.

Before we look at how to develop a secure attachment style as an adult, let’s consider some of the characteristics of this attachment style so that you can recognize it in yourself, in your partner, or in a date or potential partner. 

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Signs of secure attachment style

As you’ll see here, the traits of secure attachment style tend to mirror the types of qualities many people generally seek in romantic partners. This makes sense because as we know, the presence of secure attachment patterns increases the likelihood of happy and lasting partnership.

Secure attachment style traits:

1. A comfort with sovereignty and unity. With secure attachment someone can consistently and genuinely dance between the opposite poles of freedom and connection, avoiding neither, seeking neither. They are as comfortable with closeness and intimacy as they are with alone time and space apart.

2. They’re comfortable in their own skin. They know they’re worth and feel no need to settle nor abandon themselves in favor of love. They have no need to prove their lovability nor pretend to be something they’re not.

3. No fear of rejection, abandonment or engulfment. Because of their secure relationship with themselves and with life, those with this attachment pattern have fewer relationship fears. They don’t fear losing themselves in partnership nor do they fear their partner leaving them.

4. Interdependence. In relationships with secure attachment we find a healthy balance of independence and dependence, which we call interdependence. The partners choose to depend on one another while at the same time not expressing neediness, nor an avoidance of their needs.

5. Healthy boundaries. Because of the secure relationship with themselves, someone can set conscious and supportive boundaries that honor themselves, their partner, and the relationship.

6. Trust. A secure attachment style allows for a natural flow and embodiment of trust. The person can trust themselves. They can trust life and they can trust others. 

7. Inner peace. The style brings with it contentment with life and resilience with its challenges. Combined with the capacity for trust, you’ll find an absence of hypervigilance in a secure attachment style.

8. Help. Secure attachment allows for the willingness and ability to both ask her help and receive it. This person has no guilt, no shame, nor fear of inadequacy in their authentic needs for help.

9. Emotional consciousness and availability. A secure attachment style empowers someone to remain in conscious relationship with their emotions as well as the emotions of their partner. Emotions are allowed to flow freely without being dramatized.

10. Empathy without enmeshment. Similarly, their emotional consciousness allows this person to attune and empathize with a partner’s emotions while remaining unthreatened by the presence of those emotions. This securely attached person can stand distinct from their partner’s experience, not taking on, feeling responsible for, or getting enmeshed in the other’s emotions.

11. Self-awareness. Similarly, this style allows someone to be in conscious relationship with themselves. They recognize their weaknesses and so-called flaws as much as their strengths and brilliance. They don’t fear their greatness nor their imperfection.

12. Honor and self-respect for others. The deep relationship that a person with secure attachment style has with themselves, allows them to honor, embrace, and respect those around them in much deeper ways.

13. Conscious conflict. With this style, they neither avoid nor ignite conflicts. They can stay with the upset in themselves and their partner, in a way that allows for true resolution.

14. Authentic self responsibility. Similarly, in upsets, those with secure attachment style take authentic personal responsibility. They remain conscious to neither overtake responsibility, as those with an anxious attachment style might do, nor undertake responsibility, as those with avoidant attachment style might.

15. Dependable. Amir and Heller described those with secure attachment style as reliable, consistent and trustworthy.⁶  

As you can see from the characteristics of secure attachment style, those people, and those relationships, that have this style allow both partners to soak in more presence of peace, love, and possibility.

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How to build a secure attachment style

Now that we know what secure attachment style looks like, let’s explore how to create a secure attachment style in yourself. 

Maybe you’ve already sensed this, and the first and most important steps of building a secure attachment style rest on having a strong relationship with yourself combined with the capacity to see the world, and people, as generally benevolent, and therefore safe and trustworthy. With that being said, the personal and direct path to building a secure attachment style will depend on the unsecure style from which you’re starting, likely anxious or avoidant.

Let’s look at the specific steps that apply in most cases to building a secure attachment style.

1. Build a strong relationship with yourself. Yes, attachment styles are about relating to others, and yet when we feel insecure, inadequate, unworthy or not enough, it becomes nearly impossible to feel or trust the love of another. While none of us are perfect, if we are human (and if you’re reading this, you are 😉 ), then we are completely lovable. The first step on the journey is to discover that and feel your lovability despite your flaws, mistakes, and imperfections.

2. See others as trustworthy. In other words, rewrite your internal scripts, both conscious and unconscious, about how safe / unsafe others are. While no one will ever show up perfectly in life or love, most people have deeply positive intentions and have deep commitments to and for love. Most people are not looking to smother nor are they looking to abandon those closest to them. Ultimately we all want love and we all make mistakes in it. That doesn’t make relationships or love unsafe. A strong relationship with you allows for grace and security when others make mistakes with you. As you realize these truths, little by little you’ll see that you can trust others and the world.

3. Develop the ability to stay present by resolving old hurts. As we’ve said, others around us will behave unconsciously at times. However their unconsciousness does not require us to react. Responding consciously versus unconsciously gets much easier with a secure attachment style. When someone shows up in their own human, messy unconsciousness, if you have healed your attachment wounds, you will find yourself much more able to stay present without overreacting, without grasping for connection, or withdrawing and shutting down in separation.

4. Embrace the fact that we all need help. Whether masculine or feminine, male or female, we all need help at times. Our partnerships, especially our romantic partnerships, are meant to support us. Again, this isn’t about developing dependence. It is, however, about feeling confident and secure enough in yourself to lean in and ask for support or help. It may help here to understand the difference between having needs and being needy.

5. Develop a healthy view of relationships. Seeing relationships as partnerships where two people choose to be interdependent and rely on one another without losing their sovereignty, can change everything. Know that you can each make mistakes, clean them up, and still be ok individually and together.

6. Understand the role of masculine and feminine dynamics. When we understand the role of masculine and feminine energies in romantic relationships, we will see that they explain both the need for sovereignty and the need for unity. Consciously relating to these energies within ourselves, within our partner, and between us in relationship helps us to develop comfort with both closeness and distance. We must have both for healthy and sustainable relationships and love.

Depending on how deeply your patterns, or your partner’s patterns, of un-secure attachment run, it can take some time to develop a secure attachment style. In many cases, you may want, as an individual or as a couple, to seek support from a therapist, coach, or community who works with both self-love and romantic love. We absolutely need both forms of love in sustainable partnerships and marriages.

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The impact on romantic relationship

We began exploring this in the earlier sections and let’s take a moment to really look at how someone with a secure attachment style positively impacts a romantic connection, whether dating or in long-term union.

As we’ve mentioned, secure attachment style in a relationship increases the likelihood that the couple can sustain that partnership. That relationship stands on more solid ground and has the capacity for much more happiness. The sustainability and solidity stem from the capacity that a secure attachment style person has for conscious conflict, conscious communication, and conscious emotional expression.

Amir and Heller also tell us that one partner with a secure attachment style can help move the other partner who might have an anxious or avoidant attachment style toward more secure bonding. One of the ways they do this is through what Amy and Heller called their “ability to buffer.”⁷  This means that in the presence of a partner’s unconsciousness or projection, the secure attachment style partner can remain clear about their own responsibility and their partner’s projection of responsibility. This means that they have an ability to maintain conscious presence in upsets, which in turn keeps potentially triggering experiences from escalating.

As you can see, both partners and the relationship benefit from the well-being of the securely attached partner.

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As we conclude, if you suspect that you or your partner could develop a more secure attachment style, you’re invited first to begin to understand the attachment patterns that you personally run. You might have more of an anxious attachment style, more of an avoidant attachment style, or in a few rare cases, a combination of both. It doesn’t matter where you start, just start. Get help if you need it. 

We can of course do things on our own, and the question we must ask ourselves is how long do we want to wait before we can enjoy a secure relationship. Getting help and being in a community almost always significantly accelerates the process. Help doesn’t mean you’re weak. It doesn’t mean you’re not smart. It might just mean you’re efficient, effective, and yes, courageous.

Last but not least if you’re used to the drama and intensity of the less secure attachment styles, meeting someone and forming a relationship with a secure attachment style partner might feel unnerving, and even boring according to Amir and Heller.⁸ Do not let this deter you. The pathway to ecstatic intimacy is rooted in a secure attachment style, even if it seems less passionate in the beginning.

Here’s to healthy, sustained, and  ecstatic, relationships… 

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Since 2006 conscious men and women have chosen Ecstatic Intimacy to find and cultivate true love and sustainable partnerships, while also fostering their mastery of the yin and yang of relationships (masculine and feminine).

If this is your time, we’d love to quickly connect.

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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. 132 ↩︎
2. The Attachment Project. “What is Secure Attachment?” 2 July 2020, updated 3 June 2025. https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/secure-attachment/  ↩︎
3. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/compassion-matters/201307/how-your-attachment-style-impacts-your-relationship. Firestone, L. Ph.D. 30 July 2013.  ↩︎
4. Levine, A., & Heller, R.  p. 131 ↩︎
5. The Attachment Project. “What is Secure Attachment?” 2 July 2020, updated 3 June 2025. https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/secure-attachment/  ↩︎
6. Levine, A., &. Heller, R. p. 131 ↩︎
7. Levine, A., & Heller, R.  p. 132 ↩︎
8. Levine, A., & Heller, R.  p. 96 ↩︎