Some people navigate dating with ease, while others get caught in cycles of worry, withdrawal, or mixed signals. At the root of these patterns may lie something called attachment style—the way they learned, often in childhood, to relate to those close to them. Attachment styles act like an internal script, guiding how close people feel with others, how much they trust them, and how they experience love. This raises an intriguing question: Can life events—like entering a new relationship, moving in with a partner, or facing illness—rewrite this script and change attachment styles? And if they do, are these shifts lasting, or do people eventually return to their familiar patterns?
A team of researchers took on these questions, and their findings reveal some fascinating insights.
What Are Attachment Styles?
Attachment styles can be seen as mental frameworks that influence how individuals feel and behave in relationships. They stem from experiences seeking closeness and support from significant others, particularly early caregivers, and vary depending on how responsive and available those caregivers or partners were (Bowlby, 1969/1982).
Research has identified three main attachment styles: secure, anxious, and avoidant (Ainsworth, 1978; Ainsworth et al., 2015). People with a secure attachment style generally feel comfortable with intimacy and have positive expectations in relationships. In contrast, people with an anxious attachment style often worry about rejection and crave closeness, while those with an avoidant attachment style may feel uncomfortable with intimacy and prefer to maintain distance.
Attachment styles play out in familiar relationships, such as those with romantic partners, but also influence how individuals interact with new people. Research shows that these patterns shape many aspects of social life, from managing conflict to self-disclosure and caregiving (e.g., Collins & Feeney, 2000; Mikulincer & Nachshon, 1991; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003).
From casual dates to lasting love.
Source: Barbara Egin, used with permission
The Case for Change
Since attachment styles play such a big role in our relationships and social lives, you might wonder: Can they actually change? Research suggests that while attachment styles guide us through life, they are not necessarily set in stone (Gillath et al., 2016).
In a study published in 2021, Dr. R. Chris Fraley and his colleagues explored whether certain life events—like starting or ending a relationship, job changes, moving, or dealing with health issues—could actually reshape people’s attachment styles, and if so, how enduring those changes might be. Analyzing data from 4,920 participants who were assessed about once a month for up to three years, the researchers were able to track shifts in attachment styles before and after 25 different life events.
If you had to guess, what do you think they found?
Temporary Versus Enduring Changes
Fraley and his colleagues found that about half of the life events examined were linked to immediate changes in attachment styles. For example, entering a new relationship was associated with a significant decrease in attachment anxiety. The magnitude of these changes varied, with some events prompting larger shifts than others. However, for most people, attachment levels tended to revert to their pre-event trajectories over time, suggesting that these changes were typically short-term adjustments.
Interestingly, about a quarter of the life events studied did lead to lasting changes, suggesting that some experiences leave enduring marks on a person’s attachment style. For example, experiences like having a serious argument with a partner affected attachment avoidance in ways that differed from what was predicted before the event.
Interpretation Matters
Another intriguing finding of the study is that the effects of life events on attachment styles are highly individual—people do not all respond in the same way. For instance, while getting married did not lead to enduring changes in attachment anxiety for the average person, some individuals became more anxious than their premarriage patterns suggested, while others became less anxious.
A key factor in explaining these differences is how people perceived their life events—whether they saw them as positive and rewarding or stressful. For most events, the more positively people perceived them, the more likely they were to shift in a secure direction (becoming less avoidant or anxious), and these shifts were often both immediate and lasting. For some events, there was even a “fan effect” (Fraley et al., 2021), where negative interpretations of events led to increases in attachment styles, while positive interpretations led to decreases. For example, among participants separated from their partners, those who viewed the separation negatively experienced enduring increases in attachment anxiety, while those who interpreted the event more positively often experienced decreases in attachment anxiety.
Attachment Essential Reads
In addition, Fraley and his colleagues found that positive interpretations of events often moderated the extent of enduring change. The more positive and rewarding individuals perceived an event, the more likely they were to experience enduring decreases in attachment anxiety and avoidance following the event.
What to Take From These Findings
The findings by Fraley and his colleagues underscore that, while attachment styles are somewhat stable, they are also responsive to significant life events—and, importantly, to how individuals interpret those events. This suggests that by consciously reshaping your perspectives on life’s challenges and milestones, you may be able to influence how you connect with others and, over time, cultivate more positive and secure relationship experiences. In other words, your attachment style is not a script you are bound to follow forever. Even challenging situations, if perceived favorably, can foster a greater sense of security in your relationships.
This blog post was written by Chiara Alina Förster, who is a doctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Janina Larissa Bühler at the University of Mainz. Her research focuses on the interplay of life experiences and personality.
