are you available? or attached?

Long ago, I wrote a post entitled “are you available?” Back then, I was musing about whether or not the people I was meeting and encountering were truly available to be in a relationship with me.

I’ve recently learned of a new way of viewing this idea… You see, I had the opportunity to indulge in a free audiobook called “Attachment:  The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find — and Keep — Love” by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. While I’m not all the way through yet, I’m already planning to buy the book in print, so that I can take the assessments and use it as a workbook or manual. In addition to quizzes of sorts, I’ve already found a great deal of useful advice, as well as enormously useful insights that would likely have prevented most — if not all — of my worst relationship debacles, including the latest disaster.

(Downton Abbey helps, too, I find…if I’d known how to manage men as Lady Mary does, I’d probably be better situated at present.)

The book focuses on three degrees or styles of attachment:  the secure and two types of insecure, anxious and avoidant. It’s been fun to listen to the audio as I recall past relationships and how my or my partner’s behaviors have fit into these types or dynamics. I already feel infinitely wiser as I embark on my search… in fact, now I know what I’ve typically been drawn to and how to recognize right away those who are clearly avoidant, or unable to meet my emotional needs.

Let me know if you’ve read it and what you learned.