On Attachment

#202: How Attachment Styles Influence Friendship Dynamics

• Stephanie Rigg • Season 1 • Episode 202

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We don’t often talk about how attachment dynamics play out in friendships — but if you’ve ever felt anxious, hurt, or overly invested in a friend who seemed to be pulling away, you’ll know just how triggering these relationships can be.

While attachment theory was originally developed to explain the infant-caregiver bond and later applied to romantic relationships, many of the same fears, patterns, and protective strategies show up in our platonic relationships too — especially when they carry emotional significance.

In this episode, we’re exploring how different attachment styles can impact the way we relate to our friends, why friendship ruptures can feel just as painful (if not more so) than romantic ones, and how to navigate these dynamics with more clarity, compassion, and self-respect.

🔥 Save 40% on my Healing Anxious Attachment course for 72 hours only! 🔥

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Speaker 3:

You are listening to on Attachment A place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships, and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge, and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I, I'm your host relationship coach Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here.

Speaker:

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about how attachment styles show up in friendships, Which is actually a topic that's been requested more times than I can count. So I'm finally getting around to recording an episode on this, which I think is really something, probably the topic of friendships more broadly is one that doesn't get enough attention, and yet is something that a lot of people have a really hard time navigating. the focus tends to be so much on romantic relationships and yet. Friendships can be messy and friendships can bring up a lot of stuff and insecurities and fears and all of the things. So I'm hoping that in today's episode, I can speak to some of those challenges and offer some insights so that you can better understand how you experience friendships, the things that you might be struggling with and, and how you might approach that going forward in a way that feels a little bit more secure and grounded and empowering. Before we get into today's episode, a couple of quick reminders, if you haven't already checked them out. I've released recently a couple of free trainings, one on how to heal anxious attachment, another on healing from a breakup. So those are both really great resources if you're struggling with either or both of those things, and you're looking for. More support, a bit of a roadmap, understanding yourself, understanding what the next step might be. I really encourage you to check out those and my other free resources, all of which you can check out on my website. second quick announcement is just a reminder about my upcoming London show. There are still tickets available if you're interested in coming along. it's gonna be a lovely intimate event. I'll be giving a talk. then there'll be a time for q and a and meet and greet and it'll be lovely and casual and intimate. and I would love to see you there if you're someone who listens to the show, likes my work and you're based in or around London. Come and spend a Saturday with me in a room full of like-minded others. would absolutely love to have you there. Okay, so let's talk about how attachment styles show up in friendships now, I just wanna frame the discussion a little at the outset and acknowledge that attachment theory as a body of work is not about friendships. It was originally developed in the context of infant caregiver relationships, and subsequently, many decades later, was adapted to apply to adult romantic relationships, which is obviously the primary focus of my work and is what a lot of people associate with attachment theory in its modern form. But friendships were not really within the contemplation or the parameters of attachment theory. that being said, I think when we zoom out a bit and take a broader look at the purpose of attachment theory and the core teachings, we're really looking at the insecurities that we may carry, the wounds and burdens that we have around relationships and the ways that we've learned to cope with those things, the protective strategies that have sprung from those wounds that we've become habituated into, that we reach for, as a way to try and prevent that pain from happening or respond to that. So I think when we take that more fluid and flexible lens, which is really my preferred way of teaching about attachment in any case, and is more influenced by parts work and, and other frameworks. We can see that, of course, the patterns that play out in our relationships can and do absolutely show up in other meaningful relationships, including friendships. So while attachment theory and attachment cells uh, you know, not originally about friendships. I think we can certainly apply it there, by extension and use it as a basis to form insights and understanding. So with that as the framing, I wanna talk about how each of the insecure attachment styles might show up in friendships, what you might experience, the things you might struggle with, and, and how that might play out. So anxiously attach people in friendships, as in romantic relationships are likely to be the, the person who is more invested, who's, putting in a lot of the effort to sustain the relationship. There might be a perception of imbalance and lack of reciprocity. Like you are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. You are always the one reaching out. You are the one maybe seeking for more contact, more emotional depth, more connection. you always feel like you are closing the gap, you are reaching, and. That might both stem from and elicit feelings of unworthiness, feelings of rejection. People don't like me. insecurity generally taking things very personally. So if someone's a bit distant or busy or canceling plans, you might be very deeply hurt by that and assume that you've done something wrong. feel like they must not like you. All of those sorts of things. I think a fear of, being excluded or not belonging is a really big one for anxiously attached people. So we can go to great lengths to try and prevent that from happening. whether it's by trying to get close to people and keep them close, people pleasing, trying to fit in, all of those things. or, you know, if we're feeling excluded, if we're feeling left out, desperately trying to figure out what's gone wrong, what we've done, and trying to, to undo it, trying to repair. what can happen, and I think that this is quite a common one I've seen this quite a lot amongst students in my healing attachment program, is that I. You might find yourself in friendships with people who are more avoidant. Again, we can see the yin and yang coming together as we do in romantic relationships, and your desire for more depth, and maybe your tendency towards feeling hurt or rejected or neglected. If someone isn't putting as much effort into the friendship as you are, then, you respond to that by wanting to have a conversation, wanting to tell them about, your disappointment. You might then be met with someone's resistance or disinterest or almost like their impatience to hold space for that, to have that level of depth. and so that can further deepen the hurt and the sense of, not being important to someone, not being a priority. so you can see that everything that I'm describing here, there are a lot of parallels, in. The dynamics that can play out here, as compared with romantic relationships and, for anxiously attached people. I'm sure a lot of what I'm describing, will be familiar there. If we move over to a more dismissive avoidant look at friendships, What you're likely to see is someone who maybe has a lot of friends, but they're quite surface level friendships. So, kind of low maintenance. not a lot of emotional depth, not really relying on each other for much, maybe it's casual social, you can send them a message to go and get a drink or, catch up for something, go to a show together. you might have a lot of like activity based friends or people that you catch up with casually. and so the dismissive of what it might look like, someone who's really popular and has a lot of friends, but they're less likely to have emotional depth in their friendships. And that's probably by a preference, that suits them quite well because they don't then feel engulfed by their friendships. They don't feel this excessive reliance from other people that they don't really know how to hold or, that. Then feels imbalanced to them because they know that they're not gonna rely on the other person in turn. so it feels like it's all going in one direction. so those sorts of like easy kind of distant casual friendships are likely to work really well for someone with dismissive avoidant patterns. and as I said, there is a likelihood that, the other side of the coin that if someone's too emotionally intense, they're likely to have a bit of a reaction against that. feel like that's more than they're willing to give. and they might distance themselves from a friend who is asking more of them than they're willing to give by way of emotional depth or reliance. Someone with fearful avoidant patterns, is likely to sit somewhere in the middle, as is often the case, but with their own unique challenges as well. So the fearful avoidant in friendships is likely to value depth, but maybe also have casual friends as well. They can kind of straddle that, whereas someone who's more anxious is unlikely to want shallow casual friendships in large part, the fearful avoidant craves that depth. But with that comes a level of vulnerability that can lead to friction and even conflict. And I think something that. A lot of fearful avoidance will experience is friendship breakups. so they might have a really deep friendship and it feels really intense and they feel really connected. and then there's some sort of implosion and because they experience oftentimes like a sense of betrayal or when trust is broken that they just wanna get so far away from that, and maybe they have shame about how they acted in it all. So they might just draw a line under it and, not talk to that person ever again kind of thing. So, having that volatility around friendships, that simultaneous, depth, but then also distance if something goes wrong or if there is some sort of rupture or perceived betrayal or disappointment. that's often there for someone with more fearful avoidant patterns. So that's sort of a bit of a lay of the land on what attachment style. Can look like, uh, as they play out in friendships. One thing that I did wanna note is, while for some people your attachment style and patterns will be very much a continuation of what you experience in romantic relationships. Meaning if you're anxious in romantic relationships, you might be similarly anxious in friendships. For others, you might be really anxious in romantic relationships, but more avoidant in friendships. and if that's you. That's fine. It's not something, you know, people always say like, is this possible? What's wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with you. It just means that you fear different things in different places and, you respond in different ways. So, all of that is part of the, the messy reality of our layered experiences of relationships as humans. The ways that we've learned to cope with that. but I did just wanna acknowledge that it's not necessarily going to be exactly the same in those different types of relationships for you. same goes as a side note for family. Sometimes people will be more avoidant with family, more anxious, in their romantic relationships, or vice versa, some other combination. So some of the other patterns that we might see play out in friendships, again, we do always tend to find these balanced. Points in our relationship. So, we might have one friend who's the over functioner and one who's the under functioner, one who does all the heavy lifting and one who just follows along. one who's the caretaker and the other who's always been cared for, the rescuer and the one who's always in crisis. one who's the emotional dumping ground and one who's always offloading their stuff, uh, will often in insecure type friendships, have these imbalance dynamics that can be certainly contributed to by or, or shaped by our attachment dynamics that we see play out in other relationships. I think one of the really complicating factors when it comes to friendships, and it's kind of a blessing and a curse, is the fact that friendships are non monogamous, so to speak, whereas romantic relationships for most people, obviously not all people are monogamous. And so that exclusivity thing means that while rejection's really painful, we can sort of understand it. Whereas in friendships, if someone pulls away from us, doesn't wanna be friends anymore, distances themselves, because. There's no upper limit on how many friends you can have that can feel really, really painful. It can feel like, it's not like you can only have one friend, and so you chose someone else instead of me. you just decided you didn't wanna be friends with me because you. Don't like having me around, that can feel much more personal, because of the different nature of friendships. And so I think that can in some ways feel like more of a rejection of who we are at a fundamental level and, and can really feed those wounds around people don't like me, people don't value me, in ways that romantic relationships. We can maybe rationalize it more in the context of dating and romantic relationships if someone breaks up with us. whereas in friendships, that can really, really hurt. I think another piece around friendships that we probably don't acknowledge enough is that we have a lot of inner child wounds around friendships. Most of us will have experienced, dating back to primary school and high school, All of those fears around not belonging, around being excluded, around being left out. and so when those things get activated as an adult, it's touching into really old wounds and parts of us that are probably really young, and that have those really big fears of not being liked, of being excluded. At times in our lives where that felt incredibly vulnerable and where it felt like a survival need to fit in, in a very, contained environment of, school or other community settings where we didn't have much control over that. Even though as an adult we have so much more agency and we can, seek out friends in all sorts of different places and settings, it can touch into those really old wounds about exclusion, not belonging, not fitting in, or if you were bullied or things like that. Naturally, you are gonna have more sensitivity around adult friendships and navigating, any struggles that you have there in light of those old wounds. Again, much the same as your romantic relationships. When we've experienced struggles earlier in life, we carry those into. Our relationships. Now what do we do with all of this awareness?'cause it is a lot of awareness and there are a lot of layers, and it might be the kind of thing where after listening to this, you start processing it and metabolizing it and connecting dots and seeing patterns where maybe you weren't so aware of them before. I think that it's really important to know what we want from friendships. And the, the blessing that I was alluding to earlier of, non-exclusive friendships, meaning you can have lots of different friends, is that we don't need every friend to meet all of our friendship needs. So if you know that you're someone who looks for emotional depth and that connecting on a deeper level is really important to you, being able to pick up a phone and call someone if you're having a hard day is really important to you. Being able to. Ask someone for help if you're moving house or whatever. if like that level of, dependability and trust and reliability and emotional connection is important to you and a friend that's really good to know. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. It's, it's just part of knowing what your emotional needs are, and you don't have to get all of those needs met from every friend all the time. So you might recognize that certain friends who display some of those more avoided patterns that I was speaking to who maybe just have less. Capacity for emotional depth in friendships generally, or friendships with you. You might decide that you're okay to keep it kind of surface level and just, send each other memes or go for a coffee and talk about work or, keeping things kind of light might be okay. And, and that can still be a valid friendship. not every friendship needs to look and feel exactly the same way. and I think it's only when we. Try and depersonalize it a bit that we're maybe more able to engage with that and, and see people's capacity not as a comment on us at a fundamental level, but, but more about their capacity. so recognizing that because we can have lots of different friends, and, different levels of contact and closeness and intimacy and all of that, that we can. Be discerning around like, yes, this friendship is meeting my needs and I wanna keep investing in it. Or maybe it isn't meeting my needs and I'm gonna pull back a bit. Or maybe, I can just recalibrate my expectations of this friendship, and allow it to be what it is, rather than try to force it to be something that. It isn't. so I think that's a helpful reframe on how we think about our friendships. and certainly if you tend to be on the side of the equation where you are the one over functioning, over investing, caretaking, closing the gap, doing all of the heavy lifting to sustain a friendship, you might think about, what it would look like to reshuffle that so that it feels a bit more balanced, particularly if you notice yourself being a bit resentful, of, the, the perceived lack of reciprocity there. that's certainly something to think about. What would it look like to pull back a bit, and allow this to, to fall into a more mutual rhythm? even if that means that it's not at the level of depth or intensity that, I would prefer if it were up to me. me. A final piece that I wanna speak to is navigating conflict in friendships, because I think that, frankly, this can be really awkward for a lot of people. again, I think the tendency towards conflict avoidance in friendships is much, much higher than in romantic relationships. it's almost like there's a threshold test below which we not. Willing to to go there with friends. And maybe that's, if we are not confident that the friendship could sustain conflict and repair, if it is more casual or It feels a bit flimsy or we feel like the other person or we are not that invested, then conflict feels like a vulnerable place to go. expressing disappointment or frustration or upset, is a hard thing to do with someone that we're not like, fully committed to or that isn't fully committed to us. so there can be real vulnerabilities around conflict in friendships. That being said, I think that it's important as in any relationship, if it's an important relationship in your life to be able to. Share honestly about how you're feeling and maybe something that doesn't feel great. all of the same communication tools and guidelines that we employ in relationships apply here too. So not blaming, not accusing, taking responsibility for our own stuff, but also sharing honestly about the way we might be feeling and maybe making requests, maybe sharing boundaries. For example, if you have a friend who kind of emotionally dumps all the time and offloads all of their drama onto you in a way that feels really draining and depleting and you feel like it kind of sucks all the oxygen out of your communication and there's no space for anything else, or you don't feel like they're really checking in on how things are going for you, you might. Share that obviously in a sensitive way. but saying something like, I've noticed that a lot of our conversations recently. I mostly, you sharing stuff that's going on and I feel like it's become a bit, I balance like I'm just holding space for you and while I'm, obviously wanna be able to support you, I'd love if maybe we could talk about other things or if you'd check in with how I'm going because I've had some stuff on my plate as well and it feels like there hasn't been much space for that. those are the sorts of conversations that we wanna be able to have in our friendships because ultimately they are facilitative of greater depth and honesty and trust and connection. And, if a friendship can't survive. A conversation like that. If it can't take honest communication, then that's probably quite telling as to, the sturdiness of the friendship. So it's certainly something to think about if there are kind of ongoing points of tension or friction or frustration for you in some of your friendships, considering what it might look like to have an honest, open conversation, with that person or those people, about. What's been bothering you and, and what a better way might look and feel like from your perspective. And obviously opening it up to them as well, and inviting their perspective on, on what would feel good too. Okay. I'm gonna leave it there. I feel like I could keep talking about this for a long time, so maybe we need to have a follow up or I could get some sort of adult friendship expert on to share their wisdom as well. but I do hope that this has been a helpful introduction, at least to attachment styles and friendships and how those attachment patterns can show up in the domain of friendships, how we might navigate the various challenges that friendships can throw up. what it might look like to cultivate. Healthier, more balanced, sustainable friendships. I really hope that it's giving you something to reflect on and do let me know if you found it helpful and if you'd like me to revisit this topic or certain aspects of it. always open to your feedback and further suggestions. So, let me know. But otherwise, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks guys.