What's Your Attachment Style?

About this test

Attachment theory is one of the few genuinely solid frameworks in relationship psychology. It grew out of the work of John Bowlby and then Mary Ainsworth in the mid-twentieth century, who observed how very young children respond to a caregiver leaving and returning. Recurring configurations emerged: seeking comfort and accepting it, seeking it without being able to settle, or giving up on seeking it. Later researchers extended those categories to adult romantic relationships, where the common labels are secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganised.

Two things are worth stating plainly. First, an attachment style isn't a carved trait: it describes an average tendency in a given context, it shifts with the partner, and it changes over time and with experience. Second, most people aren't purely one type — you can be broadly secure and turn anxious with one specific person. The instruments used in actual research measure two continuous dimensions, anxiety and avoidance, rather than four boxes.

So this test is what it is: a magazine test, built on twenty very concrete relationship situations. It establishes no diagnosis, replaces no conversation with a professional, and claims nothing about your childhood. What it can do is give you a word for a habit you recognise — and that's already a usable starting point for talking about it.

How it works

Each answer maps to one of the four styles. Your result is whichever you picked most often across twenty situations: a dominant tendency, not an exclusive category, and it's common to have a runner-up that's almost as full.