Marissa’s Reviews > Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love > Status Update

The key to finding a partner who can fulfill those needs is to first fully acknowledge your need for intimacy, availability, and security in a relationship—and to believe that they are legitimate. ‘Can this person provide what I need in order to be happy?’

These behaviors & strategies can also cont long after your partner has gone. This is part of what heartache is all about—the longing for someone who’s no longer avail to us when our biological & emotional makeup is programmed 2 try 2 win them back. If ur rational mind knows u shouldn’t be w. this person, ur attachment system doesn’t always comply. The process of attachment follows its own course & schedule.

Protest behavior is any action that tries to reestablish contact with your partner and get their attention. There are many ways that protest behavior can manifest itself, anything that can jolt the other person into noticing you and responding to you.
Excessive attempts to reestablish contact, withdrawing, keeping score, acting hostile, threatening to leave, manipulations, or making them feel jealous.

- an anxious feeling that goes away only when you are in contact with them.
- believing this is your only chance for love
- believing that even though you’re unhappy, you’d better not let go

Activating strategies: thoughts and feelings that compel you to seek closeness with your partner

- thinking about your mate, difficulty concentrating on other things.
- remembering only their good qualities.
- putting them on a pedestal: underestimating your talents and abilities and overestimating theirs.

Once activated, they are often consumed with thoughts that have a single purpose: to reestablish closeness with their partner. These thoughts are called activating strategies. These are any thoughts or feelings that compel you to get close, physically or emotionally, to your partner. Once they respond to you in a way that reestablishes security, you can revert back to your calm, normal self.