Cling, withdraw, or stay calm? How your attachment style shapes the way you handle jealousy

When jealous feelings start bubbling up, we all react in many different ways. Over the past few years, John Bowlby’s ‘Attachment Theory’ quickly entered our mass culture’s pulse. From Bowlby’s studies, he concluded that there are four attachment styles that we fall into; anxious, avoidant, disorganised and secure.

Depending on what attachment style you possess, your fears of rejection will present themselves in different ways. Reflecting on ‘Attachment Theory’ is a great strategy in understanding what kind of coping mechanisms you’ve been relying on. It means you can identify your gut reaction to jealousy before it manifests harmfully.

Anxious

People with an anxious attachment style tend to fear abandonment and crave reassurance intensely. Your stomach may start to swirl when your partner doesn’t text you back quickly or answer your call. Your fears and insecurities get the better of you and your impulse is to cling as tightly as possible to your partner.

Jealous feelings quickly transform you into a worried puppy dog, not the stable secure partner you truly can be. You feel the need to beg your partner for reassurance of their love far too often regardless of what their actions tell you. Doing this hurts your partner and degrades the effort they put into your relationship.

When your head starts to spin with unease, take a moment to link back to this attachment style you’ve developed out of fear. This is a scarcity mindset where you believe this person is all you have. Clinging will only hurt your partner and yourself.

Take deep breaths, turn off the phone, and even think about the ways your partner does show you love. This may quickly show you their actions are all the reassurance you need. 

Avoidant

Avoidant people create a vast distance between themselves and intimacy. When those icky green jealous feelings arise, you run. Vulnerability feels like the enemy and your fear of rejection declares itself by building up a wall. With each brick you protect your ego and neglect your ability to love wholly.

Once your jealousy starts, you may purposefully ghost your partner and leave them on seen. You might act cold towards them or give them the silent treatment. These are all extremely hurtful acts. They don’t actually protect you from anything but only take you further away from connection.

When the urge to strike with silence appears in your view, remember that emotional distance will never bring you closer to your partner. Running away from confronting your insecurities will only make them bigger monsters. These fears may look like nonchalance from the outside, but it doesn’t take long to realise that they’re wounds.

Tell your partner the worries you’ve been having without attacking the behaviour. If you need time to yourself that is totally okay. But show them clearly that you're not running away from communication like you may have done in the past. You’re taking a breath and coming back to the worry with a calmer attitude.

Disorganised

Disorganised people move between anxious and avoidant behaviour from case to case. Your fear of rejection is scattered around and you don’t follow a pattern when it comes to jealous behaviour. You may feel the urge to spam text one day and to ghost on another.

Regardless of which coping mechanism feels right to you at the time, remember that both anxious or avoidant attachment style reactions hurt the bond in your relationship.

Your partner is holding their hand out to you, and you’re either squeezing far too tight or simply letting go. A secure attachment style caresses the hand reaching out to them with care.

Secure

Finally, people with secure attachment are comfortable with both closeness and independence. If jealousy spikes in a random moment, you calmly communicate with your partner that you may need to set a boundary for yourself. You don’t react frantically and you take the time to think about why you feel the way you do.

Secure attachment styles aren’t perfect of course. It doesn’t mean you don’t ever get jealous and fear rejection. It just means you are able to discover the roots of your insecurities quickly and effectively and then communicate to your partner.

It would be amazing if we could snap our fingers and have a secure attachment style. I mean, imagine if we could just quickly put it in our shopping carts. Unfortunately, because of past traumas and painful spots we might be inhabiting an anxious, avoidant, or disorganised mindset.

By recognising these attachment styles manifesting in our fear of rejection we can move slowly and calmly in our reactions. We can’t dictate the way we feel immediately, but we can decide the way we react.

If we aren’t currently secure, we should all be working on ourselves to move towards this type of attachment, for the sake of ourselves and loved ones. If you're anxious or avoidant, you can deal with rejection with care and consideration to react with security.