Can attachment style change: what earned security means

The short answer: it changes, but slowly. A meta-analysis of 127 studies that tracked attachment from infancy into early adulthood, retesting the same people anywhere from two weeks to 29 years later, found a correlation of about .39 between earlier and later measurements (Pinquart et al., 2013). That’s moderate stability: noticeable, but far from complete, and for many people the picture shifts over the years.

Attachment keeps moving in adulthood, too. In a study that followed the same people from adolescence into old age, attachment anxiety declined with age on average, most clearly in middle and later adulthood, while avoidance decreased gradually across the whole life span (Chopik et al., 2019). People who were in a relationship tended to be both less anxious and less avoidant.

So the more useful question is what actually moves a style. A style holds as long as experience keeps confirming it and shifts when experience starts telling a different story (Fraley & Roisman, 2019). The shift can go either way: serious losses can make someone more guarded, and good relationships can restore a sense of security.

The term comes from research using the Adult Attachment Interview, or AAI. People are asked about their childhood, and what gets rated isn’t the events themselves but how coherent and open the account is. Researchers called people “earned secure” when they described difficult early relationships with their parents yet talked about them as coherently as secure adults do (Pearson et al., 1994).

This kind of security doesn’t undo the past. In the same study, depressive symptoms above the clinical cutoff showed up in 40% of the earned-secure group and in only 10% of those who described a supportive childhood. The experience stays; what changes is how a person carries it and how they build relationships now.

There’s a caveat, though. When researchers compared adults’ accounts with observations of their actual childhoods, a childhood remembered as difficult didn’t always match what had been observed (Roisman et al., 2002). Still, people whose attachment was insecure in infancy but secure in the adult interview did go on to build successful close relationships, many of them without notable emotional difficulties.

Our test doesn’t look at your childhood story; it measures how closeness feels to you today. So it can’t tell whether your security was “earned.” What it can show is movement: if your point is closer to the secure area a year from now, something is changing.

The best-studied route to security runs through relationships. One model describes two separate processes (Arriaga et al., 2018). Anxiety eases with experiences that build confidence in yourself: being valued, having your goals supported, having your successes noticed. Avoidance eases when depending on someone turns out well: you leaned on another person, and it didn’t cost you your freedom or earn you criticism.

One good moment won’t rewrite a working model, the set of expectations you carry about closeness. It takes many small confirmations: the reply comes when promised, after a fight you both return to the conversation, a request actually gets heard. That’s why change builds up quietly and is usually noticed only in hindsight.

Research on this model mostly involves couples, but attachment plays out in friendships and families too. If you’re not in a romantic relationship right now, the door isn’t closed: with friends, you can practice new ways of asking for what you need and responding to others, and in future relationships you may recognize a familiar pattern sooner.

A review of studies that measured attachment before and after psychotherapy found that, on average, security increased and attachment anxiety decreased, across different methods, settings, and client groups. The picture for avoidance is still unclear (Taylor et al., 2015).

You don’t need a special “attachment therapy” for this. Many clinicians see the relationship with the therapist as part of the work: a place where you can be vulnerable, talk about hard things, and not regret it. That experience, too, rewrites expectations about closeness.

Therapy isn’t a requirement for change. But if anxiety or fear of closeness gets in the way of your life, has lasted for years, or is tied to painful experiences, the work usually goes more easily and safely with a professional than on your own. Look for someone you feel comfortable talking to: trusting the person often matters more than which method they use.

Without relationships or therapy, your style probably won’t shift much, but paying attention to yourself makes any experience count for more. These habits help most when you practice them regularly, not just now and then.

• Catch the moment. Anxiety and the urge to pull away kick in fast. Before you act, name what’s happening, even silently; that alone creates a pause.
• Check guesses against facts. “They haven’t replied, so something must be wrong with me” sounds like a conclusion, but it’s only a guess. Ask yourself what else could explain the silence.
• Try new things in small doses. Ask for a little help if you’re used to handling everything yourself. Hold off on conclusions if you’re used to checking right away.
• Make sense of your story. A coherent account of the past is exactly what marks earned security in the interview. Talking with someone you trust, or writing things down, can help you connect what used to feel like scattered pieces.

The processes are the same for everyone, but each style has its own main lever.

• With an anxious style, what usually helps most is a steadiness that rests on yourself and on several people, so your calm doesn’t hinge on a single reply. The steps are on the anxious attachment page.
• An avoidant style benefits from good experiences of depending on others: small requests for help that leave your freedom intact. More on the avoidant attachment page.
• For fearful-avoidant attachment, both kinds of experience matter, so change can take longer, especially when closeness is tied to pain. How to go about it gently is covered on the fearful-avoidant page.
• A secure style can shift too, after losses or painful breakups. What helps protect it is described on the secure attachment page.

So the answer to how to become securely attached looks a little different for everyone, and the best place to look for it is the page for your own style.

There’s no fixed timeline. Studies track change over months and years, and the pace varies from person to person. Promises like “change your style in a month” don’t match the data. A month is enough to get started: to notice your reactions and try the first steps. Shifts on the map usually show up later.

Change rarely runs in a straight line. A hard stretch, an illness, or a breakup can bring old reactions back for a while, and that doesn’t send you back to square one. Look at the overall direction across months, not at one bad evening. For people who have lived with strong anxiety or fear of closeness for a long time, the process may take years, and that isn’t a sign of failure.

And the goal doesn’t have to be landing in the secure area. For many people, what matters more is that fear or anxiety stops making decisions for them, and closeness becomes a choice rather than a test.

The easiest way is to compare points on the map. Take the test now and again in a few months, answering about the same relationship. Small fluctuations happen even when nothing has changed, so the direction matters more: has your point moved from the outer edge of its area toward the center of the map, or even across a line? How to read that kind of comparison is covered in our guide to ECR-R score interpretation.

There are also signs the test doesn’t measure. Fights end sooner. Asking for help feels easier. A gap in texting feels less frightening, and the urge to shut down passes before it does any damage. These small things are worth noticing too: change often shows up in them before it shows up in your scores.

If you’d like more than your own impressions to go on, ask the people close to you whether they’ve noticed a difference. They’re often the first to see that you’ve become calmer or more open.

1. 01Do I have to see a therapist?

   No. Many people become more secure through good relationships and by noticing how they react. Still, if anxiety or fear of closeness seriously disrupts your life, has gone on for years, or is rooted in painful experiences, having a professional on your side usually makes change easier and safer.
2. 02Can secure attachment be lost?

   Yes. Losses, painful breakups, and long stretches of stress can push people toward anxiety or wariness, an understandable response to hard experiences. New relationships you can rely on often bring that sense of security back, and knowing your own reactions helps you get through such a period more gently, without drawing conclusions about who you are.
3. 03Do books and courses on attachment help?

   They can help you understand your reactions and find words for them, which is a good first step. But a style changes through repeated experience, not through knowledge alone. Books work best alongside practice: try what you read in a relationship, with friends, or in therapy, and notice what happens.
4. 04What if my point hasn’t moved in six months?

   That’s normal: styles change slowly, and six months isn’t long. Look past the style name to your scores: a point sometimes moves within its area. And compare how you handle fights and silences now with how you handled them six months ago. Change often shows up more clearly in daily life than on the map.