Bonus content for my Honors Students! (Patreon)

How does your attachment style affect your happiness?

Did you know that people with avoidant attachment styles say they don’t value affectionate touch in their relationships as much as other attachment styles, but it turns out that regardless of attachment style, more intimate touch from a partner is associated with greater life satisfaction and more positive thoughts and feelings. And, the fact that they engage in less affectionate touch with their partners seems to be at least part of the reason people with avoidant attachment *also* report experiencing lower overall psychological wellbeing and general life satisfaction. Fascinatingly, touch is slightly less beneficial to avoidants’ wellbeing and positive emotions *when* they are told to engage in touch, and they get more benefit when the touch is their idea (Jakubiak & Feeney, 2016). The authors suggest that people with avoidant attachment should practice their own mindfulness of the ways they might unconsciously create physical distance from their partners. We’ve all heard “correlation is not causation” before. However, Scientists can use statistical modeling to test the “why” behind a correlation using a mediation analysis. So, here, scientists found that people with avoidant attachment report lower overall wellbeing at least PARTIALLY *because* they are avoiding physical touch that would be otherwise beneficial to them, even if they find the idea of it a little icky. To my pleasant surprise, this study of 2000 people included a few transgender and non-binary individuals in their experiments, as well as 12% homosexual couples :)