Attached

by Amir Levine M.D & Rachel Heller M.A

A few years ago, our close friend Tamara started dating some one new: I first noticed Greg at a cocktail party at a friend's house. He was unbelievably good-looking, and I found the fact that I caught his eye very flattering. A few days later we went out for dinner with some other people, and I couldn’t resist the glimmer of excitement in his eyes when he looked at me. But what I found most enticing were his words and an implicit promise of togetherness that he conveyed. The promise of not being alone. He said things like “Tamara, you don’t have to be home all by yourself, you can come and work over at my place,” “You can call me any time you like.” There was comfort in these statements: The comfort of belonging to someone, of not being alone in the world. If I’d only listened carefully, I could have easily heard another message that was incongruent with this promise, a message that made it clear that Greg feared getting too close and was uncomfortable with com mitment. Several times he’d mentioned that he’d never had a stable relationship—that for some reason he always grew tired of his girl friends and felt the need to move on.