Attached, written by psychologists Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, is an interesting self-help book that aims to bring the reader the latest advances in scientific research on how adults tend to form emotional bonds with their partners.
The authors do a great job in conveying, in simple and understandable terms, the main scientific findings on attachment theory and its influence on adult relationships.
Attachment theory explains the way in which we establish affective bonds with other people, especially with people close to us, based on the experiences with our parents or main caregivers during the first years of life. Through these experiences we learn basic notions of the functioning of relationships in terms of intimacy, security, care, dependence and autonomy. The way in which adults establish affective ties with their partners is similar to those established between parents and children. Therefore, these early experiences will end up forging our particular style of attachment; that is, the specific way in which we tend to relate affectively with other people.
