Your Sex Life’s Secret Handbook

When it comes to sex, it’s likely you have heard your fair share of stories, all varying on a spectrum. And I’m sure it’s put a few ideas or doubts in your head. Interestingly enough, these stories shouldn’t be taking residence in your brain, because chances are, they aren’t going to have much of an effect on your sex life. Now, of course, many aspects of your sex life can be switched up or adjusted. You can change places, positions and frequency. But the real trick to understanding your sex life and experiences with your partner is to understand your attachment styles. 

Crazy, right? It just seems like attachment styles were some quick part of high school that you learn and then forget about (unless of course, you’re some sort of science major). But in actuality, it may be the missing link, the handbook so to speak, of your sex life.  

The Influence of Attachment Styles

If you Google attachment styles, what you’ll see is a long list of results that basically explain how your interpersonal relationships as a child grew to affect your interactions and relationships as you got older. Now, as an adult, sex falls into play, which begs the question, “How does my attachment style affect my sex life?” Well, it’s not an unreasonable question, but rather one that should be asked a lot more. Frankly, it’ll tell you what your need to know about your intimacy experiences and levels of sexual desirability that you may have otherwise never understood. 

1. Secure Attachment

If you haven’t read about attachment styles or need a quick refresher, make that quick Google search and come back. If you already know it, let’s continue on this journey. Ok, so if you have identified that you are a securely attached person, you know that, essentially, you have good communication skills and a good grip on your ability to regulate your emotions. How this correlates to sex: emotional bonding. You could care less for the quick casual late-night hookup. Casual just isn’t your thing. You crave connection and you get it. You make sure your needs are met in the bedroom, but you also make sure your partners are. You’re comfortable enough to voice your desires and explore them, creating so to speak, a pleasurable sex life.

2. Anxious-Ambivalent

So, you’re the anxious-ambivalent type. Maybe you’ve noticed that you seek approval often and reassurance from others in your relationships. You tend to focus on the fear of losing someone, so you aim to please and cling to the people around you. You just want to be loved, but don’t know how. In the sex department, this translates to quite the agenda. Literally. You never really know how to open up or feel comfortable when it comes to expressing your desires. In order to ensure that someone stays with you or to ensure someone desires you, you use manipulative tactics to get your partner in bed so that you can get your unmet needs fulfilled. But these tactics aren’t working for you because you’re so focused on your aim to please, that you completely neglect your desires. You seek security through controlling sexual behaviors, to be reassured you are loved. But your sex life is one that lacks mutual honesty about desire, leaving a growing hunger that has yet to be met.

3. Avoidant

If you’re avoidant, you are quite familiar with the premise of being emotionally detached. You think that you can protect yourself by leaving emotion out of the equation so that you don’t get hurt. But this ultimately creates instability and a pretty dry sex life, lacking intimacy. You are the last person to emotionally bond, taking discomfort in those strong sexual experiences which foster connection. You see sexual encounters are opportunistic experiences. You use these encounters as a tool to fulfill an urgent need. You are a fan of no strings attached. No talking and a quick trip to the bathroom will do it for you. You don’t rely on pleasure from your partner but often seek routes of self-pleasure, participating in solitary sexual activity. When you do have sex, that affection aspect is non-present and you are there for a quick opportunistic moment, unaware of your partner’s needs. You might also be placing the expectation of your fantasies on those quick moments with your partner, which are always unmet because you neglect to share them.

4. Disorganized

The disorganized type is a complicated case because you’re a mix of anxious and avoidant. So compile those aspects, and you notice that you have low self-worth, resulting in you having unmet sexual needs, trying to please the opposite partner in your sex life, or attempting to please yourself, but never fulfilled and either afraid to lose your partner or so careless that you go through many partners. You ultimately struggle with intimacy. 

Compatibility Between Attachment Styles

If we’re being realistic, it isn’t every day that two people who are in a relationship are both securely attached. How nice it must be to both experience a pleasurable sex life, filled with intimacy and desire. Maybe right now that sounds like the last thing you want. To be so physically and emotionally vulnerable. Either way, it’s good to identify your attachment style and understand how that plays out in your sex life. Having a difference in attachment styles, in any case, poses a challenge. You can’t know how to please your partner or ultimately how to have a thriving sex life if you don’t know how your partner feels or what they want. Compatibility between different attachment styles is a matter of sharing and being honest so that you can best navigate your next steps.

So that’s it, that’s a guide to understanding your sex life, no doubt eye-opening. For more relationship advice, follow @VALLEYmag on Instagram!

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