What's your attachment style?

Adult attachment research measures two things. Attachment anxiety is how much you worry about being left, unloved, or not enough. Attachment avoidance is how uncomfortable you are depending on someone, or having them depend on you. Research questionnaires such as the 36-item ECR-R score these two dimensions directly, and shorter tests like this one approximate them.

The four styles come from combining them. Secure is low on both, anxious is high anxiety with low avoidance, dismissive avoidant is the reverse, and fearful avoidant is high on both. Popular writing often calls fearful avoidant disorganized, although the two terms come from different research traditions.

Most people are not a pure type, so this test scores all four styles at once. Your highest score is your primary style. If a second style comes within two points of it, your result is marked as blended.

Secure is the most common adult attachment style by a wide margin. In Hazan and Shaver's 1987 studies, 56 percent of adults described themselves as secure, 25 percent as avoidant, and 19 percent as anxious. A nationally representative US sample studied by Mickelson, Kessler, and Shaver in 1997 found 59 percent secure, 25 percent avoidant, and 11 percent anxious.

Interview studies find a similar split. A 2009 meta-analysis of more than 10,000 Adult Attachment Interviews by Bakermans-Kranenburg and van IJzendoorn put non-clinical North American mothers at 58 percent secure, 23 percent dismissing, and 19 percent preoccupied.

Fearful avoidant is the hardest style to count. Studies that use three styles fold it into avoidant, and studies that use four, following Bartholomew and Horowitz, report shares that vary widely with the sample and the questionnaire.

People who look for an attachment style test are not a random sample. Many are in a hard stretch of a relationship, and anxious results are common among them. A style that is uncommon in the general population can be a common result on a page like this one.

The test presents 12 statements, 3 for each attachment style, in mixed order. You rate each from 1 to 5.

Your primary style is your highest score. When your top two scores land within 2 points of each other, the result is marked blended.

Answer for how you react when you are stressed rather than how you would like to react, and the result will be more accurate.

Each style scores between 3 and 15. The optional round adds 16 statements from the 40-statement bank the Olively app uses, two for each of eight facets, and converts your answers into an attachment anxiety score and an attachment avoidance score. It adds detail to your result but does not change the style your first 12 answers produced.

Your result shows which pattern is strongest for you right now: how you tend to respond when closeness feels uncertain, and what you do first under stress. That is useful to know, because the same pattern shapes the texts you send when you are upset.

It cannot diagnose you or predict how a relationship will go, and it says nothing about your worth as a partner. It is a 12-statement self-report, so it reflects the relationship you are in and the month you took it. Use it as a starting point for conversations.

A blended result means your top two scores came within two points of each other. That is expected. Attachment varies along two dimensions rather than falling into four boxes, and many adults sit near a boundary, such as anxious with an avoidant streak under pressure, or avoidant with an anxious side that one particular person brings out.

The two styles in a blended result often show up in different situations. One may lead early in a relationship and the other under stress, or one with a steady partner and the other with an unpredictable one. If your result is anxious with avoidant close behind, notice what you do after a fight. Reaching for your phone suggests the anxious side is leading. Going quiet and handling it alone suggests the avoidant side.

To make use of a blended result, look at a real conversation. Pick the last exchange that left you unsettled and ask which of the two patterns shaped your reply, then read about that style first. Your result screen links to the guides for both of your top scores.

Attachment theory starts with John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, who studied how early bonds shape the way people seek safety. In 1987, Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver showed that similar patterns appear in adult romantic relationships, and in 1991 Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz described the four adult styles this test uses. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller's 2010 book Attached brought the ideas to a general audience.

Current research measures adult attachment on the two dimensions of anxiety and avoidance, usually with questionnaires in the Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) family. The best known is the 36-item ECR-R by Chris Fraley, Niels Waller, and Kelly Brennan. Olively wrote its own statements from the same definitions instead of copying a research scale, since those scales are licensed for non-commercial use.

The 12 statements on this page sort you into one of the four styles. The optional 16-statement round and the 40-question Attachment Profile in the app score the two dimensions directly, across eight facets.

If you want research-grade anxiety and avoidance scores and don't mind reading raw numbers, take the ECR-R on its authors' site. It has 36 items, takes about ten minutes, and returns two scores with little interpretation.

The quickest option is the Relationship Questionnaire by Bartholomew and Horowitz. It is four short paragraphs, and you pick the one that sounds most like you. This is the measure that introduced the four adult styles.

Take this test if you want a score for each of the four styles in about two minutes, with an explanation of your result and no email. Add the 16-statement round for the two dimension scores. The full eight-facet profile with a written report is the 40-question Attachment Profile in the Olively app.

If you scored anxious, pause before sending a text written out of fear. Write the fear down for yourself first, then send one direct question your partner can answer.

If you scored dismissive avoidant, say that you need space instead of going quiet, and say when you will be back in touch.

If you scored fearful avoidant, try naming the push and pull out loud when you feel it. You can want closeness and want out at the same time, and saying so is easier on both of you than disappearing.

If you scored secure, your steadiness helps a partner who is less secure. When things are tense, send a message that says you are still close and when you will talk.

Knowing your style helps most when you can use it in the moment it matters. For many people, that moment is a text they are about to send or one they just received.

Olively is an app for those moments. It can rewrite a draft so it lands better with your partner's style, and it can explain a confusing reply before you answer it.

The app also includes the 40-question Attachment Profile, a longer version of this test that scores eight facets and gives you a written report on your pattern.