I feel, I want, I need

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine loaned me a book called “Attached". A bit dated, the book’s goal was to explain the different types of attachment systems that people generally fall into: secure, anxious, or avoidant. I devoured this book within a few days, as I had just come out of a very long term relationship of eight years and was scrambling to make sense of what had just happened, looking for solace and understanding wherever I could find it, which in my case, is fairly often deep within the pages of a book. While the book was a bit presumptuous and the example relationships all felt as if they were cardboard cut-outs of the real thing, the message within was fairly sound, if not a tad rigid. We are all trying to find the right balance of how to be within a relationship–any relationship, not just romantic–and when you learn to identify the tendencies you can have when it comes to being avoidant, being anxious, and how to be secure; then there’s a lot of soothing that can be done…