Why Your Attachment Style Isn’t the Whole Story
What Internal Family Systems can teach us about love, conflict, and the parts of you still waiting to be seen.
It was ten years ago this past March that I published Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy.
It was a book about how to find a good couples therapist, and I wrote it during a time when I was working hard to save my own marriage. I shared my personal story because I believed—and still believe—that talking honestly about our struggles is one of the most loving things we can do for ourselves and each other.
Since then, so much has changed.
I’ve worked with a lot more couples. I walked through an unexpected, disorienting experience with depression—what I first called “brain fog,” but which eventually led me to ketamine-assisted therapy and, ultimately, to healing.
And through that healing, I stopped trying to obsessively make the loose ends of my marriage meet. I let go—not with bitterness, but with honesty. My ex and I, deeply connected but fundamentally misaligned in a few key ways, designed our separation with care. We still cohabitate to support our family, and in many ways, we’ve become better partners apart than we ever were together.
Now I find myself ready to lead a different conversation.
Not just about therapy. Not just about whether to stay or go. But about what happens inside us—the furnace of every relationship.
Attachment styles are just the surface
You’ve probably taken a quiz or two online. You may already know your attachment style: anxious, avoidant, secure, disorganized. These labels have helped millions of people begin to understand why they behave the way they do in love.
But here’s the problem: knowing your attachment style doesn’t tell you what to do next. And most of the models we’ve relied on in couples therapy—Imago, Gottman, EFT—still center on the dynamic between two people.
That’s not enough. Not anymore.
The real relationship work begins inside.
The “theory of everything” for relationships? It’s Internal Family Systems.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic framework that goes beyond communication skills or compatibility. It teaches that we are made up of parts—inner subpersonalities, like the anxious part that spirals when you feel distant from your partner, or the avoidant part that freezes when things get too close.
These parts aren’t bad. They’re protective. They formed around pain or fear, often long ago. And they’re trying to help.
Like parts in an orchestra, our protective parts (a.k.a. “protectors”) show up only when really needed and step offstage when its safe to be curious and open again. But often there’s no orchestra conductor. The defensive part of us clashes with the people-pleasing part, causing each to become more extreme than necessary.
But there is a way to develop self-leadership of your parts.
IFS introduces something radical: you are not your parts. Beneath all of them is your core Self—the calm, clear, compassionate center of you that knows how to love and lead. Having a strong core Self dramatically increases the chances of connection and creative de-escalation of conflict.
So here’s what this essay series will explore:
What your attachment style looks like on the inside
How your parts form internal “polarities”—conflicting inner voices that tug at you in love
Why healing doesn’t begin with fixing your partner—it begins with meeting your parts
How to build secure attachment from the inside out, one Self-led step at a time
What emotional safety really feels like—and how to create it without waiting for someone else to give it to you
This isn’t about pathologizing yourself or your partner. It’s about building a relationship from a place of inner coherence—where clarity, courage, and compassion can finally lead.
When you lead from Self, the doors that need to open will open. Sometimes that means healing together. Sometimes it means letting go. But either way, you stop being ruled by fear or reactivity—and start creating connection on your own terms.
So let’s begin where all real change starts: inside.
Not with your partner. Not with your past. But with the parts of you that are still waiting to feel safe, seen, and loved.
Because the only real way to change your relationships…
is to change how you relate to yourself.
What barriers have you run into when applying attachment styles to real life scenarios with your partner?