ONCE, ON A first date, a man asked me if I knew about attachment styles. He caught himself before he finished the sentence and laughingly said, ‘Oh, of course you do.’ He knew what I did for work; it had come up sometime in the pallid stream of texts we had exchanged before that evening. ‘I tend more towards anxiously attached,’ he said. ‘I need the validation a partner gives me. I need regular mirroring from them to process my experiences and feel seen. I don’t know why, but I always attract partners who are more avoidant.’

By the time he finished speaking, my mind had raced ahead, mapping out a possible future for us. Me, independent, fiercely self-­sufficient, a mortgage owner and a dog guardian (was I avoidant?). Him, seemingly in a holding pattern in life, waiting for a partner before he could commit to a mortgage or a neighbourhood, unhappy at work, resolute and up-­front about being both irresponsible and needy. There was no future. There were too many red flags. While he was self-­aware and had clearly done some of the work, he’d also lost me at ‘anxiously attached’. He sounded co-­dependent.