Attachment Style Quiz: 10 Questions to See Where You Lean

If you've ever stared at "Read 4:12 PM" for an hour, or felt your stomach drop when someone said "I love you" a little early, you've met your attachment style. This attachment style quiz takes about two minutes and gives you a rough read on where you lean: secure, anxious, avoidant or fearful avoidant.

Quick disclaimer, and it's a real one: this isn't a diagnosis. Think of it as a mirror for how you tend to react to closeness and distance in one particular relationship. Take it again for a different relationship, or a different year, and you may get a different answer. That's expected.

How to take this attachment style quiz

1. Pick one relationship. Your current partner, your most recent situationship, or your last relationship all work. Just stick with the same one for all ten questions. Never dated? Think of someone you've really cared about.
2. Think about the last three months. Not your best week, not your worst fight. A normal stretch.
3. Answer with what you actually do, not what you think you should do. Nobody's grading this.

Score each statement by how often it's true: rarely = 0, sometimes = 1, often = 2. Jot your answers in your Notes app as you go.

The quiz: 10 questions

1. When they take longer than usual to text back, I reread my last message looking for what I got wrong.
2. When they bring up "where is this going," I change the subject or make a joke.
3. When I've had a bad day, I'd rather work through it alone than tell them about it.
4. On nights they're out with friends, I have a hard time focusing on my own plans.
5. After a fight, I want to make up right away, and "let's talk later" makes me more anxious.
6. The more stable and close things get, the more I notice their small flaws.
7. When they text a lot or want to hang out every day, I start to feel crowded.
8. I run little tests to see if they care, like replying late on purpose or saying "it's fine" when it isn't, to see whether they notice.
9. When they want me to meet their friends or family, my first thought is "isn't that a little soon?"
10. When they reassure me ("of course I like you"), the calm doesn't last long and I need to hear it again.

How to score it

Add your answers in two groups:

• Column A (anxiety about closeness): questions 1, 4, 5, 8 and 10
• Column B (pulling back from closeness): questions 2, 3, 6, 7 and 9

Each column runs from 0 to 10. Column A is how much you worry about losing the connection. Column B is how uncomfortable closeness makes you. Those two are the dimensions attachment researchers most often use: anxiety and avoidance.

What your result means

Leaning secure: You can mostly get close and be apart without much drama, and when you're uneasy, you tend to say so. You still get hurt. You just don't usually need tests or disappearing acts to deal with it.

Leaning anxious: Distance sets off your alarm fast, and you want to text a little more, check a little more. Caring a lot isn't the problem. The problem is that it pushes you toward things you wouldn't normally do, like the little tests in question 8.

Leaning avoidant: You're used to handling things yourself, and when things get close you want to step back. That's usually not a lack of caring. It's more often a fear of losing your own space.

Leaning fearful avoidant: You may want closeness and fear it at the same time, with both columns pulling at you. That's exhausting. If it's causing you real pain, a therapist who works with attachment can help.

Two more ways to read it:

• Look at the numbers, not just the label. A 5 in Column A with a 4 in Column B and a 10 with a 0 both land on "anxious," but they're very different. Scores near the 4/5 line mean you're really in the middle, with a bit of both.
• Look at which questions got a 2. A single "often" can say more than the total. If only question 10 scored a 2, ask yourself: do you need a lot of reassurance in general, or is this relationship genuinely hard to feel sure about?

Didn't get the result you expected? That's normal

Here's the thing: it doesn't mean the quiz broke. Three common reasons:

• Which relationship you picked. With someone who does what they say, anxious scores often drop a lot. With someone hot and cold, even a fairly secure person starts staring at their phone. Take it again for a different relationship, and you may meet two very different versions of yourself.
• What's been happening lately. A week of being left on read, a recent breakup or a move to a new city can all push scores up for a while.
• It really is a simplified version. Research questionnaires are much longer and have been validated. A widely used one, the ECR-R, has 36 items. A ten-question checklist like this one is a starting point for noticing patterns, nothing more.

For a different version, try our 10-item interactive attachment quiz. It uses a 7-point scale and scores both dimensions for you. To actually do something with your result, our interactive lesson on attachment styles walks you from the result to a next step.

One thing to try next

Whatever you lean toward, the goal isn't to stop being that style. It's to give yourself one more option in the moment the alarm goes off.

• Leaning anxious: Next time you're about to send a third text, type it in your Notes app instead and wait 20 minutes before deciding whether to send it.
• Leaning avoidant: Next time you want to pull back, check whether you're resting or dodging a topic. If it's dodging, try one sentence: "I'm not ready to talk about that yet. Can we do it this weekend?"
• Leaning fearful avoidant: Practice letting two feelings exist at once: "I really want to see them, and I'm scared to." You don't have to pick one. Being nervous and still taking the next small step is exactly what our free lesson Let yourself be nervous practices.
• Leaning secure: Your steadiness may matter more to your partner than you realize. If they lean anxious or avoidant, a simple "I'm here" or "take your time" often does more than you'd think.

If Column B came out high and you notice that the more you care about someone, the more you want to run, that can be tied to feeling not good enough. Our free lesson Worth isn't feeling worthy unpacks that.

For a full tour of all four styles, see attachment styles explained. If you and your partner landed on opposite sides, our breakdown of anxious vs avoidant attachment gives each of you one change to try. More on relationships lives on our relationships topic page.

FAQ

Is this attachment style quiz accurate?

It depends on how you use it. It's useful for noticing your own reactions and not useful for labeling yourself or anyone else. Short online quizzes, this one included, haven't been through the validation that research questionnaires have, and results shift depending on which relationship you're thinking about.

Am I anxious or avoidant? How can I tell?

Notice what you do when you feel distance. If you tend to move toward the other person (texting more, needing reassurance, testing), you lean anxious. If you tend to move away (going quiet, needing space, changing the subject), you lean avoidant. Plenty of people do some of both.

What are signs of anxious attachment?

Common ones: rereading messages for hidden meaning, needing reassurance repeatedly, feeling panicky when plans change or replies slow down, and testing your partner to see if they care. Any one of these is human. A steady pattern of them is what points toward anxious attachment.

Can I find my attachment style if I've never been in a relationship?

Yes. Think about someone you've cared about a lot, or how you act with close friends and family. The result will be rougher, and it's worth retaking once you're in a relationship.