Bartholomew Model

I found this model to be very interesting. I know a lot of people who fit into these models of attachment fairly accurately. In particular, there is a friend who is the fearful avoidant type. She avoids true intimacy because she’s always afraid of rejection. With friends, she always feels like she has to be the image of the perfect friend, mom and wife. For example, she always cleaned her place before I came over because she was afraid that my image of her would be tarnished. She is my husband’s best friend’s wife and even though I always considered us close, I found out later that she wasn’t being completely upfront with me and I think it’s because she was afraid of rejection. To this day she puts on a front to compensate for her low self-esteem and high attachment anxiety. She is overly dependent on her husband to make her feel better, but also because she’s afraid he will leave her. We rarely see each other now because we live very far apart, but now that I know the true her, I feel sorry for her while simultaneously feeling upset that she was deceptive all this time. Having a relationship with someone who is the fearful avoidant type is hard.