Do people with different attachment styles differ in terms of how satisfied they are with their relationship?

More of the Secure folks (66.9%) said that they were Very or Totally Satisfied with their relationship and fewer of the Secure folks said that they are less than Very Satisfied (33.1%) with their relationship than did the Avoidant (47.7% vs 52.4%), or Anxious/Ambivalent (40,1% vs 59.9%) folks. These differences in satisfaction levels correspond nicely to the magnitude of the descrepancies between what the groups think love it and what they report experiencing. This provides additional support for our other findings that indicate that people are less satisfied with their relationships when there are larger descrepancies between what they think love should be and what they are experiencing.

Specifics of our findings on relationship satisfaction and attachment style.
We asked people how satisfied they are with their relationship.

• 8.8% (82) said Not Satisfied
• 13.2% (92) said Somewhat Satisfied
• 22.9% (159) said Moderately Satisfied
• 36.4% (253) said Very Satisfied, and
• 18.7% (130) said Totally Satisfied.

In order to simply things, we decided to collapse the five groups into three groups:

• 22.0% (153) Not or Somewhat Satisfied
• 22.9% (159) Moderately Satisfied, and
• 55.1% (393) Very or Totally Satisfied.

If there were no differences between the attachment style groups, we would expect to see the same proportion of satisfaction levels as shown above within each attachment style group. That's not the case (Chi square (4) = 36.2, p < .00001).

Secure Attachment Style

16.4% Not or Somewhat Satisfied (less than the 22.0% we expected)

16.7% Moderately Satisfied, and (less than the 22.9% we expected)

66.9% Very or Totally Satisfied. (more than the 55.1% we expected)

Avoidant Attachment Style

24.7% Not or Somewhat Satisfied (more than the 22.0% we expected)

27.7% Moderately Satisfied, and (more than the 22.9% we expected)

47.7% Very or Totally Satisfied. (less than the 55.1% we expected)

Anxious/Ambivalent Attachment Style

30.7% Not or Somewhat Satisfied (more than the 22.0% we expected)

29.2% Moderately Satisfied, and (more than the 22.9% we expected)

40.1% Very or Totally Satisfied. (less than the 55.1% we expected)

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