If you’ve ever caught yourself checking your phone obsessively for a reply, reading into the tone of a two-word text, or lying awake wondering if your partner still loves you, you already know what relationship insecurity feels like in your body. That tight chest, the racing thoughts, the urge to seek reassurance one more time.

Attachment theory offers one of the most useful frameworks we have for understanding why relationships feel the way they do: why we pursue or withdraw, why certain dynamics repeat, and why intimacy can feel both essential and threatening at the same time.