Six Golden Rules For A Happy, Secure Relationship By A Psychiatrist Of 20 Years

“Each insecure relationship you have ages you by nine months,” says psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr Amir Levine, citing research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal earlier this year. He then brings up another landmark study which found a 50 per cent reduction in mortality risk among those who felt more securely connected.

“There is so much evidence like this out there, it is crazy,” he says. “People do all these cold plunges, peptides, vitamins and supplements, when the evidence is very flimsy. Yet having secure, happy relationships is this scientifically-proven longevity hack that really works on a
cellular level.”

The question, of course, is how to achieve such a longevity hack when most of us have relationships that unsettle us: the friend who is warm one week and distant the next; the family member who leaves us feeling small; the boss whose emails make our stomach drop; the partner who seems to retreat just as we reach for them.

Levine understands relationships like these all too well – 15 years ago, his bestselling book Attached, co-authored with Rachel Heller, helped turn attachment theory into part of our everyday vocabulary. It saw the theory, first developed by psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth in the 1950s and 60s to explain the bond between children and caregivers, applied to adult relationships, broadly grouping people into secure, anxious or avoidant patterns of relating.

Attached explained why we behave the way we do in love: why some people panic when a text goes unanswered, why others pull away when intimacy deepens, and why some seem able to stay steady and calm throughout it all.

But if Attached gave us the language to understand our patterns, Levine’s new book, Secure, asks the more useful question: can we change them?

His answer is yes. Here, he shares his six golden rules to building a more secure life…

1. Start with your own behaviours 

“You may think secure relationships begin with finding people who make you feel secure. Of course, those around you matter enormously, but the first place to start is with your own behaviour – especially if you tend to be anxious or avoidant.

“The foundation of a secure, connected life is being what I call CARRP: consistent, available, responsive, reliable and predictable. All of these qualities can be enacted in small gestures – from maintaining regular contact to showing up when someone calls. The important thing is that being CARRP is not just something you decide about yourself. You might think, ‘I’m a great friend, I’m doing all the right things’. But unless the other person experiences you that way, your work is not done. It’s almost like two-factor authentication. You have to check: does this person actually feel that I’m reliable? Do they experience me as predictable? Because it is only this way that you can start to become more secure.”

2. Express your needs

“If someone in your life isn’t CARRP, tell them. Sometimes people simply don’t realise that that is how you are experiencing them. So give them a chance: you explain what you need.

“I find it helps to detach it slightly from blame and talk about it as a basic relationship need. Just as the skin needs sunscreen, people need consistency and connection in order to feel safe. This is not, ‘You hurt my feelings by never replying to me’, it’s more ‘this is the kind of contact that helps me feel secure’.

“You might say, ‘When I don’t hear back from you for days, I experience that as disconnection. It would really help me if you could just send a quick message’. Then see what they do.

“If they can show up for you, that’s wonderful. If they can’t, then you have some very important information.”

3. Adopt the appendix rule

“The appendix rule is especially important for people with anxious attachment. Anxiously attached people often have a very sticky attachment system: they want to repair, to fix, to understand, to go back again and again to the same person, even when the interactions are painful.

“This can easily get mistaken for being too sensitive. But anxious people are often picking up on real moments of disconnection, even if other people would brush them off.

“The point is not to shame yourself for noticing, but to stop repeatedly putting yourself in situations that hurt you.

“That’s where the appendix rule comes in. If a relationship repeatedly inflames your nervous system, you can’t keep going back and letting it inflame you again and again. You need to disengage and deprioritise it.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean a dramatic cut-off. In fact, cutting someone off abruptly can activate the attachment system even more. The secure move is often more temperate: you move that person to the outer circle of your life, much like an appendix.

“You can still be kind. You can still say hello. But you stop treating them as someone who belongs in your inner circle. You can’t afford to keep having repeated interactions that are literally shortening your lifespan.”

4. Lean on community 

“When people talk about loneliness, they often assume it means you don’t have enough people in your life. But you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely if those relationships leave you feeling excluded, ignored or disconnected.

“You don’t need hundreds of friends. You need people and places that regularly remind you that you belong. That repeated contact is what helps you feel more secure. It gives you small, steady experiences of being included, seen and connected.

“And that doesn’t have to mean every relationship is deep or intense. My father was avoidant and liked a lot of time on his own, but he went swimming every morning at a public pool.

“Over time, he became friendly with the other people there. They would talk, they would share things, and he had a sense of community. Then he would go home and have his space. For him, that was exactly the right dose.

“For someone else, it might be a running club, a choir, volunteering, a book group, a class or a weekly coffee. The point is not to force yourself into some ideal version of sociability – it is to build a community that works for your temperament and gives you regular, reliable moments of connection.”

5. Reach for a secure script

“When something unsettles you in a relationship, your first reaction is not always the most accurate one. If you’re anxious, your brain may jump very quickly to: ‘this is the beginning of the end’. If you’re avoidant, your brain may say: ‘this person wants too much from me, I need to get away’. So one very practical thing you can do is pause and ask: ‘what would a secure person do here?’

“If you are avoidant, the secure thing is often not to disappear. Avoidant people are not villains, but when closeness feels overwhelming, they can create unnecessary distance: ghosting, going cold, saying ‘I’ll call you right back’ and then not calling. The secure alternative doesn’t mean suddenly becoming intensely available or abandoning your need for space. It might just mean sending a very brief text: ‘I need a bit of downtime, but we’re okay’.

“If you are anxious, the secure thing might be to remind yourself that one missed text does not mean the whole relationship is collapsing. Maybe they are busy; maybe they forgot. You can reach out warmly without attacking them or panicking.

“The point is to deviate from the insecure script and find your secure script. Often it’s much simpler than people think.”

6. Stop blaming your childhood 

“A lot of people believe their attachment style was fixed in childhood; that everything stems from how their mother or father treated them, and therefore they are stuck like that.

“I don’t see it that way. Of course childhood matters, and talking about the past in therapy can be helpful. But human beings are much more complicated than: ‘this happened to you, therefore you are doomed to be anxious or avoidant’.

“The more useful question is not always, ‘Where did this come from?’ but, ‘What can I do now?’ If you think you are stuck, start there, knowing that we all have secure kernels within us. The work is to build a life that brings that secure potential out more often.”