Anxious attachment may shape how people respond after a partner harms them, according to new findings published in The Journal of Social Psychology. Across three preregistered studies, researchers found that individuals who worry about rejection are more likely to hold grudges, withdraw, and struggle to forgive, particularly when the offending partner delivers a nonapology or simply ignores the wrongdoing.
The work was led by Brianna Davison, a PhD candidate in the University of Calgary Love Lab, who conducted the research while at York University, alongside C. Ward Struthers, Jingyuan Sophie Li and Amy Muise. The team aimed to understand how a partner’s response after a conflict might shape how anxiously attached people react in the longer term.
Attachment insecurity is typically measured along two dimensions: avoidant attachment, which involves discomfort with intimacy and a preference for emotional independence, and anxious attachment, which combines a strong craving for closeness with an intense fear of rejection or abandonment.
Previously, researchers have produced mixed results on whether anxious attachment is linked to destructive reactions after a partner’s wrongdoing. A 2005 diary and observation study found that those with higher attachment anxiety perceived more daily conflicts and tended to escalate disputes. A 2019 meta-analysis suggested anxious individuals generally have a harder time forgiving, while a 2015 study co-authored by Struthers found links to grudge-holding and avoidance that were not consistently replicated in a later experimental phase.
The new study set out to test whether a partner’s behaviour after a transgression helps explain why anxiously attached victims turn to destructive responses. Davison and colleagues explored nonapology as an active, defensive reaction—refusing to say sorry, making excuses, denying fault, or blaming the victim—and hypothesised that such behaviour would signal unavailability to anxiously attached individuals, prompting destructive outcomes.
“Previous research tells us that adult attachment plays an important role in how individuals initially respond to and manage relational wrongdoing in their romantic relationships; however, far less is known about how adult attachment shapes individuals’ long-term responses after their romantic partner wrongs them,” Davison told PsyPost. “Our research fills the gap by exploring whether anxiously attached individuals are more likely to hold grudges, avoid their partner, or struggle to forgive following a relational wrongdoing and whether these long-term responses are shaped by a partner’s refusal to apologise. Understanding how individuals with anxious attachment respond to relational wrongdoing matters because these responses can have lasting consequences for relationship quality, potentially making it harder for them to maintain the close, secure relationships they desire.”
In Study 1, 242 adults comprising 121 romantic couples who had been together for at least six months completed a 12-item questionnaire assessing anxious and avoidant attachment, and each wrote about a recent unresolved conflict in which their partner had wronged them. Although both partners took part, each person recalled a conflict that stood out to them personally. They then rated the partner’s nonapology and their own destructive responses on 1-to-7 scales and the researchers combined these into an overall destructive-response score, adjusting for avoidant attachment in the analyses.
Initial correlations in Study 1 suggested that higher anxious attachment related to more destructive responses. However, after accounting for avoidant attachment, the direct link was not statistically significant. Instead, the pattern depended on perceived nonapology: when participants perceived high nonapology, anxious attachment predicted more destructive behaviour; when nonapology was perceived as low, the link weakened.
Study 2 broadened the sample to 538 adults in exclusive relationships lasting at least six months, with one partner per couple and an average age of 25. Participants completed a longer 36-item attachment questionnaire before recalling an unresolved conflict and rating their partner’s nonapology and their own destructive responses. After adjusting for avoidant attachment, higher anxiety was associated with slightly fewer destructive responses overall, contrary to the initial expectation, but the interaction pattern persisted: no significant link when nonapology was perceived as low, and significantly more destructive responses among high-anxiety individuals when nonapology was high, with the effect more than doubling in strength compared with low-anxiety participants.
In Study 3, 334 undergraduates in romantic relationships (average length 2.5 years; mean age 22) wrote about a real unresolved conflict and were randomly assigned to imagine one of three scenarios immediately after: an apologetic text from their partner, a nonapologetic text in which the partner blamed and lashed out, or a control condition in which no response was received, replaced by a routine university notification.
Following the imagined scenario, participants completed comprehension checks, answered about perceived partner availability and responsiveness, and rated the likely destructiveness of their reaction. Compared with the apology condition, the nonapology scenario elicited greater destructive responses for both high- and low-anxiety participants, an finding described as exploratory. In the no-response control, anxious participants showed more destructive reactions than their less anxious peers.
The researchers conducted mediation analysis to see whether perceptions of partner availability connected anxious attachment to destructive responses, but cautioned that because perceptions were measured rather than manipulated, causal inferences remain tentative. They noted that in the nonapology condition, partner responsiveness did not emerge as a significant mediation pathway; instead, in the no-response condition, higher anxiety correlated with viewing the silent partner as less available, which in turn related to more destructive responses.
Davison and colleagues offered two possible explanations for the particularly troubling impact of silence. First, a nonapology—even if hostile—acknowledges the victim and leaves room for conversation and repair, whereas ghosting may signal total disengagement. Second, the authors suggest that ambiguity in the absence of a reply may lead anxiously attached individuals to assume their partner is unavailable and uncaring.
The findings align with earlier research linking anxious attachment to unforgiving motives such as revenge and avoidance in hypothetical infidelity scenarios, and with diary studies showing greater retaliation when anxious partners feel ignored or slighted. Yet the authors caution that the overall destructive scores were modest across the studies and that the results rely on one partner’s recollection rather than independent observations or reports from both sides of the relationship.
Limitations also include that Study 3’s control condition did not function as a truly neutral baseline, given that imagining no response provoked distress in anxious participants, and that including the attachment measure after the manipulation could have coloured responses. The researchers also note that the conflicts described across the studies tended to be moderate in severity, leaving open questions about dynamics in more severe betrayals or chronic tensions.
The study, “The Association Between Victims’ Anxious Attachment and Transgressors’ Nonapology on Conflict Resolution in Romantic Relationships,” was authored by Brianna Davison, C. Ward Struthers, Jingyuan Sophie Li, and Amy Muise.
