Top 40 Amir Levine Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “If you want to take the road to independence and happiness, find the right person to depend on and travel down it with that person.”

— Amir Levine

2. “True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind. “Still waters run deep” is a good way of characterizing it.”

— Amir Levine

3. “A secure base is a prerequisite for a child’s ability to explore, develop, and learn.”

— Amir Levine

4. “1. Show basic concern for the other person’s well-being. 2. Maintain focus on the problem at hand. 3. Refrain from generalizing the conflict. 4. Be willing to engage. 5. Effectively communicate feelings and needs.”

— Amir Levine

5. “Effectively expressing your emotional needs is even better than the other person magically reading your mind. It means that you’re an active agent who can be heard, and it opens the door for a much richer emotional dialogue.”

— Amir Levine

6. “Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet needs. When their emotional needs are met, and the earlier the better, they usually turn their attention outward. This is sometimes referred to in attachment literature as the “dependency paradox”: The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.”

— Amir Levine

7. “A general word of advice: It’s always more effective to assume the best in conflict situations. In fact, expecting the worst – which is typical of people with insecure attachment styles – often acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume your partner will act hurtfully or reject you, you automatically respond defensively – thus starting a vicious cycle of negativity.”

— Amir Levine

8. “So not only do people with a secure attachment style fare better in relationships, they also create a buffering effect, somehow managing to raise their insecure partner’s relationship satisfaction and functioning to their own high level. This is a very important finding. It means that if you’re with someone secure, they nurture you into a more secure stance.”

— Amir Levine

9. “People with a secure attachment style know how to communicate their own expectations and respond to their partner’s needs effectively without having to resort to protest behavior.”

— Amir Levine

10. “In a true partnership, both partners view it as their responsibility to ensure the other’s emotional well-being.”

— Amir Levine

11. “Remember, an activated attachment system is not passionate love. Next time you date someone and find yourself feeling anxious, insecure, and obsessive – only to feel elated every once in a while – tell yourself this is most likely an activated attachment system and not love! True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind.”

— Amir Levine

12. “Numerous studies show that once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one physiological unit. Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood. We are no longer separate entities. The emphasis on differentiation that is held by most of today’s popular psychology approaches to adult relationships does not hold water from a biological perspective. Dependency is a fact; it is not a choice or a preference.”

— Amir Levine

13. “Paradoxically, the opposite is true! It turns out that the ability to step into the world on our own often stems from the knowledge that there is someone beside us whom we can count on – and this is the “dependency paradox.”

— Amir Levine

14. “You now live in suspense, anticipating that next small remark or gesture that will reassure you. After living like this for a while, you start to do something interesting. You start to equate the anxiety, the preoccupation, the obsession, and those ever-so-short bursts of joy with love. What you’re really doing is equating an activated attachment system with passion.”

— Amir Levine

15. “Unfortunately, just as the importance of the parent-child bond was disregarded in the past, today the significance of adult attachment goes unappreciated. Among adults, the prevailing notion is still that too much dependence in a relationship is a bad thing.”

— Amir Levine

16. “Getting attached means that our brain becomes wired to seek the support of our partner by ensuring their psychological and physical proximity. If our partner fails to reassure us, we are programmed to continue our attempts.”

— Amir Levine

17. “After all, our brain assigns our partner the task of being our secure base, the person we use as an emotional anchor and a safe haven, the one we turn to in time of need. We are programmed to seek their emotional availability.”

— Amir Levine

18. “Devaluing your partner when things become too close is very typical of people with an avoidant attachment style and is used as a way to create emotional distance.”

— Amir Levine

19. “If you’re anxious, when you start to feel something is bothering you in a relationship, you tend to quickly get flooded with negative emotions and think in extremes. Unlike your secure counterpart, you don’t expect your partner to respond positively but anticipate the opposite. You perceive the relationship as something fragile and unstable that can collapse at any moment. These thoughts and assumptions make it hard for you to express your needs effectively.”

— Amir Levine

20. “And if we lack that sense of security? If we are unsure whether the person closest to us, our romantic partner, truly believes in us and supports us and will be there for us in times of need, we’ll find it much harder to maintain focus and engage in life.”

— Amir Levine

21. “Having a partner who is inconsistently available or supportive can be a truly demoralizing and debilitating experience that can literally stunt our growth and stymie our health.”

— Amir Levine

22. “When our partner is unable to meet our basic attachment needs, we experience a chronic sense of disquiet and tension that leaves us more exposed to various ailments. Not only is our emotional well-being sacrificed when we are in a romantic partnership with someone who doesn’t provide a secure base, but so is our physical health.”

— Amir Levine

23. “In prehistoric times, people who relied only on themselves and had no one to protect them were more likely to end up as prey.”

— Amir Levine

24. “Also, people with different attachment styles tend to explain why they are still alone in a different manner: People who are anxious often feel that there is something wrong with them; secures will have a more realistic view of things, and avoidants often sound like Paul – they attribute their single status to external circumstances, such as not having met the right girl.”

— Amir Levine

25. “Your date’s response to effective communication can reveal more in five minutes than you could learn in months of dating without this kind of discourse.”

— Amir Levine

26. “Having a partner who fulfills our intrinsic attachment needs and feels comfortable acting as a secure base and safe haven can help us remain emotionally and physically healthier and live longer.”

— Amir Levine

27. “With avoidants, everyday interactions and conversations, whether they’re about which channel to watch on TV or how to raise the kids, are actually negotiations for space and independence. You often wind up complying with their wishes – because otherwise they will withdraw. Research shows that avoidants hardly ever date one another. They simply lack the glue that keeps things together.”

— Amir Levine

28. “There is a major difference between couples who are dealing with non-attachment-related issues and those who are engaged in intimacy struggles. While the first couples want to find a common ground and reach a resolution that will bring them closer together, the latter either engage in ongoing, irreconcilable fights or one of the two is forced to compromise unilaterally in areas that are near and dear to him or her.”

— Amir Levine

29. “The more attuned you are to your partner’s needs at the early stages – and he or she to yours – the less energy you will need to expend attending to him or her later.”

— Amir Levine

30. “The emotions, thought patterns, and behaviors automatically triggered in children in attachment situations appear similarly in adults. The difference is that adults are capable of a higher level of abstraction, so our need for the other person’s continuous physical presence can at times be temporarily replaced by the knowledge that they are available to us psychologically.”

— Amir Levine

31. “Avoidants are not exactly open books and tend to repress rather than express their emotions.”

— Amir Levine

32. “Karen’s self-blaming view of herself as too needy and Tim’s obliviousness to his attachment role are not surprising and not really their fault. After all, we live in a culture that seems to scorn basic needs for intimacy, closeness, and especially dependency, while exalting independence. We tend to accept this attitude as truth – to our detriment.”

— Amir Levine

33. “Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet needs.”

— Amir Levine

34. “True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind.”

— Amir Levine

35. “The ideal relationship is one between two self-sufficient people who unite in a mature, respectful way while maintaining clear boundaries.”

— Amir Levine

36. “Numerous studies show that once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one physiological unit. Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood. We are no longer separate entities. p26.”

— Amir Levine

37. “They rarely search inside themselves for the reason for their dissatisfaction, and even more rarely seek help or even agree to get help when their partner suggests they do so. Unfortunately, until they look inward or seek counseling, change is not likely to occur.”

— Amir Levine

38. “Not only do they influence how we feel about ourselves but also the degree to which we believe in ourselves and whether we will attempt to achieve our hopes and dreams.”

— Amir Levine

39. “By using the abundance philosophy, you maintain your ability to evaluate potential partners more objectively. What you are actually doing is desensitizing your attachment system and tricking it into being easier on you.”

— Amir Levine

40. “Attachment research shows that people tend to become more secure when they are in a relationship with someone secure.”

— Amir Levine

41. “Only because they’re both willing to stay and deal with the issue do they find a resolution that they can both live with and in the process learn to be more in tune to each other’s needs.”

— Amir Levine