• Secure Attachment: "It is relatively easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me. I don't worry about being alone or having others not accept me."
  

• Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment: "I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don't value me as much as I value them."

• Dismissive-Avoidant Attachment: "I am comfortable without close emotional relationships. It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient, and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me."

• Fearful-Avoidant Attachment: "I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely, or to depend on them. I sometimes worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others.

• Infant Secure Attachment: A child who is securely attached to its mother will explore freely while the mother is present, will engage with strangers, will be visibly upset when the mother departs, and happy to see the mother return. A child becomes securely attached when the mother is available and able to meet the needs of the child in a responsive and appropriate manner

• Anxious-ambivalent insecure attachment: A child with an anxious-resistant attachment style is anxious of exploration and of strangers, even when the mother is present. When the mother departs, the child is extremely distressed. The child will be ambivalent when she returns - seeking to remain close to the mother but resentful, and also resistant when the mother initiates attention. This style develops when the child's needs are ignored until some other activity is completed and that attention is sometimes given to the child more through the needs of the parent than from the child's initiation.

• Anxious-avoidant insecure attachment: A child with an anxious-avoidant attachment style will avoid or ignore the mother - showing little emotion when the mother departs or returns. The child will not explore very much regardless of who is there. Strangers will not be treated much differently from the mother. There is not much emotional range displayed regardless of who is in the room or if it is empty. This style of attachment develops from a mothering style which is more disengaged. The child's needs are frequently not met and the child comes to believe that communication of needs has no influence on the mother.

• Disorganized attachment: Children with disorganized attachment experienced their caregivers as either frightened and frightening. Human interactions are experienced as erratic, thus children cannot form a coherent interactive template. If the child uses the caregiver as a mirror to understand the self, the disorganized child is looking into a mirror broken into a thousand pieces.

What researchers find is that securely attached infants tend to become securely attached adults, but infants with anxious-ambivalent insecure attachment tend to have anxious-preoccupied attachment, and anxious-avoidant attachment tends to develop into both dismissive-avoidant attachment and fearful-avoidant attachment. Generally, 70-80% of adults maintain the same style throughout their lives.

But progression and development is observed along the lines of an integral model, in the form of Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment, which expands out the attachment style types to  Simply put, this model suggests that secure attachment is possible at all levels of development and that fusion is also possible, but significantly, fusion is maladaptive at all levels. I believe this is labeled 'compulsively care-giving/compliant' in the DMM. One interested feature of this model is that as the individual develops, the number of distinct attachment styles increases, until full-blown psychopathy is observed in adults.This model also seems to indicate distinct masculine and feminine types of pathological attachment. The green-hued styles on the right seem masculine, and the red-hued styles on the left seem to be feminine.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Relationships

 Intimate relationships are closely connected with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. As we grow, we seek out our intimate partner when each of our needs is threatened, whether a parent or caregiver, close friend, husband or wife. Attachment theory outlines modes of relating on each of those levels. For example, a person loses their job and experiences low self-esteem tries to turn to their spouse for comfort and reassurance, in just the same way that a toddler would turn to his mother when he feels frightened. How an individual pursues that goal determines the style of attachment.

Its common to believe that romantic relationships are only about romantic needs, but from an integral perspective, they include the full spectrum of needs. A style of attachment is maladaptive if it is ineffective to achieve those needs, and as an individual progresses up the developmental ladder, ineffective strategies become more ineffective for higher needs. A person with a deeply pathological attachment style has difficulty achieving even lower level needs, but a person with moderately or slightly ineffective attachment style struggles with needs further up the pyramid. At the highest levels, at an integral level, an intimate relationship helps each partner achieve self-actualization.

It seems clear, then, that intimate relationships exist throughout the development ladder. Romantic relationships are one type of intimate relationship, perhaps the primary type because it addresses the full spectrum of need, but if follows the same basic principles of attachment that all relationships follow.