#pls add more thoughts to this if anyone has them bc i'm so curious about what people think about this

[agent-troi]

i have soooo many thoughts and idk if i'll be able to eloquently form all of them but first i wanna talk about codependency bc that's one of the first things the book talks about (it's called attached by amir levine and rachel heller btw) and since everyone is always talking about how codependent mulder and scully are i think that's super important:

they go on to talk about how we're actually biologically inclined to depend on one another and it's actually normal and a good thing, and also about the "dependency paradox" wherein the more dependent two people become on one another the more secure they feel and the more courage they actually have to go out into the world independently and try new things and stuff (aka the "secure base", which has been observed in experiments with mothers and their babies, and it's theorized that adults approach their relationships with one another in a similar way as parents/children)

anyway i guess my point with this was we tease msr about being codependent and some people talk about it like it's a bad thing but it's literally not, we've seen countless times over the course of the show how they lean on each other and draw strength from each other and their codependency is actually an asset (which scully seems to realize at the end of how the ghosts stole christmas- "maybe i really did want to be out there with you")

so where was i? oh right, attachment styles. so there are four:

i would probably put scully in the secure corner, but closer to the high end of the avoidance scale. she grew up with a mostly secure base with parents who loved her albeit a father who could be emotionally distant at times (a product of his generation not bc he didn't have any love or approval to give) so when she approaches relationships as an adult she's been conditioned to expect her love to be returned, and when a relationship turns out to not be good for her she is able to leave it (jack willis, daniel waterston) but we've also seen that she has a tendency to avoid or run away when things get hard (in never again she can't or won't express her needs to mulder directly, in fight the future she considers leaving bc she thinks she can't be what mulder needs and if things can't be the way they used to be between them she might as well cut ties and move on, and we don't have as much information about the pre-revival breakup but i think we can safely assume that scully would only have left mulder if she believed staying would have made him worse, and so she concluded the only way he could get better was if she wasn't holding him back) so overall i'd say she's mostly secure but her life experiences have led her to acquire a certain degree of avoidance.

now mulder is obviously somewhat more fucked up, he did have a relatively normal childhood prior to samantha's abduction (except for the shadow of the syndicate hovering over them, which mulder couldn't have been consciously aware of but i do think he had a vague inkling that things weren't as perfect as they appeared, if his admittedly unreliable recollections in demons are any indication) but after samantha is taken his parents become increasingly distant, he blames himself and they do nothing to alleviate that and sometimes even encourage it. in the two canon relationships that we know of, we know he was manipulated emotionally (phoebe was more overt about it vs the more nefarious subtlety of diana).

i would need to do a lot more thinking to figure out phoebe's and diana's attachment styles (given that we really don't know all that much about either of them it might be difficult lol) but i think it's safe to say that mulder is some combination of anxious and avoidant; he simultaneously craves intimacy while pushing it away (calling scully repeatedly during chinga, running away from her overtures in detour, begging her to stay with him but later insisting she should leave in fight the future, and his attitude in never again can pretty much be summed up as "you want to leave? well you should leave. please don't leave me. i don't know what i'd do without you. you'd be better off without me.")

i haven't gotten to the chapter about anxious-avoidant people yet and i'm sure i'll have more thoughts then, but mulder's seemingly contradictory behavior seems to me like that's the style that would describe him best.

edit: i think phoebe and diana are both avoidant, considering they way they drop mulder and move on with ease only to come back when they need something from him

have you ever made a meta post about mulder’s and scully’s attachment styles? my mom got me a book for my birthday about the different attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant, and anxious-avoidant) and how to recognize them in yourself and others, and i keep going back and forth on what scully and mulder would be. i think scully’s mostly secure but with a bit of avoidance, and mulder is probably anxious-avoidant (idk i haven’t gotten to that chapter of the book yet and also one’s attachment style can apparently change over time and revival mulder is definitely a lot more secure) anyway i’ve started rambling lol but have you ever written or thought about that

I haven't-- BUUUUUUT I did think about that just the other day! Is it a sign? o.0

Your assessment sounds accurate though now I'm curious what the technical dividing line between all of them are, what their expressions are, and why they aren't. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

If you have more thoughts, share share share because my brain is super duper curious now. XDD