Big 5 Traits, Dating, and Attachment Styles
What are the big five traits and how do they affect romantic relationships?
What are the Big 5 traits? You can remember it with the acronym OCEAN or CANOE. CANOE stands for Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, and Extraversion. Personality quizzes that measure the Big 5 personality traits don’t tell you that you’re conscientious or not, agreeable or not, open or not. These quizzes actually measure these traits on a spectrum. For example, they may measure how agreeable you are based on a scale that goes from belligerent to agreeable; they use two different extremes expecting you to fall somewhere between them. The fact that these personality traits are being measured on a spectrum instead of an either-or dichotomy is why the Big 5 is so accepted in the field of Psychology. If you want to learn more in depth about this topic, click here.
Because the belief is that these traits are our core traits, they are supposed to be extremely important in your relationships with people. The one trait that I will focus on today is neuroticism. This trait means that you are overly anxious, moody, and insecure. As one might expect, having high levels of neuroticism may set you up for an unsatisfactory and unsuccessful relationship. For example, the stress and negative emotions felt by one partner may bring their other partner down as well. Another reason why high neuroticism affects relationships in a negative manner is because it tends to mess with the couple’s sexual lives as the anxiety becomes too much. If you would like more information on this, please read here. However, some findings suggest that people with higher levels of neuroticism who are in a romantic relationship might actually become more emotionally stable.
People who have high neurotic tendencies may also have an Anxious Preoccupied or Fearful Avoidant attachment style. If you want more information on the relationship between neuroticism and insecure attachment styles, please read here. Those with Anxious Preoccupied attachment style tend to have a fear of abandonment or rejection, while those with Fearful Avoidant Attachment tend to have fears of being too close or too distant to their romantic partners (or others in their life). If you want more information on this please read here and here. It would make sense as to why people with those attachment styles are associated with people who have high neuroticism levels. The anxiety and fear becomes too much, and it begins to cause stress to not only themselves but the people around them.
Those with high levels of neuroticism can also do things to prevent an unsuccessful relationship. There is hope! Finding a therapist that specializes in anxiety can be extremely beneficial. Therapists can help reduce anxiety through teaching you different coping skills. Make sure to find a therapist that fits you! There are many types of therapists such as Cognitive Behavioral, Dialectical Behavioral, Attachment-Based, Parts and Memory Focused, EMDR specialists, and more! It may take time to find a therapist that fits you, but that also is beneficial as you can find what works the best for you. You can also begin to practice mindfulness and engage in activities such as meditation, yoga, reiki, etc.
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