Here’s a new take on The Three Little Pigs and how it explains attachment styles.
Pig One: The Straw House: Anxious Attachment
The first little pig builds a house of straw in record time.
It's quick, it's dirty, but at least it provides cover.
Seen through the lens of attachment, this is the anxious pig:
- They want safety but don’t think they can have it.
- They build quickly because uncertainty is intolerable.
- They take the quickest path from fear to relief.
- Their emotional “walls” are paper-thin — they can be blown down at any moment by stress or conflict.
- The wolf comes, and the house disintegrates immediately.
Metaphorically, this is what happens when a person with anxious attachment is spurned, ghosted, criticised, or otherwise unsure of the other person's feelings. Their sense of inner structure falls apart. Panic ensues. They try to run for cover under someone else's roof. Internal message of Pig One: “I have to cling because I am not safe on my own.”
Pig Two: The Stick House: Avoidant Attachment
The second pig does things a little differently.
He builds a house of sticks: stronger but not by much.
He invests some more time, but it still won't hold up against serious pressure.
- This is the avoidantly attached person:
- They value independence, but they mistake self-protection for healthy self-reliance.
- They build walls, but not bonds.
- They keep their structure clean and orderly and closed off—“No vulnerability here, thanks.”
- They often have more relational infrastructure than the anxious pig, but when stress hits, the house shatters not because they can't handle the pressure but because they lack relational flexibility. ("I don't NEED help, but maybe you could HELP ME…")
The wolf comes, and this pig tries to manage on his own until the wolf's presence becomes too much, and he is forced to seek safety from the outside. Internal message of Pig Two: "If I keep my distance, I can't be hurt."
Pig Three: The Brick House: Secure Attachment
The third pig takes his time.
He is careful, steady, and diligent. He plans, and when the building starts, he has a rhythm, a pace that allows him to do the work well. This is the securely attached person:
- They believe in their own ability to create safety.
- They can tolerate discomfort without breaking into panic or avoidance.
- They don’t rush. They don’t avoid. They don’t cave in.
- They build bonds with others that feel solid and protective.
- Their emotional infrastructure has some flexibility, some give.
The wolf comes, but he does not win. The secure person will not simply ignore life’s wolves, but they will also have emotional support structures in place to help them withstand the winds when they blow. Internal message of Pig Three: “I can rely on myself and others.”
The Big Bad Wolf: Emotional Threats & Old Wounds The wolf is not just fear. It’s the thing that lands on your old attachment wounds:
- abandonment
- conflict
- loss
- criticism
- Shame
- overwhelming emotion
- relational unpredictability
He huffs and he puffs and it’s not that different from the emotional gales that buffet us all:
- A partner doesn't text back → "My house feels like it's shaking."
- Someone wants more intimacy → "My walls aren't strong enough.
- We remember someone we lost → "I have to find somewhere safe to run."
- Attachment is the architecture of how we respond to threat.
Relational Dynamics: How the Pigs Help Each Other. The real heart of this story is not what each pig does individually, but what they do together. When the anxious pig’s straw house blows away, where does he run to? The avoidant pig. When the avoidant pig's stick house falls, where do they both go? The secure pig.
Relational healing is not solitary. This is how the therapeutic process works: People heal by co-regulating, by sharing a sturdier, safer house, by allowing themselves to have the relational experience in treatment that they could not rely on outside of it growing up. Real relational change often looks like:
- Anxiously attached people learning that panic is not necessary to stay close
- Avoidantly attached people learning that closeness does not mean losing oneself
- securely attached people providing stability without resentment or fear
In therapy, we are building the brick house together.
The Three Little Pigs has lessons for all three of these stories:
Your emotional house was built with the materials you had.
- If you grew up in chaos, you learned to move fast.
- If you grew up with distance, you built it alone.
- If you grew up with safety, you built strong.
- None of this is moral. It's an adaptation.
You can rebuild at any time.
- Straw can turn into sticks.
- Sticks can turn to bricks.
- People can learn new patterns when relationships become safe enough.
The wolf isn’t the enemy; the isolation is.
- Threats come.
- Challenges come.
- But when we face them together, they lose their power.
Secure attachment is not built through perfection, it’s built through repair.
- The pigs survive because they stick together.
- We survive and grow the same way.
- Attachment is how we cope with insecurity in an unpredictable world.
In The Three Little Pigs, we are reminded that we were born into emotional houses that were built long before we had a say in how or why. But those first houses are not our last. Rebuilding, strengthening, and healing are always possible. Your home can be sturdier. Your walls can be warmer. Your relationships can be safer. And you don’t have to do it alone.