I’ve noticed something in the people around me, in the couples I observe, in the relationships I’ve quietly studied from the inside and the outside.

Some people can’t sit still. They need the new restaurant, the spontaneous trip, the plan that hasn’t been made yet. Repetition makes them restless. Routine starts to feel like something closing in.

Others, and I count myself among them, need the same corner table. The café where the waiter already knows the order. The walk that follows the same route every evening. Not because it’s boring, but because it’s proof. Proof that something in life is stable enough to return to.

For a long time, I thought this was just a matter of personality. Different energy, different taste. But I’m starting to think it runs much deeper than preference. I think both types of people are trying to solve the same problem: how to feel safe. They just need completely opposite things to get there.

And a recent study finally gave me the framework to understand why.

What the research uncovered

A 2025 study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science tracked couples over 21 days to examine how different types of shared experiences affected relationship satisfaction. They were interested in two categories: novel and exciting activities, like trying something new or going somewhere unfamiliar, and familiar and comfortable ones, like cooking a regular meal together, watching a favorite show, or simply being at home.

Every night for three weeks, each partner independently reported what they’d done together that day and how satisfied they felt with the relationship.

The overall finding wasn’t surprising. Both types of experiences were linked to higher satisfaction. But the familiar, comfortable experiences had roughly two to three times the effect of the novel ones.

What was surprising, and what I haven’t stopped thinking about, is what happened when they factored in attachment style.

For people high in attachment avoidance, those who typically pull away from closeness and guard their independence, novel and exciting activities provided a specific boost. On days with more novelty, the usual link between avoidance and lower satisfaction weakened. Something about newness helped avoidant individuals feel more connected.

For people high in attachment anxiety, the ones who fear abandonment and crave reassurance, the pattern reversed. Familiar and comfortable experiences were what mattered most. On days filled with routine and predictability, anxious individuals reported feeling significantly more satisfied. The safety of the known quieted something in them that novelty couldn’t reach.

Two kinds of hunger

I read that finding and something clicked that I hadn’t been able to articulate for years.

Because I know both of those hungers. Not theoretically. Personally.

I know what it’s like to crave the familiar so deeply that even a small disruption to routine can feel like emotional vertigo. I know the way a repeated morning, the same coffee, the same playlist, the same walk, can feel like the only thing tethering me to myself.

But I also know the other side. I know how a new city can crack something open in me that months of stability couldn’t touch. How the unfamiliarity of a street in Chiang Mai or a café in Prague made me feel more alive than any amount of comfort at home.

I’ve always assumed those two impulses were contradictory. That wanting safety and wanting aliveness were pulling me in opposite directions. But this study suggests they might not be contradictions at all. They might be two different attachment systems, each trying to solve the same problem: how to feel close without feeling threatened.

The avoidant need for movement

Avoidant attachment has always fascinated me, partly because I recognize pieces of it in myself.

People high in avoidance tend to associate closeness with loss of autonomy. Intimacy can feel like a trap. Not because they don’t want connection, but because connection has historically come with a cost: being needed too much, being swallowed, losing the edges of who they are.

So when a relationship starts to settle into routine, something in the avoidant nervous system can read that settling as stagnation. As walls closing in.

What the Schrage study shows is that novelty gives avoidant individuals a way to stay in the relationship without feeling consumed by it. Trying something new together creates just enough psychological distance from the domestic, the predictable, the thing that triggers their withdrawal. It lets them be close while still moving. Still free.

I think about this every time I remember how alive I felt on the back of a scooter in Bangkok. Wind. Heat. Motion. No plan. That aliveness wasn’t just about the place. It was about what the movement was doing for me emotionally. It was giving me permission to feel without sitting still long enough to be overwhelmed by it.

For avoidant individuals, adventure isn’t escapism. It’s a relational strategy. A way to stay connected without triggering the internal alarm that says closeness is dangerous.

The anxious need for return

Anxious attachment is the one I know most intimately. The one I’ve studied and lived inside and written about more times than I can count.

People high in attachment anxiety don’t need novelty to feel connected. They need consistency. They need repeated proof that someone is still there. That the relationship hasn’t shifted overnight. That the ground beneath them hasn’t moved while they were sleeping.

This is why the study’s finding about familiar experiences hit me so hard. Because it names something I’ve always felt but never had data for: the reason a quiet evening at home with someone I love can feel more meaningful than any trip we could ever take together.

It’s not that anxious people are boring. It’s not that they lack spontaneity or curiosity. It’s that their nervous system is wired to scan for threat. And novelty, however exciting, introduces uncertainty. New restaurants, new cities, new experiences all carry the same subliminal question: will this change things between us?

Routine answers that question before it’s even asked. It says: we are still here. This is still ours. Nothing has shifted.

And that answer, repeated enough times, can quiet the deepest fear an anxious person carries.

Why this matters inside a relationship

Here’s where it gets complicated, and where I think most couples get stuck without realizing it.

If one partner is avoidant and the other is anxious, which is an extremely common pairing, their needs will look like they’re in direct conflict. One wants to try the new place. The other wants to go back to the usual one. One feels trapped by repetition. The other feels destabilized by change.

Neither person is wrong. Both are trying to regulate. But without understanding the attachment logic underneath the preference, it just looks like incompatibility. Like they want different things from the relationship, when really they want the same thing: to feel emotionally safe with each other.

The study’s lead researcher, Amy Muise, noted that the effects were modest on any single day, which makes sense. These aren’t dramatic shifts. They’re small, daily recalibrations. But over time, those small moments accumulate.

And the couples who learn to read each other’s attachment needs, who know when their partner needs novelty and when they need the comfort of the known, are the ones who build something that actually holds.

What I’ve learned from watching myself

I used to judge myself for wanting routine so badly. I thought it made me rigid. Unadventurous. Too attached to control.

And then I would swing the other way, booking a flight somewhere unfamiliar, convincing myself that movement was the answer. That if I just kept going, the anxiety would dissolve into the noise and motion of a new place.

Both impulses were real. But neither one was the full picture.

What I’ve started to understand, through my own research on emotion regulation and self-compassion, and now through studies like this one, is that the need for safety and the need for aliveness are not opposites. They’re partners. And the question isn’t which one to follow. The question is which one you’re neglecting.

When I’ve been too still for too long, I need the disruption. The new street. The unfamiliar café. The version of myself that only appears when the routine breaks open.

But when I’ve been moving too fast, running from something I don’t want to sit with, I need the return. The same cup. The same walk. The same playlist that tells my body: you are home. You can stop now.

The difference that changes everything

If there’s one thing I’d want someone to take from this, it’s not a prescription. It’s not “try more new things” or “stay home more often.”

It’s a question. A small, honest one that most people never think to ask their partner, or themselves.

What do you need right now to feel safe enough to stay close?

Because for some people, the answer is: take me somewhere I’ve never been. Let me feel the edges of something unknown with you beside me.

And for others, the answer is: stay. Just stay. Let tonight look like last night. Let me stop bracing for change.

Both answers are love. Both are legitimate. Both are trying to solve the same ancient problem of how to be close to another person without losing yourself in the process.

The difference is knowing which one your partner needs. And being willing, even when it doesn’t match your own impulse, to offer it anyway.

Not because it’s easy. But because love, when it’s honest, is the willingness to speak someone else’s emotional language, even when your own language would have said something completely different.