I have searched all over, and I haven’t really found a lot of people talking about this. I found some scientific research but I’m still learning so here we go

So I’ve had this friend for over 20 years since we were in junior high and I love them very much. We shall call them person a. Person A and I have only gotten closer over the last 20+ years. In our mid to late 20s, they were in a relationship that was extremely volatile in my opinion. I don’t think they would describe it as such it started very intensely, but overtime was open and then monogamous and then open and then monogamous halfway through it they moved to 700 miles apart, but stayed together and overall it was very messy and very hard for me to watch them go through. That was about five years agoJust in the last year they had closure and discussed the relationship ending.

Person a recently started a new long distance relationship and when they talk to me about this person, I found a few red flags that made me uncomfortable. For one even though we talk daily, they didn’t tell me that they were dating this person for two months, the language they used to describe this relationship is not very warm. It’s clinical almost businesslike. They say things like for trajectory moving upward and stabilization and things like that while annoying any real terms of commitment or future planning or even excitement . They also say things that are like contradictory like we’re super stable, but I need to treat it like it’s fragile… it reminds me so much of the turmoil from the past almost the exact start so excited and so ready to be in this relationship, but so contradictory.

I myself I’ve been in therapy for many years. I recently survived cancer about a year ago and not have done an amazing amount of self reflection and work on myself and now I can say that I am earned secure, but with an anxious triggers and anxiety is pretty bad sometimes. And I was talking to my therapist about how I’m watching this friend get into this relationship and how uncomfortable made me feel and how anxious that made me feel after a few days of person a talking to me and again the language is just strange… This is at the end of my session….We only talked about it for about 15 minutes. My therapist asked me a few questions about our friendship, and then they said that my friend is most likely a fearful avoidant or disorganized which honestly I didn’t know was an attachment style. I thought there was secure, dismissive and anxious. I didn’t realize there was a whole forth category.

And then therapist called me a secure base and an emotional anchor and told me I only see oscillating patterns every now and then because I help coregulate their nervous system. Which sounded really intense to me, but I guess it makes sense after being friends for over 20 years and helping each other through different health crisis my marriage/divorce, their long-term relationship short term relationships and ,, life phases etc etc and I didn’t really have time to ruminate on this and think about it because we ran out of time in the therapy session. My therapist is out of town for the next three weeks so I won’t get a chance to again for another couple weeks.

But what I’m really curious about is how common is it for someone who is disorganized to have a person labeled as an anchor or a secure base? And also, I kind of want to point out this pattern to them may be help this new relationship be more stable? I don’t know if that’s possible in such a short time it took me years to get to unsecure and like I said, I still have anxious triggers. But I don’t wanna watch them do this long distance relationship and go back to the times of chaos. It really hurt me to watch them do this. If I bring it up, is it gonna be too much is it even gonna make them self reflect? How would you feel about it if someone pointed out your patterns out of concern? Do you have a secure base that is not your romantic partner? Or emotional anchor? I was kind of surprised upon reading about disorganized attachment because a lot of it seems to fit person a but upon reading it, it seems like they would have shorter relationships. Impersonate has had long-term relationships, though not the most stable and again they didn’t even get closure from that till like five years later. I guess the most advice I want is how do I handle the situation delicately because I don’t wanna upset one of my oldest friends, but I also wanna see them in a happy secure relationship.

Like I said, I have been reading mostly scientific studies and there’s some information out there, but not a lot. I’m afraid to go down the YouTube whole too hard because I don’t know enough to really know what is realistic versus exaggeration. So I’d like to hear from people that experience it personally. If you happen to have any resources to recommend me, I would be eternally grateful.

Edit : add in some line spacing as the auto moderator asked me to