Love, Attachment, and '(500) Days of Summer': When Anxious Meets Avoidant
Love, Attachment, and '(500) Days of Summer': When Anxious Meets Avoidant
Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) in their iconic meet-cute in the elevator | Feature art by Arri Salvador
Films stay the same, but the way we return to them can change over time.
Sixteen years later, (500) Days of Summer still lingers — just not always in the ways we remember. It’s the bittersweet disposition of modern relationships, uncovering the complexities of love, attachment, and the disillusionment that follows when expectations don't meet reality. What once felt like a breakup story now stands as a lesson in how we love and how our attachment styles pull us together just as easily as they push us apart.
Told through memories in a non-linear timeline, the film flips through its pages like a worn-out sketchbook filled with nostalgia, retrospection, and the stories we tell ourselves about love. It reiterates that it is not a love story and yet it becomes one — not in the conventional sense, but in how it teaches us to learn from our mistakes, ultimately redefining us through experiences of longing and loss. It paints compelling portraits of attachment styles in action, unveiling the psychological frameworks behind the personal tendencies that define the way we fall in and out of love.
Tom gazing at Summer with a wistful expression as they sit together on their bench in Angelus Plaza for the last time | Still taken from IMDb
Tom: The Anxious
We all know Tom. A hopeless romantic at heart, Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a classic example of someone who has an anxious attachment style. He constantly seeks validation and reassurance in his relationships and believes that love is about finding the perfect match and making grand gestures, convinced that it’s all just meant to be. He tends to cling fast, often mistaking moments of fleeting connection for lasting affection. His infatuation blinds him to the red flags and the reality that the love he desperately wants cannot simply be willed into existence. When things don’t align with his expectations, his deep-seated fear of abandonment only makes it harder for him to let things go. Trapped in a cycle of highs and lows, his anxiety grows with the notion that if love isn’t perfect, then it’s destined to fail. Through Tom’s eyes we see how looking back sometimes distorts our perspective — how we keep replaying moments over and over, searching for clues where things went wrong, rewriting memories to fit the narrative we wish to be true.
One of the film’s distinctive split-screen scenes, contrasting Tom’s heartbreak with Summer’s wedding | Still taken from IMDb
Summer: The Avoidant
And then there’s Summer. Independent and guarded, Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) embodies the avoidant attachment style, keeping her emotional distance at arms’ length with walls as high as her skepticism on relationships. She doesn’t believe in love. She sees it as a fantasy that doesn’t last, a feeling that is only meant to be enjoyed at the moment. Reluctant to commit, she often struggles with intimacy, fearing the compromise of her autonomy. Though she is fond of Tom’s company, she never truly lets him in and refuses to label their relationship, even calling them “friends” when their connection clearly goes beyond that. She withdraws every time Tom demands answers. Her internal tug-of-war between wanting affection and protecting her freedom shapes every decision, reinforcing the belief that love, as she knows it, is just an illusion. In Summer’s mind, detachment isn’t an act of betrayal but rather an avoidance of dependency; a defense mechanism, an instinct for self-preservation.
Tom and Summer sitting on their bench, overlooking the buildings and parking lots of downtown Los Angeles | Still taken from IMDb
Expectations vs. Reality
Yes, this is a story of boy meets girl. Things were going so well — until they weren’t. As we dig deeper, it becomes evident that this is not a tale of love lost but an account of what happens when anxious meets avoidant. Over 500 days, we witness how Tom falls in love with the idea of The One and projects his Dream Girl onto Summer. While they share a love for The Smiths (a connection many of us can relate to), it’s nothing more than a common interest. Right from the start, Summer explicitly tells Tom that she’s not looking for anything serious, a stark contrast to Tom’s interpretation of them being soulmates. In fact, they’re just two people with different emotional needs, born from the troubles and traumas of their past. Tom, raised on a steady diet of sad Britpop songs and romcoms, relentlessly pursues the romance of a lifetime trying to “fix” her. Meanwhile Summer, warily scarred by her parents’ divorce, seeks enough space to be anything but belonging to somebody. She is upfront about wanting something casual yet Tom misinterprets it as taking things slow, ignoring the warning signs and forgetting that attraction alone is not enough to make a relationship work. The tragic beauty of (500) Days of Summer lies in these mismatched attachment styles, offering us the hard truth that no amount of love can change the way someone is wired to love you back.
But even then, the film doesn’t cast blame; it doesn’t punish Summer for her honesty nor condemn Tom for his earnestness. Instead, it reveals how often we fall for people, not as they are, but as we imagine them to be. He sees her as fate; she sees him as a chapter. Neither is wrong, but they’re never really meant to last forever.
