Attachment Anxiousness
In a romantic relationship, attachment works like a warning system. When couples are experiencing distress or conflict, it moves partners to seek comfort, reassurance, and care from the other.
In securely attached relationships, partners depend on each other to cope with emotional distress and to meet his/her needs. This person is the one we depend on the most to be there for us.
Isolation Is Traumatizing
I believe that we are all wired for relationship and being isolated and alone is a traumatizing experience for anyone. As human beings, we were created for connection. When partners feel isolated and/or walled all from the other, the common response is conflict. The attachment alarm bells go off with "danger, danger, danger!" but no one is there to respond.
The attachment alarm bells can be set off by silent withdrawal as much as it does by angry attack. The panic and fear results from a lack of feeling safe rather than just a lack of engagement.
Relationship Insecurity
Feeling insecure in a relationship occurs when the other partner is unresponsive and fails to respond to a person's needs in a situation of distress. In a relationship, this happens in the moments of distress where the partner seeks comfort or care from the other partner but doesn't find connection.
Disconnection = Long Term Negative Health
These disconnections or failures to find comfort from the other partner can have long-term negative effects on a couple's relationship and that partner's health.
Research has shown that insecure attachment can lead to:
Anxiety and fear
Loneliness
Anger Issues/Rage
Depression
Lower self-esteem
Physical health problems
Negative Coping Responses
If this failure to receive comfort and response continues, a couple may turn to alternative strategies for managing their emotional distress. There are three basic patterns of negative coping that include anxious, avoiding, or mixed responses to the attachment distress.
The anxious coping response increases the attachment alarm system and results in desperately pleading for a response. Avoidant coping responses attempts to shut down the distress by minimizing it or withdrawing from it. Obviously, one coping response can negative affect the other partner's attachment alarm bells, thereby increasing the reaction.
Insecure Patterns Reinforce Insecurity
These insecure coping strategies are used when partners don't get their needs met by the other partner. The challenge for the relationship is that insecure patterns of relating tend to reinforce each other.
Over time, one partner's anxious response for connection triggers the other partner's avoidant (withdrawing) response, leaving the insecure partner feeling alone, which triggers escalated response of pursuit for connection, which overwhelms or floods the avoidant partner. When these patterns become routine and the problems never resolved, a couple's relationship becomes emotionally insecure and it in danger of dissolving.
Start Couples Counseling Today!
If you are identifying with this pattern or cycle in your relationship, I recommend that you contact me to setup a couples counseling session to begin learning a new pattern for connection.
Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples provides a "road map" for changing the dance that couples can find themselves caught in. You no longer have to feel alone, in pain, feeling insecure or hopeless that the relationship is doomed. I can help you reignite the love and passion that you both had for each other when you met.