Attachment Theory: Underneath the Problematic Pattern
The attachment view of love gives us a way of understanding toxic patterns. It guides us back to the nature of our childhood experiences of being cared for, encouraged, and protected. Our early experiences of these fundamental needs are stored in unconscious or implicit memory and beliefs about ourselves and others. When these experiences and beliefs cause us to expect to be rejected, abandonned, or hurt by others, and/or to doubt that we have value or are lovable, we may find we have an avoidant or anxious "attachment style" as we seek love and security and defend against hurt and vulnerability in our relationships.
As adults, we may consciously want calm, loving, cooperative discussions in which our thoughts and feelings are met with understanding and acceptance. But our desires and plans can be derailed when when unconscious anxieties and beliefs take over. When the child in each of us jumps into the fray with fears about being hurt (e.g., neglected, rejected, abandonned, shamed, controlled, ignored, betrayed, misunderstood) exchanges between lovers can evolve so fast and become so chaotic we can’t catch what’s happening underneath the heated words or the withdrawal. We can’t see how we could react differently or change the pattern we’re trapped in.
But if we slow things down we can see the underlying attachment needs—the need to feel understood, accepted, loved, and supported. The powerful emotions that accompany these needs, and the ways we defend against feeling rejected or judged, often arise suddenly. When triggered, our attachment needs explode a conversation into an argument fueled by underlying, unrecognized issues of security and survival—whether the triggering of these issues results in raised voices or withdrawal, heated emotions or numbness. Caught behind our defenses we cease to be open and available to each other.
Emotional Responsiveness: The Key to a Lasting Love for Couples
Dr. Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy, described emotional availablity as having three main components:
1. Accessibility: Can I reach you? Can I be reached?
This means being emotionally and physically available, staying open to your partner even when you feel insecure or defensive. It often means being willing to struggle with your emotions (or your numbness) that make you want to either fight or withdraw so that they are not so overwhelming. It may mean learning what you each need to feel open and to return from disconnection.
2.Responsiveness: Can I rely on you to respond to me emotionally?
Mutual responsiveness is grounded in respect and tolerance for your differences that eases the defensive need to be right and supports the desire to understand each other. It means accepting your partner’s feelings and perspectives and sending clear signals of comfort, care, and validation when your partner needs them.
3.Engagement: Do I know you will value me and stay close?
The dictionary defines engaged as being absorbed, attracted, pulled, captivated, pledged, involved. Emotional engagement here means the special kind of attention we give to a loved one. Prioritizing time together without distractions, affectionate touch, words of care and appreciation, and expressing interest in each other’s feelings and thoughts are examples of what partners often talk about as being emotionally present.
However, we each receive and give love differently. So, engagement also means knowing what makes each other feel loved, as well as what is called each partner’s “love language”—how each of us expresses love. We may find speaking our partner’s love language difficult or may find feeling loved difficult if they don’t speak ours. Being responsibly engaged (able to respond to each other’s needs) may mean becoming bilingual in your love language.
One way to remember these three aspects of emotional responsiveness is through an acronym: A.R.E. (accessible, responsive, engaged) and the questions:
Are you able to be with me right now?
Am I able to be with you right now?
Becoming Accessible
When we want to be heard, it’s crucial to understand that communication is a 2-way street. If either one of you is inaccessible (whether too hot or too cold), it’s best to delay or back off and take a break.
Oops! A way of signaling the need to take a break is for one of you (whoever is noticing the conversation reeling out of control or beyond resolution) to say “Oops!” as a non-blaming signal that a break and time to regroup is needed.
Returning to connection starts by connecting with and understanding your reactions to your partner.
Getting at what is going on in you: Take some deep belly breaths; journal, draw, or walk out your upset letting the flaring charge of energy release from your body. In journaling, write to the prompts:
What I’m really upset about is . . .
I can’t be accessible, responsive, and engaged with my partner right now because I’m . . .
To be able to reconnect I need . . .
The important benefit of journaling or drawing is that it captures and contains your upset, holding it still so that it’s not cycling repeatedly in your head and you can look at it, gaining a bit of separation from it and sometimes a different perspective. It can be difficult to make yourself do this, whether you’re feeling some variation of angry, hurt, scared, or guilty—or a combination.
It’s natural that these emotions, once aroused, don’t want to let go of you. The thought-spiral they cycle into is fundamentally defensive and protective of you (and themselves)—even self-blame (e.g., I never get it right . . .) or catastrophic thinking (e.g., they’ll leave and I’ll be alone the rest of my life . . .) is building justifications for you’re a habitual sense of self and your reactions.
Before re-engaging it’s important to ask yourself the A.R.E. question: Am I able to be accessible, responsive, and engaged now? If the question isn’t a clear yes, is there something you need from your partner to create the emotional safety you need to be present and engaged?
Returning to Connection
Right timing: is essential in having discussions that tend to morph into a conflictive pattern of interaction.
Before you talk about the issue again, this might mean asking your partner if they are feeling open to reengaging?
Starting with reassurances: can contextualize the discussion in your love and commitment to one another. This might include reassuring each other of your love, desire to understand, willingness to listen, commitment to staying.
Structuring the conversation: This can include “rules”:
Who talks first and for how long without interruption.
What kind of response you want or don’t want (e.g., no blame; understand but not correct or criticize; listen and care/reassure without trying to fix).
Listen with attentiveness (if you start thinking about what you want to say, take a breath and return to listening, letting yourself feel what your partner is communicating)
Remembering to use the “Oops” to stop yourselves from falling down the slippery slope into old patterns of interaction.
The attachment view of love gives us a way of understanding toxic patterns. It guides us back to the nature of our childhood experiences of being cared for, encouraged, and protected. Our early experiences of these fundamental needs are stored in unconscious or implicit memory and beliefs about ourselves and others. When these experiences and beliefs cause us to expect to be rejected, abandonned, or hurt by others, and/or to doubt that we have value or are lovable, we may find we have an avoidant or anxious "attachment style" as we seek love and security and defend against hurt and vulnerability in our relationships.
As adults, we may consciously want calm, loving, cooperative discussions in which our thoughts and feelings are met with understanding and acceptance. But our desires and plans can be derailed when when unconscious anxieties and beliefs take over. When the child in each of us jumps into the fray with fears about being hurt (e.g., neglected, rejected, abandonned, shamed, controlled, ignored, betrayed, misunderstood) exchanges between lovers can evolve so fast and become so chaotic we can’t catch what’s happening underneath the heated words or the withdrawal. We can’t see how we could react differently or change the pattern we’re trapped in.
But if we slow things down we can see the underlying attachment needs—the need to feel understood, accepted, loved, and supported. The powerful emotions that accompany these needs, and the ways we defend against feeling rejected or judged, often arise suddenly. When triggered, our attachment needs explode a conversation into an argument fueled by underlying, unrecognized issues of security and survival—whether the triggering of these issues results in raised voices or withdrawal, heated emotions or numbness. Caught behind our defenses we cease to be open and available to each other.
Emotional Responsiveness: The Key to a Lasting Love for Couples
Dr. Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy, described emotional availablity as having three main components:
1. Accessibility: Can I reach you? Can I be reached?
This means being emotionally and physically available, staying open to your partner even when you feel insecure or defensive. It often means being willing to struggle with your emotions (or your numbness) that make you want to either fight or withdraw so that they are not so overwhelming. It may mean learning what you each need to feel open and to return from disconnection.
2.Responsiveness: Can I rely on you to respond to me emotionally?
Mutual responsiveness is grounded in respect and tolerance for your differences that eases the defensive need to be right and supports the desire to understand each other. It means accepting your partner’s feelings and perspectives and sending clear signals of comfort, care, and validation when your partner needs them.
3.Engagement: Do I know you will value me and stay close?
The dictionary defines engaged as being absorbed, attracted, pulled, captivated, pledged, involved. Emotional engagement here means the special kind of attention we give to a loved one. Prioritizing time together without distractions, affectionate touch, words of care and appreciation, and expressing interest in each other’s feelings and thoughts are examples of what partners often talk about as being emotionally present.
However, we each receive and give love differently. So, engagement also means knowing what makes each other feel loved, as well as what is called each partner’s “love language”—how each of us expresses love. We may find speaking our partner’s love language difficult or may find feeling loved difficult if they don’t speak ours. Being responsibly engaged (able to respond to each other’s needs) may mean becoming bilingual in your love language.
One way to remember these three aspects of emotional responsiveness is through an acronym: A.R.E. (accessible, responsive, engaged) and the questions:
Are you able to be with me right now?
Am I able to be with you right now?
Becoming Accessible
When we want to be heard, it’s crucial to understand that communication is a 2-way street. If either one of you is inaccessible (whether too hot or too cold), it’s best to delay or back off and take a break.
Oops! A way of signaling the need to take a break is for one of you (whoever is noticing the conversation reeling out of control or beyond resolution) to say “Oops!” as a non-blaming signal that a break and time to regroup is needed.
Returning to connection starts by connecting with and understanding your reactions to your partner.
Getting at what is going on in you: Take some deep belly breaths; journal, draw, or walk out your upset letting the flaring charge of energy release from your body. In journaling, write to the prompts:
What I’m really upset about is . . .
I can’t be accessible, responsive, and engaged with my partner right now because I’m . . .
To be able to reconnect I need . . .
The important benefit of journaling or drawing is that it captures and contains your upset, holding it still so that it’s not cycling repeatedly in your head and you can look at it, gaining a bit of separation from it and sometimes a different perspective. It can be difficult to make yourself do this, whether you’re feeling some variation of angry, hurt, scared, or guilty—or a combination.
It’s natural that these emotions, once aroused, don’t want to let go of you. The thought-spiral they cycle into is fundamentally defensive and protective of you (and themselves)—even self-blame (e.g., I never get it right . . .) or catastrophic thinking (e.g., they’ll leave and I’ll be alone the rest of my life . . .) is building justifications for you’re a habitual sense of self and your reactions.
Before re-engaging it’s important to ask yourself the A.R.E. question: Am I able to be accessible, responsive, and engaged now? If the question isn’t a clear yes, is there something you need from your partner to create the emotional safety you need to be present and engaged?
Returning to Connection
Right timing: is essential in having discussions that tend to morph into a conflictive pattern of interaction.
Before you talk about the issue again, this might mean asking your partner if they are feeling open to reengaging?
Starting with reassurances: can contextualize the discussion in your love and commitment to one another. This might include reassuring each other of your love, desire to understand, willingness to listen, commitment to staying.
Structuring the conversation: This can include “rules”:
Who talks first and for how long without interruption.
What kind of response you want or don’t want (e.g., no blame; understand but not correct or criticize; listen and care/reassure without trying to fix).
Listen with attentiveness (if you start thinking about what you want to say, take a breath and return to listening, letting yourself feel what your partner is communicating)
Remembering to use the “Oops” to stop yourselves from falling down the slippery slope into old patterns of interaction.