Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It (3 page)

Like those with a preoccupied style, those with a dismissing style are also prone to believe that their partners will not reliably be there to support or comfort them. But they protect themselves by unconsciously using
deactivating strategies
that “turn off” (or deactivate) their attachment system, enabling them to avoid being in the untenable position of feeling a pull to rely on an undependable partner. They effectively suppress, avoid, or ignore their emotions and attachment needs. They tend to remain distant, limit their interactions and intimate conversations, and frequently denigrate their partners. For example, while Andy often seemed kind as he helped Chris with her finances, which she appreciated, this also allowed him to remain in a distant and superior position, which only increased her negative feelings about herself. At other times, Andy would keep a safe distance and respond to Chris’s attempts to be emotionally intimate by telling her that she was “just too needy.” This, of course, only increased her self-doubts. In the end, dismissing people might truly care about their partners, but they do so without getting too intimate or emotionally entangled.

Generally unaware of their feelings, dismissing people aren’t fully equipped to cope with emotionally upsetting experiences. For instance, when their partners aggravate them, they try to minimize or deny their anger. However, that anger continues to exist under the surface, often making them tense and unforgiving. This dynamic, of course, does not bode well for their relationships; but it can’t be easily addressed or rectified because so much of it occurs outside of their awareness. This dynamic is most problematic for anxiously attached partners, who tend to interpret the dismissing partner’s anger as evidence that there is something wrong with them.

So why doesn’t the dismissing partner just leave? Even those with a dismissing style need comfort and connection. So they seek out and stay in romantic relationships, even as they simultaneously protect themselves by being excessively self-sufficient in those relationships.

Dismissing people approach their sexualities in the same distant and self-protective way as they engage in relationships in general. Because physical or sexual contact can weaken their defenses, many are uncomfortable with connecting through touch, such as with hugs or gentle caressing. They might abstain from sex, sometimes choosing to rely on masturbation. Or they might remain emotionally distant by limiting sex to one-night stands or short-term relationships that are only superficially close. When they are in intimate relationships, they tend not to be affectionate and may be emotionally disengaged during sex. This can leave anxious partners feeling unattractive and unworthy of love.

Fearful Attachment: Conflicted in Love

John describes himself as an emotional mess. He has been this way since he was a kid. By the age of fourteen, he was essentially taking care of himself because his father was an angry drunk and his mother was busy trying to hold the family together while working long hours. He thinks of himself as flawed, needy, helpless, and unworthy of love. And he believes that others know something is wrong with him and therefore keep their distance. So although he would love a committed, romantic relationship, he avoids getting close out of fear that he’ll be rejected or misunderstood.

This conflict between an intense fear of rejection and a desperate need for reassurance and closeness is typical of people with a fearful attachment style. When they are not totally avoiding relationships, they end up behaving in contradictory and confusing ways. Prone to seeing partners as emotionally distant, they sometimes try desperately to get their partners’ approval and attention by using hyperactivating strategies such as exaggerating their distress. However, when they perceive their partners as getting close, they feel vulnerable to getting hurt. So they instinctively look to protect themselves from their partner, turning to deactivating strategies to avoid intimacy. In John’s case, he would spend his weekends repairing old furniture, limiting the time he could be with his girlfriend (when he had one). This constant tension between being too close or too distant leaves fearfully attached people chronically distressed, insecure, extremely passive, and emotionally distant. Not surprisingly, they are at high risk for anxiety, depression, and other emotional struggles.

Convinced that their partners are emotionally unavailable, fearfully attached people tend to view their partners in a particularly negative light and have trouble empathizing with them. For instance, when John was dating Amanda and would meet her after work for dinner, he would invariably conclude she was uninterested in him when she was really just tired from a long day. This predisposition, of course, creates tension in relationships. But those with a fearful style are likely to just stew in their feelings rather than directly address them. Probably because of their sense that they are unworthy of love, they tend to remain in their relationships even when those relationships are seriously troubled or even abusive. On the other hand, because of their discomfort with intimacy and being appreciated (though it’s what they desperately want), they are likely to feel something is wrong and end a relationship, even when they are in love and their partner is truly caring.

Just as they struggle with being emotionally intimate with their partners, they also struggle with being physically intimate. Sometimes this means using casual sex as a way of remaining emotionally distant and safe while also trying to meet their need for comfort, acceptance, and reassurance. They might do this with one-night stands or short-term relationships (that end when they start feeling vulnerable). When they are less focused on meeting their attachment needs and are more in the mode of protecting themselves, they are likely to avoid sexual intimacy and its accompanying vulnerability.

If you have not already done so, review the four styles of attachment and decide which one you most resemble. But remember, you are unlikely to fit any one style to a T. So pay attention to how your personal attachment style incorporates some of the characteristics of the other styles. For instance, are you basically secure but with a tendency toward doubting your self-worth (being preoccupied)? Also keep in mind that although you have a particular, characteristic style, it will likely vary a bit with different relationships.

Another way you can assess your style of attachment is to graph your ratings on the dimensions of anxiety and avoidance. Get a clean sheet of paper. (Graph paper is best, if you have it.) Draw a horizontal line and label it
Anxiety
. Place evenly spaced tic marks along it, numbering them from 0 to 10 (from left to right). Then, at the 5, draw a vertical line and label it
Avoidance
. Again, place evenly spaced tic marks along it and number them from 0 to 10 (from bottom to top, placing the 5 where this line crosses the horizontal line). Now you have a graph that looks like figure 1. Copy the style descriptions from figure 1 into each of the quadrants on your graph. To determine your rating for attachment-related anxiety and attachment-related avoidance, look back to the exercise “How Much Anxiety and Avoidance Do You Feel in Your Relationships?” Using your two ratings, plot where you fall in the quadrants and place a dot there. Not only will you see the style quadrant into which you fall, but you will also see how close you are to each of the other quadrants. The less extreme you are on each of the dimensions, the less your traits will match the prototypical style of the quadrant that you are in.

A third way of determining your attachment style in intimate relationships is to use an online survey (including the empirically validated “Experiences in Close Relationships—Revised” questionnaire) developed by researcher Chris Fraley and colleagues (Fraley, Vicary, Brumbaugh, and Roisman, 2011). You can find a link to this questionnaire on my website:
http://www.drbecker-phelps.com/insecure.html
. Along with revealing your attachment style, it also shows where you fall on a graph of attachment-related anxiety and attachment-related avoidance.

Once you are clear about your own attachment style, you might want to look at the attachment style of your partner or past partners. You can rate them the same way you rated yourself, using your observations about them and their behaviors. You can also have current partners rate themselves if they are open to it; the advantage of this is that it can open some illuminating and intimacy-building conversations. In both cases, understanding their style of attachment will help you to better understand them and the relationship the two of you have or had.

Finally, knowing your attachment style is an effective first step to changing it. So you’ve already accomplished a lot just by getting to this point. Understanding how your style developed is also important. And this is what I’ll discuss next.

Chapter 2

My goal in this chapter is to clarify the development of attachment styles well enough that you can look at yourself (and your partner) and honestly say, “Well, of course you’re struggling with that. The ways you are thinking and feeling make perfect sense.” As with any problem, the first step toward a solution is to approach it with a positive attitude and true understanding.

To start, it’s essential that you understand the attachment system’s three basic functions:

• Proximity:
  People naturally strive to keep their attachment figure (usually a parent or romantic partner) close.
  
• Safe haven:
  When people feel threatened, they look to an attachment figure for protection, comfort, and support.
  
• Secure base:
  When people feel safe and supported around an attachment figure, they feel freer to pursue goals apart from that relationship.
  

Your experience in adult relationships is very much related to how well each of these functions was met by caregivers during your childhood, and how well they’ve been met by attachment figures in subsequent relationships. No, you can’t blame it all on your parents. But a healthy, informed look back can go a long way toward putting you on the road to healthier relationships, by clarifying where you came from.

The safety of young children is dependent on caregivers being close and attentive. Even as children mature into adolescence and young adulthood, they still rely on their parents, though the parent-child relationship changes significantly. They broaden their network of attachment figures and so might also rely on other family members, mentors, clergy, or close friends. And then, significantly, they often look to a romantic partner (eventually a spouse) as their principal attachment figure to help them feel safe and to support their interests.

However, “closeness” means something a bit different for an adult than for a young child. Adults are more effective in using
mental representations
, or images, of attachment figures for a sense of comfort. This means that
thinking
of your partner, parent, or close friend can give you the sense that they are emotionally close, which allows you to symbolically return to them as a safe haven and a secure base. Over time, you might come to identify so much with certain caregivers that you incorporate their way of relating to you into yourself, enabling you to maintain a sense that you have value and to generally expect that others will be supportive. Unfortunately, the more you struggle with attachment-related anxiety, the less likely you are to truly believe that you have value or that others value you. As a result, you will have more difficulty using mental representations as a safe haven to self-soothe or as a secure base for exploration.

(I will return to the idea of mental representations later in the book, because developing them is crucial to lessening your anxiety and distress in relationships.)

Children are biologically wired to look to their parents as a safe haven from threats. For instance, many young children run to their parents for protection during loud thunderstorms or when they meet a clown at the circus (which, from their perspective, is an understandably scary creature). However, it’s not enough for parents to offer physical safety. Children must
feel
safe and comforted in their parents’ presence.

Parents who can maintain their emotional equilibrium do the best job of this. By not getting caught up in their own emotions, they are free to have empathy for their children’s experiences right from infancy. When children feel that their parents empathize with and respect their experiences, they feel good about themselves and their developing abilities. As the children mature, these parents continue to provide sensitive responses as a way to help them accept, understand, and cope with their emotions. (Keep in mind that no parent is perfectly consistent or in tune with her child. Rather than being perfect, caregivers only need to be what psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott [1953] calls “good enough.”)

Unfortunately, not all parents are able to do this—even when they love their children. As a result, their children do not experience a reliable safe haven. They don’t feel fully accepted, and might not feel worthy of love. They might also view their parents (and by extension, others) as emotionally unavailable and unsupportive. These experiences of self and others persist into adulthood. (And, as you might remember from chapter 1, experiences of self and experiences of others are the two working models that underlie attachment styles.) So to the extent that childhood caretakers were inconsistent or unavailable in providing you with a safe haven, you will likely be preoccupied with the fear of your partner leaving you; or you might just not even look to your partner for comfort.

To enjoy a secure and happy relationship, you need to face your fears of being unlovable and rejected, understand them, and nurture a new sense of having a safe haven in your adult relationships. It’s not an easy task, but it is definitely doable. To help you face and understand this struggle better, complete the next exercise.

Exercise: Looking for a Safe Haven in Your Relationship

How sensitive are you to either physical or emotional separations? When your partner is doing something outside of your relationship, how do you feel about it? Are you quick to feel abandoned, rejected, or just not cared about? If so, allow yourself to experience, acknowledge, and explore your reactions (for example, feeling painfully alone or vulnerable). Remember that whatever your reactions are, they have their basis in an attachment system that was evolved to keep you safe from harm. The intensity of your feelings is your attachment system’s way of calling out, “Hey, I need help here! If you aren’t here for me, I might die!”

If you are fortunate enough not to feel particularly sensitive to separations, consider what you do feel. How much are you comforted by a sense of your partner being with you (or by a sense of being part of a couple) even when you are physically apart? Or do you
not
feel comforted even when he is around? Consider whether you feel—or try to feel—detached so that you are relatively immune from being hurt by your partner. Take time to think about situations when you and your partner have been away from each other, and explore your reactions to them.