Unlocking the Past: How Childhood Attachment Influences Present Relationships

Reaching out for love can be hard, accepting it can be harder.

In Part 1 of this attachment series we learned what attachment is and the two main types of attachment ( click here for Part 1). While it is clear how attachment can affect us as children, we might be asking ourselves, “how does it impact me as an adult?”

Attachment Styles in Adulthood

As we age, we become less dependent on our parents or caregivers and more dependent on our friends and romantic partners. However, the attachment type we developed in childhood provides a roadmap for how we see and interact with the world around us. Although we are adults, our attachment needs do not change, they just become more sophisticated.

Secure Adults

Secure attachment is an attachment style marked by low relationship anxiety and low relationship avoidance. For adults with secure attachment, this roadmap can make friendships and especially romantic relationships much more of a joyful experience. Adults with secure attachment have a foundational knowledge that they are important and worthy of love. They also experienced first hand what unconditional love feels like and consistently had their needs met. Therefore, they know how to love themselves and meet their own needs.

Their fear of abandonment is greatly reduced because they have not been abandoned by the most important people in their lives. More importantly, they never had to act like someone they were not or pretend to not need things they really needed in order to feel safe or receive love from the most important people in their lives. Plainly, they never had to abandon themselves.

When adults have secure attachment, they are considered secure adults; secure in themselves and their place in the world. If their partner behaves badly, the secure adult is likely to understand that behavior to be a reflection of their partner, not them. They do not have to worry about being abandoned, not because it can’t happen, but because if it does, the secure adult can take care of themselves. Despite the hurt, they will be okay. They deserve to be okay.

Preoccupied Adults

Adults with anxious attachment are called preoccupied adults. It is an attachment style marked by high relationship anxiety and low relationship avoidance. This preoccupation refers to the adult’s hyperfocus on relationships, specifically (but not always) their romantic relationship. If I put you in a cage with a lion, you would hyper focus on that lion. You would follow its every move, try to map out what it might be thinking, feeling, planning. If the lion is relaxed, you are going to be less anxious. If the lion is upset, you will be more upset and afraid. Such is the way of a preoccupied adult, except the preoccupied adult is not afraid of being eaten by their partner, they are afraid of being abandoned by their partner. And this fear of abandonment can often be just as great as the fear of being eaten by a lion.

Let’s go back to those early years as a baby. As we have established, babies do not have defense mechanisms. They cannot care of themselves. They also don’t know what the heck is going on. So if a baby is crying and upset, cold or hungry, and no one comes to care for it, a conclusion is drawn: I am in serious danger. Even new born babies understand danger- danger that feels life or death. For babies, abandonment is the most threatening thing we can experience. Children with anxious attachment learned to fight this fear by clinging to their caregivers. These children grow up to be adults who do the same to their partners. Even though they are older, that same old fear remains just as strong, even if we don’t realize it’s origin.

Dismissive Adults

Adults with avoidant attachment are referred to as dismissive adults. It is an attachment style marked by low relationship anxiety and high relationship avoidance. Again, a dismissive adult refers to how they view relationships in their lives. If we know that attachment styles are a survival mechanism, then taking a dismissive stance on relationships is a very logical thing to do.

Imagine for a moment that you are a newborn baby alone in a crib. Imagine that you are uncomfortable and scared and need your caregiver. If you cried and cried and cried out alone and afraid, and no one came to your aid, how would you eventually come to feel? Like most mammals, we can only take so much distress before we either run away, fight, or start to shut down. For babies, only the latter is an option. If we need something long enough, and don’t get it, our body will bury the need and the intense feelings that come with it because it is too painful. Most of us know what it is like to feel unrequited love. For a baby or child, unrequited love feels like a danger they never want to face again. This logical conclusions robs them of the connection we all need.

A dismissive adult is a child who needed love and connection so desperately that they buried their need and longing for it. In fact, it is buried so deeply that it is hidden even to them. These individuals learn to rely only on themselves and have come to view relationships as threatening and even smothering. Unlike preoccupied adults, dismissive adults view closeness as something not to be valued. Indeed, a dismissive adult’s feelings about relationships is so buried, they are often unaware of the relationship anxiety that they experience, until and unless their defenses have been hindered.

Unresolved Adults

Finally, there is the category of disorganized attachment. Adults with disorganized attachment are considered unresolved. If you have been reading this and thinking, I have a lot of anxiety and fear of being abandoned in relationships, but I also really fear closeness in my relationship, you may have disorganized attachment, also called fearful-avoidant attachment. Unresolved adults have both high relationship anxiety and high relationship avoidance. They want to be in a relationship, to love, to belong. And, they also expect to be hurt by their partner to the point where they may always be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

This is also very logical. Again, let’s go back to that newborn baby. Helpless and needing their caregivers to give them everything they need to survive. Love and gentle, physical touch are also necessary for survival. Babies can be fed, kept warm, kept safe, but if they are not held, they can develop physical ailments preventing them from growing referred to as “failure to thrive”. In many cases, these babies are not able to thrive at all and perish under the weight of emotional neglect. If we know that emotional and physical nurturing is as essential as food and water, it is no wonder that children raised in abusive homes or with caregivers who are sometimes scary and chaotic will still seek out nurturing when they can get it. These children come to learn that love is accompanied by fear and pain. That is the way of things.

An adult with unresolved attachment may exhibit self sabotaging behaviors in their relationship, doing things that end the relationship before their partner can really hurt them. Some of these individuals may become aggressive or accusatory as a way to protect themselves from the pain they are sure will come. Others may practice a pattern of getting very close to someone and then abruptly abandoning the relationship, leaving their partners (and even themselves) dumbfounded. Still, others may become practiced victims, taking solace in the “devil they know”, not allowing themselves to consider a love without pain.

Healing

While attachment patterns are powerful, they are not set in stone. Attachment patterns are learned behaviors allowing us to survive in the best way possible. This means that they can change. As we grow and heal in our lives, we may find that our attachment patterns are not as helpful to us as they once were. Changing our attachment patterns to meet the needs of a life of joy and healing is not always easy, but it is always worth it.