Why We Love the Way We Do:The Power of Attachment in Relationships

When it comes to understanding couples and their most significant challenges, Attachment Theory offers powerful insights and practical guidelines to enhance the quality of relationships. Research on Adult Attachment over the past 20 years has revealed a strong correlation between a person’s attachment style and the quality of their communication and emotional functioning in intimate relationships.

The Origins of Attachment Theory

What is Attachment Theory? The roots of this concept trace back to the 1980s with British psychoanalyst John Bowlby. Moving away from traditional psychoanalysis, Bowlby emphasized the importance of real-life interactions in human development, particularly those between a child and their primary caregivers. He argued that attachment is a fundamental biological need for security and closeness, and that children are born with an innate system driving them to seek proximity to caregivers for safety and protection.

Since Bowlby’s pioneering work, researchers like Mary Ainsworth, Mary Main, Peter Fonagy, and Neils Rygaard have further explored how early childhood relationships influence the quality of bonds in adult affective relationships.

Types of Attachment Style:

Mary Ainsworth expanded on Bowlby’s theory with her groundbreaking "Strange Situation" experiments, which examined how the quality of primary bonds impacts relationship patterns throughout life. She defined the Attachment style acquired during childhood as the set of motivations and behaviors to bond effectively with our loved ones and maintain closeness with them, as well as the characteristics of the reaction to separation and reunion with these loved ones and the way we explore the environment.  

They came up with three main attachment styles:

• Secure Attachment: If you have this pattern, you feel comfortable with intimacy and independence, you naturally trust those whore are close to you and are warm and loving in relationships. You normally have a positive view of yourself and others.

  
  

• Insecure Anxious or Ambivalent Attachment:  These individuals often seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their partner. If it sounds like you, you might be frequently preoccupied with your relationships and fear abandonment, sometimes unconsciously acting disproportionately to “test” the other´s availability and commitment. Careful! You might also overlook many red flags and yet do everything in your hand to stay in the relationship, even when it's harmful.

  
  

• Insecure Avoidant Attachment: Individuals with this attachment style tend to maintain emotional distance and struggle with intimacy and closeness. If you have it, you often value independence and self-sufficiency over relationships and might struggle to empathize with others or rely on them. 

  
  

• Disorganized Attachment: Added later by Mary Main, this style describes individuals with inconsistent strategies for navigating relationships, often displaying a mix of anxious and avoidant behaviors,  from craving intimacy to fearfully scaping away from it.

How are Attachment Styles developed up to Adulthood?

The main characteristic that differentiates us humans from other living beings is that our offspring are born with absolute vulnerability and profound dependence on those primary caregivers. We need another human being to survive - to be fed, hydrated, stimulated, to sleep in a way that we can rest, to relieve us of pain, protect us from cold, heat, dangers, etc. - but also to meet our brain’s need for stimulation finish developing all the structures that will allow its adult capabilities in the long term. There are incredible studies showcasing the impact of deficient early relationships on the baby's brain structure and functioning. 

For these two reasons, to overcome this enormous vulnerability and dependence, the attachment system arises – a close, stable, and meaningful emotional bond with a caregiver that ensures the child's safety, especially in moments of fear, anguish, or stress

In the early moments of life, children start exhibiting their attachment behaviors (crying, screaming, smiling, touching, seeking the gaze of the attachment figure, maintaining eye contact), and these will be responded to by the attachment figures - whose own attachment style will make them respond in one way or another. Children will adjust these behaviors for their greater efficacy in securing the proximity from this figure, and in this attachment process they begin to construct internal representations of themselves, of others, and of how to achieve proximity to these others.

These internal representations or working models of the child will generate more complex attachment behaviors, guide them, orient them, and finally produce them, developing a unique attachment style - secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-anxious-ambivalent, disorganized. Research on attachment has shown that these internal working models remain relatively stable over time and also define attachment styles in adults. 

But not only are these representational systems created in the construction of the bond with the attachment figure - a series of key basic emotional and cognitive capacities, essential for later adult functioning, are also acquired and developed during this process:

• The competency to discriminate emotions

• The ability to regulate emotional states.

• The ability to experience the permanence of one's own emotional states, as well as the permanence of the other's emotional states about oneself.

• The ability to see the other as a differentiated being and the ability to see oneself as differentiated from the other.

• The ability to experience the p

• The ability to mentalize (theory of mind).

• The most genuinely human capacity: empathy.

When a child haven’t had the opportunity to establish a quality primary attachment during their first two years of life, they often present developmental deficits, especially in the area of social behaviors and learning development. There is a direct relationship between attachment disorders, childhood empathy disorders, conjugal incompetence, and subsequently, parental incompetence.

Internal Working Models in Adulthood

Our internal working models act as lenses through which we view and interact with the world. They influence our feelings, behaviors, attention, memory, and cognition. 

You might know someone whose partner regularly communicates throughout the day, and when one day the partner is in a crucial meeting and doesn't respond to messages for hours will be enough for your acquaintance to feel anxious and abandoned, thinking their partner no longer cares. When the latter finally calls back, our protagonist accuses them of neglect and not loving them. Despite the partner's explanations and reassurances, our hurt one remains upset and withdrawn, displaying passive-aggressive behavior and coldness for the rest of the day. Sounds familiar? 

Although seemingly maladaptive and troublesome, these models provided the necessary rules for survival during critical times in childhood. As adults, we continue to rely on these models and behaviors, even if they no longer fit our reality or lead to positive outcomes. With this, someone with an anxious attachment who hasn't gained awareness of the process and the capacity to mentalize will be constantly drawn to avoidant partners, re-enacting the dynamic of seeking affection from an emotionally unavailable caregiver.  It’s not on purpose, of course! Their pain is real. But they unconsciously deploy their attention in a way that reinforces and justifies what is written in their internal working models, pushing them to perceive reality and interact interpersonally according to them.

Insecure attachments can be healed through therapy that offers unconditional acceptance, emotional stability, and empathy. This secure therapeutic relationship allows individuals to embark on the process of mentalization—understanding oneself and others in terms of subjective states like desires, thoughts, and feelings, and how these link to behaviors.

If you recognize these patterns in your relationships, seeking the right help can lead to healthier connections and a more fulfilling life. Remember, it’s a journey, but one worth taking for the sake of your emotional well-being and relationships.