Attachment Styles

If you are paying attention at all to relationship themes, you likely have heard of attachment styles.  I think it's a relatively well-researched concept although like everything it's hard to wade through the garbage on YouTube and the internet to find reliable, accurate content.  And I'm just a consumer of content, not someone who actually works in the field and has good knowledge.

But as someone with a good relationship with my parents who doesn't generally avoid conflict and who doesn't feel anxious in relationships (without cause), I believe I am fairly secure.  But I also am really trying to understand what went so wrong in my relationship so am very open to adjusting that belief with better understanding and then working on myself.

So I'm not shying away from the discussion during my last therapy session about whether I might be a bit avoidant.  

There's many characteristics of avoidants that don't feel like they fit but I do strongly feel that most of life falls on a spectrum and that we usually can't neatly fit people into boxes.  So just because it doesn't feel like it fits doesn't mean it isn't manifesting itself in some way that is affecting my relationships.

I grew up with parents who were great parents in so many ways.  They provided for my sister and I.  They paid attention to us.  They responded to us and our needs.  They taught and guided us.  The only thing I feel like I lacked was a deeper emotional support.  They are logical, analytical people - my sister is the same way.  They solve problems.  They don't spend all that much time openly analyzing their feelings.  

I'm not sure that means they don't actually know how to manage their feelings.  I suspect it's just normally an internal process and not something they lean on other people for support and so they don't know how to give that support.  Although, it's not that I never saw emotion out of my parents.  Both my parents could become angry at times and I remember seeing tears in my mom on a few occasions.  But they dealt with them and moved on.

I suspect my depression in high school/early college stemmed in a combination of my parents inability to connect with me on a deeper emotional level and the struggles I faced with my sexuality in those years and the impact on my closest friendship.  And I think I'm wired differently than my family and so in my most difficult teenage years that disconnect created a real deficit.  I remember the challenging conversation I had with my parents to convince them I needed therapy as it was not something they recognized themselves and their analytical minds didn't understand the value of therapy.

Note, I don't blame them for any of this.  They were great parents, not perfect parents.  They gave me a head start in life in so many ways that I saw lacking in my peers who struggled with adulthood more than I did.  I remember blaming them a lot when I was in my 20s without understanding the greater picture and the value they did bring to my life.  Maturing and take accountability for who I was as an adult helped me see them as the imperfect but loving parents they really were (and still are).

But going back to the affect this upbringing had on me and what I still struggle with today, it pushed me to learn to deal with my emotions on my own.  

I love the swings.  At my church retreat in February, I took time to just swing at the playground in between sessions.  There is something about that back and forth motion high above the ground that is soothing.  And as a child, that is one of the most common places I self-soothed.  I could swing for hours and just let my mind wander, sift through the emotions running through me, accept my situation for what it was, and plan for what I could control.  It was where I escaped from the terrible babysitter we had in early elementary school.  It is where I felt free.

So as someone that learned to self-soothe at an early age maybe I didn't expect it from people I was in a relationship with.  That doesn't mean I didn't seek it out.  In therapy on Friday, I could name quite a few people who had provided emotional support to me over the years but it was more a surprising benefit to a relationship rather than an expected part of one.

So when my husband couldn't provide me with that support, I'm not sure I thought anything of it on a conscious level.  I had learned it is not something everyone can provide and that their lack of ability to provide that emotional support didn't negate the other ways I could benefit from a relationship with them.

But maybe, what my body didn't anticipate was the unbalanced way I would provide that to someone who wouldn't or couldn't do the same for me.  And maybe that can work in a casual friend or family relationship where I'm expanding my net far and wide in a way that doesn't work in an intimate partner relationship where two people commit to walking every day life together. 

So maybe I'm not so avoidant in my communication style but was (am?) avoidant in recognizing what I needed for a balanced intimate partner relationship.