Getting Closer

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

- Carl Sagan

“ What is wrong with me that even my own mother cannot love me?“

Oh if I had a dollar for every time I have heard that. Maybe not mother, but fill in your family member of choice; sister, brother, son, cousin, aunt, father, daughter, grandmother … it doesn’t matter who it is in our family that appears to reject us, abuse us or wish us harm – we at some point in time ask,  “what is wrong with me?”

We may have been told in great detail what is wrong with us, and from time to time, we may even believe it. But here’s a truth;  people’s inability to love very often says as much about them as it does us. If we believe that it is about us, and only us, we will be bamboozled. We will miss the complexity of interaction and perceived rejection will erode our sense of value, belonging and self worth.

The thing is, unresolved childhood attachment issues can leave us vulnerable to difficulties in forming secure adult relationships. Patterns of attachment continue through our lives and across generations. New relationships are impacted by what we have come to expect from  past relationships and so on. Recent research has demonstrated a clear link between people who have insecure or dismissive/avoidant adult attachment style with unhappy or failed relationships and marriages.  When we don’t feel safe, we tend to either be either rejecting or desperately seeking connection. When we are relating from these patterns, we aren’t pro relationship – we are pro-reaction. Patterned reactions do not good relationships make!

Attachment issues play out in all our relationships, not just in our childhood and not just with our intimate partner. We may find we are attracted to particular relationships or kinds of people. We may find ourselves trapped in what feels like an endless cycle of repeated issues, far too similar for comfort. Some of it is about us, some of it is about how we choose relationships, what feels ” normal”, what sorts of things we have been conditioned to accept or put up with and some of it is about what the other person comes into our relationship carrying. Asking a wounded person with attachment issues to be healthy, present and loving for us, especially under stress or during emotional intensity, is unrealistic. That goes for us too!

” I was the bad kid. If something went wrong people automatically looked at me, even when I didn’t do it. In my adult relationships I seem to end up dealing with people who blame me for things. Even things I didn’t do! It’s just like when I was a kid.”

“My boss is a control freak, micro managing everything I do. It’s like having my father hanging over me while I am trying to work.”

“ I never felt like I measured up with my dad. He left us when I was eleven and I never heard or saw him again. I was always waiting for my husband to get sick of me and run off and eventually he did.  Just like everyone I care about.  What is wrong with me?”

” I don’t put up with emotional games. Strong feelings are a turn off. Most of my relationships with women don’t last. They are all gamers.”

Attachment problems are often handed down generation after generation until someone breaks the chain. Some of us will have had a parent who developed an insecure or dismissive  attachment pattern. It may be that as a result they lacked the ability to form a strong attachment to us, their partner, or other people.  It may be as a result,  we didn’t get to experience healthy emotional development when we were kids, and it may be that until we make changes, we are playing out the same themes. If we don’t address basic issues of attachment, connection and nurturance, we are predisposed to pass along to our children a lifetime of relationship difficulties.

Who is to blame? Does it matter?

Thankfully, attachment styles are not fixed in stone. With the benefit of positive life experience, healthy relationship, appropriate therapeutic intervention if necessary and a strong desire for change – all of us have the capacity to work through attachment issues, alter our relationships and experience true intimacy and closeness.

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