How Attachment During Childhood Affects Adult Relationships

You may be familiar with the concept of attachment, but what does it truly mean, and how does childhood attachment affect adult relationships? Understanding your attachment style can help you recognize your patterns of thoughts and behaviors, allowing you to develop healthy and fulfilling connections with others.

Attachment During Childhood

Attachment patterns are established during early childhood and significantly influence how individuals relate to others throughout their lives. Attachment theory emphasizes the importance of a child’s emotional bond with their primary caregivers and how disruptions in this bond can affect a child emotionally and psychologically. 

From the moment we are born, a parent or caregiver’s love lays the foundation for our brain to either learn to trust or be wary of human connection. A baby depends on their primary caregiver’s ability to help them emotionally regulate, soothe distress, feel safe, and build trust in relationships. This foundation then influences our comfort and security in relationships, fear of rejection or abandonment, and preference for love and connection or self-sufficiency and personal distance.

While it is valuable to consider how our childhood influences our attachment style, it is also important to note that attachment can be shaped by various factors and experiences throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, as well as in the context of different relationships.

Secure Attachment

Secure attachment develops from a dependable relationship between caregiver and child, where caregivers consistently provide a caring environment and attend to the child’s physical and emotional needs. As children, we need nurturance, guidance, and protection from our early caregivers to develop the necessary brain processes for optimal living and healthy social and emotional development.

Potential Characteristics of Secure Attachment in Adult Relationships:

• You can enjoy intimacy without becoming overly worried about your relationship.

• You feel comfortable effectively communicating your needs.

• You are at ease with commitment, intimacy, and sharing your feelings.

• You feel confident after disagreements or hardships that there will be repair.

• You are not overly jealous or paranoid. 

• You are comfortable with both closeness and independence and don't take your partner’s need for space or reassurance too personally. 

Insecure Attachment

Conversely, a lack of attunement from caregivers toward their child’s physical and emotional needs often leads to the development of insecure attachment. This can be a result of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. However, a caregiver’s lack of attunement may also be unintentional, although a child will still experience their needs as being unmet. Insecure bonding with a caregiver can complicate bonding with others, influencing how significant relationships are formed and experienced into adulthood.

Many well-meaning caregivers might not provide adequate protection, nurturance, or guidance simply because they cannot offer what they did not receive or have. Numerous factors can prevent a secure attachment bond from forming or being maintained between a loving caregiver and child, such as:

• An inexperienced caregiver lacking certain skills

• Caregivers struggling with their untreated mental health issues

• Lack of resources or support

• Traumatic experiences

• Substance abuse 

• Separation from the primary caregiver

• Inconsistency from the primary caregiver

• Needs of other family members or children 

Potential Characteristics of Insecure Attachment in Adult Relationships:

• Relationships can consume a large part of your emotional energy.

• You tend to be hypersensitive to small fluctuations in your partner's actions or mood.

• You fear or worry that your partner does not want to be as close as you would like.

• You might prefer autonomy over depending on intimate relationships. 

• Even though you desire closeness, too much intimacy might make you keep partners at a distance.

• You might feel uncomfortable opening up to partners or being vulnerable.

Insecure attachment adaptations are natural responses our brain and body use to cope with adverse conditions and distressing experiences. We did not cause our attachment style; it is not a flaw but rather a normal response to maladaptive attachment experiences.

Attachment During Adult Relationships and Healing Attachment

While categories of attachment styles can help us understand human behavior, they are not meant to label us, assign blame, or make us feel poorly. Instead, they provide insight into how we feel within ourselves and how we behave in relationships. Understanding what you had or what you lost can guide your path toward reclaiming what you need today.

By identifying factors that contribute to an insecure attachment, we can move toward healing and increase the possibility of forming secure attachments as adults. Understanding our attachment style provides insight into why we live and love the way we do. We can learn how we bond and what we need, as we uncover how we learned to attach and love.

How Therapy Can Help 

Developing secure attachment involves fostering three key elements that may have been lacking: nurturance, protection, and guidance. To do this, we must first understand our attachment history. Reflecting on past experiences and recognizing what was missing can help us address these gaps. In therapy, we have the chance to explore early losses or distressing attachment experiences, grieve unmet childhood needs, and learn how to build healthy attachments.

If you would like to learn more about therapy and attachment, please schedule a 15-minute consultation call here.