Attachment styles and couples’ dynamics

Some attempts have been made to integrate an analysis of emotional attachment styles with an analysis of the
interactional processes in couples. Pistole (1994) suggests that the relationships that develop in couples may be
shaped by, but cannot simply be predicted from, their attachment styles. It is possible, for example, that in some
cases the interactional dynamics serve to aggravate each person’s characteristic style and in other cases to effect
change. Couples’ attachment styles shape the beliefs and expectations that each partner holds as they interact and,
in turn, the solutions to relationship problems that emerge. Couples frequently display cycles of closeness– distance
(Byng-Hall 1985, 1995) where a frustrating process appears to take place in which attempts by either partner to
become close are met by withdrawal from the other, and vice versa. In such cases a couple may eventually find it
extremely difficult to move from an unpleasant stalemate and feel that their relationship is disintegrating since
neither can take the risk of showing intimacy for fear of rejection. Pistole (1994) suggests that such stalemate cycles
may be linked to an interlocking of each partner’s attachment styles and needs. Anxieties may be generated by some
unexpected external changes, which in turn upset the balance of an established relationship pattern: John and Jane’s
relationship has been stable for 2 years. Jane is promoted to a job that demands more investment from her and also
provides her with a greater sense of personal meaning. Perceiving the change in the amount, quality, and direction
of Jane’s attention and emotional investment (more in her job) as a separation threat, John approaches. Jane,
involved in her work, is not attentive and responsive to John’s bid for greater closeness. Following a rebuff, which is
experienced as an abandonment threat, John experiences separation anxiety and responds with more pressure for
closeness and with protest behaviour, that is anger, as a bid for Jane to be responsive and emotionally available. Jane
in turn feels both unduly pressured and attacked; she backs off or responds with anger designed to distance John. A
pursuit cycle had begun and may continue until sufficient anger from both parties results in an argument followed by
some sort of contact (perhaps ‘kissing and making up’), which calms John’s attachment system and allows the couple
to re-balance their distance. (Pistole 1994: 151) Later it is possible that stress and demands may lead Jane to wish to
gain more reassurance and contact from John. However, he may still be smarting from the rejection he perceived
earlier from Jane, leading him to avoid showing affection. If John and Jane have anxious attachment styles then such
disturbances may lead both of them to feel abandoned and uncared for but unable to make the first move for fear of
further rejection. Of course it is also possible that partners become aware of their own histories and are able to
transcend their immediate emotional reactions. This may in some cases require some ‘luck’ in finding understanding
partners and friends or, alternatively, therapeutic input. Attachments: from dyads to triads One substantial
reservation regarding attachment theory for systemic practitioners is that it is limited to a dyadic model. The unit of
analysis is typically pairs of people, in particular mothers and their infants. In work with families, however, we see
that children not only have an attachment to each parent but also to the parents’ relationship – children with whom
we work feel safe and secure when their parents are together. The quote below from a young woman, Kathy, is
illustrative of this: They used to hate each other so much I always used to be so scared that one of them would do
something stupid and I would come home and, I used to hate coming home just in case something happened. And
they’ve both got the worst tempers, even dad . . . dad’s is rarely seen but it is really bad . . . The only thing I ever hear
them talking about is me and if I didn’t have this [anorexia] its kind of like, would everything fall apart, at least its
keeping them talking. And they won’t argue while I’ve got this because it might make me worse. So um . . . that’s
kind of bought, sort of like, I’m not in control as such but I’ve got more control over the situation that way. Kathy.
(Dallos 2006: 11) This young woman had suffered with anorexia and felt herself to be caught between (triangulated)
conflicts between her parents (Figure 4.2). She described how she had been close to both of her parents but now felt
increasingly drawn in to take sides and anxious when her parents were together. This illustrates that family members
have multiple, and possibly different attachments to each other and further that each attachment pair may be
influenced by their other attachment relationships.
Mother father

Kathy – attachment to each parent influenced by her attachment to their relationship to each other

Fig. attachment as triadic process

Trauma and loss

We can argue that both trauma and loss have been fundamental areas of concern for family therapy. Family life cycle
perspectives have emphasized how loss is an inevitable aspect of family life, as well as the issues it raises for the
family in adjusting and reorganizing. Trauma, likewise, has been of concern, and attempts have been made to
explore how traumatic events such as physical and sexual abuse can come to organize family systems (Bentovim
1992). These areas are central to attachment theory and it is interesting that Bowlby (1988) noted, in some ways
similarly to Bateson (1972) and Haley et al. (1976b), that one of the most damaging areas is when parents act in ways
which are anxiety-provoking for their children. Furthermore, Bowlby (1988) had described the processes whereby, as
with double-binds, there can be severe distorting processes in families. He talked of ‘knowing what you are not
supposed to know and feeling what you are not supposed to feel’ in relation to family situations where children were
given distorted versions of events. A particularly destructive situation is where a sexually abusive parent denies to
the child and other members of the family the kind of events that happen in secret between him and the child at
night. Attachment theory gave an important impetus to considerations about how such actions caused impossible
emotional dilemmas since the child, on the one hand, had a fundamental attachment and need to be close to and
protected by their parent but, on the other, their appeals for comfort and love from this person were met with abuse
and lack of care. In agreement with systemic approaches, attachment theory suggests that it is not events in
themselves which result in traumatic responses to loss, danger and abuse but the ways that these are processed with
our primary attachment figures. Even the most brutal and dangerous events may not lead to traumatic states if we
are able to process these experiences openly and are supported in the attempt both to understand and to develop
future strategies to avoid danger and harm. Bowlby (1988) had helpfully pointed out, in agreement with
contemporary understanding of trauma (Liotti 2004; Herman 2001; Crittenden 1997) that attachment and
communicational processes in families are closely linked. Open, undistorted communication helps to process and
resolve such experiences, while restricted or distorted communication may lead, for example, to a child feeling
danger at an embodied level by a confusing contrast with what he has been told verbally. Attachment and meaning-
making processes: beliefs and narratives As systemic family therapy evolved there was a shift from a focus on
behaviours, patterns and processes to thinking of families in terms of their meaning-making processes, their beliefs
and expectations. Alongside developments in family therapy there has been a massive upsurge in cognitive
therapeutic approaches inspired by the work of Beck (1967), Brewin (1988) and Young (1990) on depression. In
Britain we have also seen the influence of the work of Harry Procter (1981, 1985), which developed George Kelly’s
personal construct theory into the idea of families as composed of a matrix of individual and shared beliefs. These
approaches, including Beck’s cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), had proposed that emotional problems such as
depression were maintained and possibly caused by patterns of negative thought processes. This suggested that
feelings and beliefs were intimately linked and it was not so much what had happened to us but what sense we
made of these events that shaped our responses and types of distress. George Kelly’s (1955) work emphasized the
importance of ways of seeing the world but he cautioned against evaluations, arguing that people adopted what
appeared to be the best ways of making sense of events. He proposed that each person is like a scientist attempting
to make sense of and to predict and anticipate events in the world. However, each person was seen as possessing a
unique set of beliefs, or personal construct system about the world. A core aspect of this was a set of beliefs or
constructs about the self. In particular, positive and negative feelings were seen to be associated with validation and
invalidation of our desired self. Change involved working in a collaborative way with people to discover alternative
ways of making sense of the world but this required an understanding of how and why they had come to develop
certain views. Similarly, Kelly (1955) suggested that emotional states were intimately connected to patterns of
beliefs. For example, he argued that anxiety arises when we feel that we do not have an adequate understanding
and ability to predict situations, when we feel out of control. Procter (1981) had developed Kelly’s ideas to produce a
systemic model of how families develop shared constructing, validating or invalidating each other’s experiences and
beliefs, and how this relates to the development and maintenance of emotional problems (Procter 1981, 1985).
From its inception, attachment theory has also been concerned with representations, that is how our early
experiences come to be held as a ‘working model’ set of expectations, beliefs, stories, images and reflections about
ourselves and others (Bowlby 1973, 1988). Central to this working model is how we see ourselves – as worthy of love
or as flawed and unlovable – and how we see others – as available, trustworthy or unreliable and not available.
These, in effect, contain predictions about the future in terms of how we expect others will act and which shape our
core narratives. For example, we may develop a view that as we can and should only turn to ourselves in times of
crisis or danger, when things go wrong it is our own fault. Or the idea that others are responsible for looking after us
and that we should demand affection and care and if things go wrong it is not our own fault. The way in which our
early experiences of attachment and connection with others becomes embodied in narratives has become a central
concern of contemporary attachment theory. A number of different methods have been developed to explore the
increasingly sophisticated stories that children are able to articulate about their early experiences in line with the
maturation of their mental abilities (Crittenden 1997, 2006; Cassidy and Shaver 2008). These include explorations of
the stories that pre-school children tell about imaginary attachment scenarios using toy figures and animals; the way
they continue stories inspired by cartoons with captions depicting increasingly anxiety-provoking attachment
scenarios; structured interviews which explore family relationships, experiences of danger and comforting. Also
there has been an important development in attempts to explore the narratives that we hold as adults about our
childhoods, and how these can influence the relationships with our own children. Mary Main (1993) has developed
an important research tool – the adult attachment interview. This is a detailed structured interview that invites
people to tell the story of their childhood attachment experiences, including the nature of their relationships with
each parent, patterns of comforting, danger, loss and threat from parents or others. The interview is transcribed and
then analysed for both the content and the style or form of the responses. The interview can be classified, largely in
terms of the coherence and amount of insight or integration that people show in their ‘narratives’. Such classification
has been effective in predicting childhood attachment experiences and also continuity of attachment patterns in
terms of the attachment relationships their own children will have with them (Fonagy et al. 1993). These narrative
styles also appear to be able to predict adult romantic attachments (Hazan and Shaver 1987; Crittenden 1998;
Feeney 1999). As an example, someone who as a child develops an insecure and ambivalent attachment style may
enter adult relationships hoping to find the security that they lacked as a child. However, since they are likely not to
trust the affection, they may find that eventually their clingy ambivalence does lead their partner to become
exasperated and even to rejection. It is also argued that individuals seek other vulnerable people for a partner since
they do not regard themselves as ‘good enough’. Such pairing based on combined vulnerabilities may be unstable.
There is evidence to suggest that separation and divorce is more likely with such couples if they do not have the tools
to grow and heal vulnerabilities (Hendrix and Hunt 1998). One of the most interesting aspects of the work on adult
attachment has been the development of models of people’s internal worlds. It is argued that the nature of our early
experiences and attachments is held as memories of interactions, feelings, conversations and images. As the child
develops these become characteristic styles of internal dialogues. For example, some people frequently give
themselves a hard time, punish themselves, perhaps using voices from their past (and possibly still present) who
have done so to them or to others in their presence. It is also argued that when the experiences have been
predominantly negative or when children have been abused, they find it painful to remember or contemplate these
voices from the past, or to speculate on how these people might have seen the world. The ability to reflect, to
consider one’s own and others’ thoughts may therefore be impaired (Crittenden 1998). Fonagy et al. (1993) have
developed the reflectivity scale which they argue suggests that children who have insecure attachment styles do
appear less able to reflect on their own and others’ thoughts. This of course has powerful implications for family life.
Managing relationships may be difficult when family members find it hard to contemplate each other’s or their own
actions. This is an important idea, suggesting that abilities to understand and develop narratives regarding our
experiences is a learnt skill which may be fostered or held back by family experiences. This has substantial
implications for all forms of therapy, not least the forms of narrative and family therapy, when family members are
required to listen and reflect on reflecting team discussions.