Don’t Expect Healthy Relationships to Fall into Your Lap

Relationships are hard.

If you have done any work at all to understand how to achieve healthy relationships, you probably have come upon the term “attachment”. Attachment is a term that describes an emotional bond between an individual and an attachment figure (usually a child and a caregiver). Attachment has also been applied to adult romantic and close relationships, where similar patterns happen. There are typically four kinds of attachment:

1) Secure: Comfortable with intimacy, independence, communication, emotions, and can form trusting relationships. Caregivers were consistent, responsive, and emotionally available.

*Aside from secure (the attachment we strive for) there’s 3 kinds of insecure (challenging) attachment styles*

2) Avoidant: Overly values independence, suppresses emotions, struggles with intimacy and closeness, and may seem emotionally unavailable, dismissive, or conflict-avoidant. Caregivers were emotionally distant, unavailable, or rejected emotions.

3) Anxious: Eager for closeness and approval, seeks reassurance, fears abandonment, and is overly dependent and sensitive in relationships. Caregivers were sometimes attentive but sometimes neglectful.

4) Disorganized: A mix of both the anxious and avoidant characteristics above – what I call “pusher-pullers” because they pull you in but then push you away repeatedly. Wants closeness but also fears it, distrustful, struggles with intimacy and deeper emotional bonds. Caregivers were often abusive, severely inconsistent, and unpredictable. This is commonly associated with trauma and caregivers with addictions and/or mental illness.

I am not an attachment expert, and I am not a couple’s therapist. I am a licensed therapist who works individually with clients, who very often do end up discussing relationship issues in their own personal sessions. What I am writing today is meant to encourage you to look into attachment even deeper and to look into healthy relationships – how to build them and sustain them. This will not magically fall into your lap someday; you will not wake up out of the blue one day and know how to navigate from secure and healthy relationship skills. This can be LEARNED. Skills are developed and then practiced over time – rinse and repeat – if we want to get good at it.

So, where do we learn skills for secure attachment & healthy relationships? Reflect on your own personal learning style and where you like to learn new information. The internet has endless sources to learn from, there’s online courses/programs, retreats, community presentations, books, workbooks, audio books, podcasts, YouTube, and even social media channels have helpful information, tips, and tricks to manage relationships and attachment in better ways.

Here are some names/helpful sources that come to mind (don’t come at me with hate - I have no affiliation with these people nor get anything in return for listing them here. These are popular names in the media & I’m sure there are countless others who are not as ‘famous’. If you don’t like them for your own personal reasons, that’s okay! Comment anyone else you follow for attachment and relationship help at the end of the blog):

• Jimmy Knowles (helpful especially for men who want guidance from another man)

• Thais Gibson

• Julie Menanno

• Dr. Sarah Hensley

• The late Dr. Sue Johnson

Books I recommend:

• “Secure Love” by Julie Menanno

• “Secure Relating” by Sue Marriott & Ann Kelley

• “Hold Me Tight” by Dr. Sue Johnson

• “Attached” by Amir Levine

Podcasts I recommend:

• “The Secure Love Podcast” with Julie Menanno

• “Let’s Talk Attachments” with Jessica Da Silva, LMFT

• “On Attachment” with Stephanie Rigg

• “Rikki and Jimmy on Relationships” with Jimmy Knowles & Rikki Cloos

Following these names on social media will give you bite-size portions of these resources as you do your usual scrolling throughout the day. We are what we consume; it can be helpful to add some of these healthy resources to your feeds. I also want to encourage you to pace yourself – learning does not require you to deep dive and obsessively read and listen to every resource that you can. Do some learning bit by bit, a little at a time, and don’t overwhelm yourself. If it’s too much or too hard, you probably won’t come back to it. Also, if you don’t like something, no problem, try something else, find what speaks to you.

A way to speed up this process and give you live support would be to enroll in professional therapy services. People, emotions, and relationships are all basic topics that most therapists can support you with. Each therapist has their own specialty and what they work best with – shop around, try different therapists. I, for example, work with clients who need individual support with self-esteem and self-improvement, while I can educate them about attachment and relationships on a basic level. Another therapist may specialize in attachment (meaning this is all they do and focus on in their training), while another therapist might focus in on anxious attachment only. Couple’s therapists have a wealth of relationship knowledge, which is helpful when they work with both partners but even if they work with you one-on-one. The point is emotional support through therapy can be a great first step to becoming secure yourself and creating healthy relationships with others.

I hope this has given you some ideas on how to start opening yourself up to new information and new ways of navigating your relationships. You are not damaged or behind or stupid or helpless for not knowing these things – we were either taught these things in our upbringings or we weren’t. Just because you didn’t have access to this information or these skills in the past, doesn’t mean you can’t make the choice to learn it now.

Best wishes.