Disorganized Attachment: Why does your partner alternate between love and detachment? Healing Childhood Trauma & Developing Lasting, Loving Relationships

Does your partner exhibit contradictory behaviours in intimate relationships, stating such things as: "I hate you, don't leave me"? Statements that alternate between stickiness and detachment?

Do you nobly strive to grow the relationship, but have been stuck in the same spot for months or years?

Attachment styles are the way we connect with other people. They are generally developed by infants and further refined by children, adolescents, and adults.

Later, particularly in romantic relationships, people with disorganised attachment styles often experience fear and anxiety when forming intimate relationships and suffer from a negative self-image and extremely harmful internal dialogue. They often feel intense loneliness due to a sincere desire for a genuine connection, but the stress and fear response connected to that desire causes them to act erratically, pushing away the potential connection.

People who exhibit attachment disorganisation swing from two biological drives whenever the opportunity to attack in life presents itself: the need to belong (to love and connect with others) and the need to survive (to protect themselves).

You may already have started a family with someone with this kind of attachment and undertaken enormous efforts to try to make it all work, out of love for your partner, for the family and for the children. (as well as for your own happiness!).

I recommend that you read this book if your partner appears to:

·       Be unable to regulate emotions.

·       Exhibits a strong fear of being hurt/rejected/abandoned by loved ones.

·       Be a chronic and anxious watcher.

·       Appears to have low self-determination: a sense of not having an impact on the world.

·       Feel ineffective and helpless in life.

·       Feel unlovable, inadequate, or unworthy.

·       Have difficulty bonding, opening up and trusting others.

·       Show contradictory behaviour in intimate relationships, making statements such as: "I hate you, don't leave me!".

·       Alternate between stickiness and detachment.

Not everyone wants or has time to physically sit down with a couple counsellor. They are often not prepared for this specific type of attachment, so I can quickly advise you to throw the relationship away and enter into another, simply saying that they don't love you. (Although sometimes it's not quite like that!).

Instead, you might feel:

·       Empty and confused when you are close to him/her.

·       You feel like an invader in her life and constantly side-lined.

·       bewildered by the compulsive requests for closeness.

·       Like you know that there is something wrong and you feel that somehow it is your fault.

·       As if you are playing a constant game of "hide and seek" in this relationship.

·       Insecure and unworthy of love.

In fact, research suggests that people with borderline personality disorder [also] exhibit a disorganised attachment style. They badly need closeness but fear rejection, and exhibit contradictory mental states and behaviours.

If you do not intervene soon, couples in which there is a person with disorganised attachment will end up having to settle for a relationship made up of distances, approaches and misunderstandings, all the way up to the complete destruction of the relationship. Everything that has been built together will have been in vain.

Fortunately, with the right information, it is possible to unlearn bad attachment habits and over time, acquire the skills and reassurance, support and continued safe, positive and trusting relationships that truly help to heal the trauma.

Understanding the wounds of attachment is the best gift you can give to your relationship to finally make your intimacy grow.