Attachment Needs

We are biologically wired to need each another. Our health and happiness is dependent on our connections with others, and most importantly, on our attachment to one significant other.

In Stage I of your relationship you have found a person who can be your "shelter" in life, someone who answers your need for love and validation. But in the early stages of your relationship your ties are still tentative and you are still developing trust. So what happens is, just when you start to depend on one another, your differences emerge and conflict feels like it will threaten your bond.

In Stage II, when if feels like your significant other is emotionally unresponsive, a warning siren goes off, "Danger, danger." We are afraid of being hurt or abandoned. This warning awakens our primitive instincts to fight or flight. We don't think. We feel the fear and we act!

One could say that in Stage I two people feel "blissed" In Stage II, couple goes from being BLISSED to "PISSED" - Protective (self), Insecure, Scared, Shamed,Embarrassed,Disconnected."

We either react by protesting the loss of our connection and fight or we shut down our feelings and withdraw trying to protect ourselves from loss. This is how we get into the blame/defensive, pursue/withdraw cycles with our partner. I call these frustrating encounters fake fights - conflict that is adversarial, a ME verses YOU struggle over surface issues that have nothing to do with the underlying needs for love and validation.

Unfortunately many couples get lost in this Stage II, ME verses YOU conflict. Some couples find themselves so in the "dark," they stop seeing the good in their partner and they give up. The attachment questions such as,"Are you there for me? Do I matter to you?, cannot go unanswered for too long lest the feeling of closeness and emotional connection will erode.

The solution to this Stage II impasse can be found when couples learn how to ATTUNE to their partner's underlying needs for understanding, love, and validation. In Stage III, couples learn to hear and respond to the attachment concerns beneath the fake fights. They learn that the problem and the solution is not about fixing me, not about fixing you and not about fixing the situation. The problem and the solution is in what is going on between ME and YOU, in the connection that we can call the WE.

Couples learn to think instead of of employing knee-jerk reactions. Couples learn to stop blaming ME or YOU and, instead, learn to say "WE are in a disconnect."Partners learn to take breaks to calm hot emotions down. To accept apologies. To use humor. To express their needs more softly. To listen for the reasonable requests. To soothe each other's anxiety and respond to one an other's attachment needs.

The opportunity of Stage II conflict is to deepen your mutual understanding and expand your relationship so that there is room for both partner's needs. This is when a ME and a YOU evolves into a WE.