Many clients look back on their relationship and wonder: Why did I leave? Or, why did I stay?
Hindsight makes everything seem so much clearer.
The red flags are so much redder and the green much greener. We see all the signals and are left wondering why we saw and ignored them.
While relationships are complex things, one determining factor of how long we stay is often our attachment style. Attachment is all about how we relate to people based on our previous experiences starting from childhood.
Secure Attachment
People who are securely attached usually have healthy relationships that are marked by the fact that both partners feel comfortable both with intimacy and with time alone.
You can usually recognise when a relationship has run its course. An ending is not seen as an overall statement of someone not being good enough. This doesn’t mean that its not painful for you or you don’t question yourself.
Rather, that you can recognise it was not a good fit in the end and that you will find someone else.
Anxious Attachment
Anxious attachment usually means a fear of loosing others and being abandoned.
This creates extreme hypervigilance of a partner’s mood. There is a constant need for reassurance and a high level of discomfort with yourself or your partner being alone. If your partner breaks up with you, you are usually left devastated and often try to hold on by any means necessary.
On the other hand, if you are the one that leaves, you often feel that you stayed way too long.
Avoidant Attachment
People with avoidant attachment often struggle with or do not want to connect to people on a deeper level at all.
You are usually distant, focusing on your individuality and independence. A relationship can feel like a threat to you. You are often on the lookout for reasons to leave first, so you can avoid being abandoned. As a client in therapy, you often wonder why you left a good relationship when nothing was wrong. Usually, the answer is that you left because you found the intimacy unbearable.
Disorganised Attachment
Disorganised attachment means both experiencing a deep fear of losing the other which causes anxiety and wanting to drive someone away, as emotional closeness feels unbearable.
Relationships are inconsistent as you cling on to your partner only to push them away. It can make endings messy.
The anxiety caused by the threat of an ending mixes with the unbearable experience of emotional intimacy. This causes you to oscillate between wanting to stay and wanting to leave. As a consequence, the ending becomes longer, leaving both sides exhausted, confused and heartbroken.
Attachment isn’t unchangeable but it does take time. Being surrounded by steady people who hold
boundaries without pushing away can be beneficial.
Therapy can help by gaining a better understanding of why we ended up with our attachment style and help actively work on the way it influences us, so it does not cause havoc in our relationships.