The Most Common Cause of Conflict In Love Relationships

IMG_6134My husband, David, and I have a ton of things in common. We both like sports. We both enjoy being in nature, hiking or biking or just reading together at the beach or by a lake. We both love challenging conversation around big ideas. We appreciate just about every genre of music. We are both first-born, natural leaders.

And our mutual passion for God and personal spiritual growth was one of the first things that attracted us to each other as college students.

For all the rich goodness in our relationship we also had

a couple of reoccurring relational snags that kept tripping us up. 

These glitches distracted us from what we agree is a rare and remarkable love. And, sometimes, those rough patches blinded us from seeing the best in each other and our relationship.

What was going on? 

  • Did we fail to use the right words when we communicated our differences?
  • Was it the tone of our voices, or power struggles or just a clash of family histories? 

It was none of these typical go-to conclusions.

We had been to countless seminars that taught us how to “fight fair” and we had spent years dissecting the differences in our families of origin.    Still, we kept getting stuck. 

Finally, we learned about two powerful relational dynamics that have revolutionized the way we understand and engage with each other.

One of those dynamics is:  attachment style.

 Originally, attachment style was thought only to be significant in the way infants bond with their caregivers, but groundbreaking research by Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver indicates that adults show patterns of attachment in their love partnerships similar to the patterns of attachment children develop with their parents somewhere between birth and 18-24moths.

Attachment Theory says there are at least three (*some divide it into four) predetermined ways adults perceive and respond to intimacy in romantic relationships:

1) Secure

2) Anxious

3) Avoidant. 

Securely attached adults feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving. They take things in stride relationally and are not easily upset when conflict arises.

They effectively communicate their needs and feelings to their partner and are good at reading their partner’s emotional cues and responding to them. They easily share both their wins and losses with their mate and are emotionally available in their partners’ time of need.

Anxiously attached people have a deep need, even crave intimacy and are often preoccupied with their relationships. They have a great capacity for love and need to feel very close to their partners.

They often have fears that their partner doesn’t want to be as close to them as they would like. Relationships consume a lot of their emotional energy.  They are sensitive to even the smallest changes in their partners mood or behavior and though they may be right about what they sense they take their partners actions too personally. They experience a lot of negative emotions in their relationship and get easily upset.

Avoidant adults equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness. It is important for them to maintain their self sufficiency and they often prefer autonomy to intimacy in relationships.

Even though they do want to be close, they feel uncomfortable with too much closeness and can tend to keep their partner at a bit of a distance. They don’t worry about or spend much time thinking about their romantic relationships. They tend not to be open and their partners often complain that they are emotionally distant or disconnected.  Avoidants are often on alert for signs their partner might be trying to control them or get in their space.

A fourth category researchers call Anxious/Avoidant or Disorganized is a small percentage of the population who pull their partner close then push them away because the feeling of intimacy is too uncomfortable.

The differences in our attachment patterns can affect a whole host of issues like:

-our view of what togetherness looks and feels like

-the way we deal with conflict

-our attitude toward sex

-our ability to communicate our needs and wants

-our expectations for our partner and our relationship

The consensus is we adapted our pattern through a combination of factors that include 1) the way we related to our parents in infancy 2) our genetic makeup 3) our life experiences

We’ll talk a lot more about this in future blogs and podcasts but when David and I discovered the differences in our attachment styles we were finally able to see how our reoccurring clashes came from subconscious and genetic wiring that caused us to automatically react in the opposite direction of each others needs. This was huge! 

Take another look at the three basic descriptions of attachment styles above and see if the true issues that are causing the most conflict in your love relationship are not ultimately due to your different attachment styles. 

We can help you discover the built- in barriers to harmony in your most important relationships. Contact us now for information about a consultation that can help you better enjoy your personal relationships or feel more success with the people at work.

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