The Past’s Impact on the Present Marriage: Attachment Podcast

A good mindset is saying, I don’t isolate my spouse’s behavior and reaction or my behavior and reaction but understanding they are flowing out of the context. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Excellent to have you along. 

My name is Matt Kaufman. I’ve got Kaleb Beyer with me today. Good to be with you, Matt. Kaleb, our topic is always marriage, and I’m looking forward to getting into today’s topic. In addition to just marriage, we’ve been talking in the last few podcasts about the past playing itself out in the present. What I mean by that is we have a present day with our spouses. And sometimes we forget that a great deal of the past is actually playing into that present moment. So, the topic under consideration in this podcast, Kaleb, that thing that makes a difference in the present, but formed in the past is attachment. Okay, bring us up to speed. Help us understand what we’re talking about when we talk about attachment.  

Yeah. Maybe I’ll start with actually a short excerpt from a book. It’s called How We Love by the Yerkoviches. They have a quote here that I think is helpful maybe to lay some groundwork for our discussion.  

After 14 years, though, a huge change took place. When we discovered the unseen forces that determined how we loved, we realized our lessons in love didn’t start in our marriage. They started in infancy, and they lasted all the years we lived with our parents. Our experiences growing up, good and bad, left a lasting imprint on our souls that determined our beliefs and expectations about how to give and receive love. 

So, from this, the idea of attachment is there’s an imprint, there’s a forming, there’s a nurturing that happens from the cradle that shapes how it is that we show love to someone. How it is that we receive love. And that doesn’t just show up when you’re engaged, and I say I love you. Well, how does that happen? 

And so, attachment, and we would say the attachment we form presently with our wife or our husband, is really born out of and shaped by these experiences in the past. And is love just one slice of the language of attachment? Do we attach in other ways?  

Certainly. That’s an interesting question. I mean, they use the language of how we love. I would say, as far as attaching with someone, we can attach with someone around intellectually attaching, or we can attach around spiritual connection. But when we think in the marriage relationship, a key component, certainly spiritual intellectual, recreational, all these intimacies are critical, and what’s foundational is that there’s a sharing and a response. 

So, meaning we’re together on this. You get me. You understand me. And what’s deeply painful is when there’s a loss of connection and I don’t feel understood. I’m not getting through. Exactly. And that’s when we would say, during those painful disconnecting moments is when our attachment system takes over. 

Yes. That’s when it starts firing from the past of like, okay, when there’s that pain, there’s almost an automated response. This is what you do. Yes. Because this is how you learned how to cope and engage with that pain. And so that’s where the past piece comes in. There is a route that we go to, or there’s a playbook, maybe you could say there’s a playbook in the way that I operate in the way that I connect. 

And we’re going to go to that well-worn playbook, which has been probably written in the past, and we’re going to bring that same playbook into the present marriage, aren’t we? Right. Exactly. Those are the rules. Exactly. That’s the way we learned how to, for example, cope with distress, and we found a way to soothe it. 

And guess what? It worked at some level in the past. All right. So, I think now what people are thinking is, all right, help me see the playbook that I’m running by. Yeah. Because when it has become so ingrained in us, in the way that we attach and the way that we make meaning, I would have to believe it’s one of those things where we can’t even see it anymore because it’s too close to us. Yes. So, spell out what this might look like, and I think maybe we’ll see ourselves in it.  

So, let’s start, Matt, with just a secure attachment. Now, you said secure attachment. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Okay that rolled off your tongue like I should know what you’re talking about. Sorry, this is a pre-credit class this is like 089. So, there are different, we would say, styles of relating and engaging with each other that are formed, and so they, meaning those researchers, you know, authors, and here, How we Love, Yurkovich, have put together terms that describe experiences. 

And so, one of the terms they use is called secure attachment. And what that means is someone is securely attached when there is distress, okay? I experience emotional distress. And we are relational beings. And so, I seek relationship to soothe that distress. Right, and it’s received, accepted, made sense out of, and then I’m able to go on my way, right? 

Yes. So as a child, parents who see, listen, and accept distress in their kids, and acknowledge it, find a way to soothe it without dismissing emotions. On one hand, it says, basically put a smile on your face. You know what, you need to have a good attitude, these sorts of things in the midst of distress. 

Yeah. Or, oh no, my child’s in distress! Catastrophe. But come here and let me listen to you. It’s going to be okay. Dad’s here with you, mom’s here, you know, talking through to be able to soothe it. You validate the stress, and yet have a container to hold the stress. In a sense of saying stress happens. There’s normalization and there’s a way that we handle it. And I see you. Okay. I’m not going anywhere, right? I’m with you in this and I’m going to help you through it. So that leads to what we refer to as securely attached. It plays into even how kids see themselves and how they see relationships as safe. 

I can come to you and there’s safety in coming to you and in knowing that distress is soothed. So, a secure attachment style is a good thing. It is. This is platinum style. Okay, that’s good to know. So then, another one is avoidant. 

Okay. And so, an avoidant attachment style, then as the term implies, avoidance usually isn’t great. Sometimes it’s okay. I mean, yeah, I happen to know it quite well myself, but anyway, that might be for a different hour. All of us avoid at some level. 

So avoidant is, we think about when a child seeks their parent and either the parent is overwhelmed by the distress of the child, or they’re just not present.  So, then the child learns to be independent on their own and to dismiss those negative feelings in a way that isn’t soothed in relationships. So, they become very independent and as adults, I’m fine. Feelings get in the way sort of thing. But again, then what happens? In a marriage relationship when that comes up and I have this distress, especially when my spouse is in distress, that’s often when it comes up. 

It would seem that we’re running away from that when there is a need and perhaps they’re reaching out with a need and we don’t know how to handle that. It becomes overwhelming. So that’s an obvious way to connect the past playing into the present. This actually provides some meaning. It provides a reason for the struggle of knowing what I should be doing, but not doing it. 

I mean, there’s times where I feel that way as a husband and a father, it’s like right now I should be doing X, Y, and Z, but I’m doing A, B, and C. And for whatever reason, I’m having a hard time doing X, Y, and Z, even though I know I should be doing that. Right. I think recognizing that the attachment system is overwhelmed to the point that there’s frozenness. It’s not just about cognitively. Oh, I know what to do is the right thing, but I can’t do it because I’m stuck in this place, whether it’s shame or just an overwhelming experience of emotion that just floods me out.  

And so, I find a way to disconnect. I think there’s some fear there too. I know I should do X, Y, and Z, but I’m so unfamiliar with what that would even look like. Yeah. But I know what A, B, and C look like. I keep doing that as unfavorable as it is. Right. It’s got a bad outcome, but at least I know the landmark. 

Yeah. And the challenging thing, too, I think for avoiders is it looks like there’s not a response emotionally, but there’s a lot happening internally. And I think you put your finger on that, Matt. As a father, I see this happening. I know what to do, but it’s like I can’t get myself to do it. 

So, the internal system of emotions and thoughts is probably going pretty strong, but on the exterior it’s like, why aren’t you responding? Why aren’t you engaging? And so, we get the impression that avoiders don’t have emotion. And they don’t care. But in fact, they do. And so now we can see where things go sideways, because we’re not saying what we want to say in that moment. I am not communicating what I want to communicate in that moment. The message is not clear. The message is very much hijacked. If I am overwhelmed because my wife, Angela, is in distress and I don’t know what to do and she sees me not responding at all, I’m silent, she gets the message that I don’t care. 

If, like you had mentioned, I fill in that gap with, this is so hard and painful, I don’t even know what to say. You know what, she can challenge in her head, it’s not that he doesn’t care. Yes, there’s something else going on for him. Yeah, so I think you’re separating the things that we do from the reasons we do them. I think that’s helpful because I have a hard time doing the right thing because my playbook has said the wrong thing for 43 years. 

Right. Exactly. That’s really, I think, where, in my experience, healing occurs when we begin to see our spouse’s behavior in a different light. And actually see, in this example, the avoider moving away, not because they don’t care, but actually, in fact, they care very deeply. Yeah. But that’s difficult for my wife to really see that, and I wouldn’t expect her to see that. 

Okay, so I think that’s really helpful. I think we’re starting now to understand why this is an important topic. But I think that understanding helps make meaning of the difficulty. Yep. Present day.  

So, we have secure attachment. We’ve got avoidance. Yep. And another one is pleaser, or sometimes it’s called anxious attachment. Okay. And so, with this attachment style, we would, this is oversimplifying, but when there’s a level of distress, it actually turns up the volume. So, the avoider tries to turn down the volume of the distress by avoiding and moving away. 

That’s how they learn to cope from years past. The anxious or the pleaser learned to actually turn up the intensity of the distress. So, for someone who ends up being a pleaser, perhaps there was a parental figure where the child’s needs led to more anxiousness or intensity in the adult. 

They didn’t know what to do with it. And so, the child learned in that sense that my feelings and needs are overwhelming, so I please, in other words, I do the right thing, so it doesn’t distress another person. Yes, and so the way that plays out then in the marriage relationship is when my spouse is distressed, what do I do with that? 

It is really a pursuit and sometimes it can be an intense pursuit that comes out of distress. Yeah, so if you think when we’re in distress, we tend to be more edgy, more critical, more intense. And sometimes that’s how it can be felt by the spouse, when they’re a spouse of a pleaser. Yes. And then everything that we’ve said before then comes into play here. 

And to understand now my spouse for their behavior and how that’s embedded in a playbook that’s been written a long time ago helps provide meaning. In some ways, Matt, it is looking at it from a different angle. Avoidant attachment really goes to internal control. Pleaser goes to external control, right? 

When there’s distress, yes. That’s where I tend to go, depending on my attachment style and my experiences as a child. Okay. Now, one thing that I’ve picked up through this conversation, Kaleb, is that attachment is centered on relationships. Is that true? True. Okay. It seems like relationships need to be very central to our thinking if I’m going to make positive gains on attachment.  Is that a true statement? Yes. Being able to see this as an interactional piece and not just individually, an avoider and a pleaser, but how does this pattern play out between the two of them? Interaction instead of reaction. Yes. Exactly. 

So, that’s helpful. Interaction is about when we’re in this together and we’re working through this distress together to make sense of it rather than we’re each on our own reacting to the other’s distress. Yes. And so, being able to see both how I tend to react towards stress or distress or pain and how that reaction then leads to a reaction in my spouse is a helpful piece. What could you say, what are some basic things about good interaction in these moments? What does that skill set look like? What is one thing that’s going to boost my interaction?  

A good mindset of someone who is looking at the interaction is saying, I don’t isolate my spouse’s behavior in reaction or my behavior in reaction but understanding it’s flowing out of a context. One of the things that we can get hooked on is in the sense of, wow, they’re coming off strong or he’s not responding. Which is true, but it misses the context out of which that is flowing and being curious, being able to notice there is more going on there, and knowing that, there’s things I’m doing that are influencing my spouse. And there’s things that my spouse is doing that’s influencing me. And how is this back and forth, perpetuating reactivity, rather than engagement in interaction. Because very often our reaction is from the outward things, is that what you’re saying? Yes, we react.  

So, a reactor is very much fixated on the outward things. He came off really strong or there he goes again but a person who has a mindset of interaction is going to allow those things to pass and look at the main thing. They’re looking at the most important things and that is the context or the matter at hand. Yes, that’s correct. And we also need to acknowledge as we’re talking through this, Matt, that’s nearly impossible to do when our attachment system is firing. If I point myself in the direction of interaction, that’s going to go a long way in getting me to do the right thing. 

I was thinking as you were talking there, Matt, just about Jesus and how he interacted in the Gospels with people in a way that moved towards connection, and he really saw them, and he valued them. I was just thinking, take Jesus with Mary and Martha at Lazarus’s death. He was responsive to their distress, Matt. So, they felt their distress was held, and they felt heard and seen by that. Interaction was important to him at that moment. And with that, Matt, it seems like to be able to get to a place that I can connect to the distress in the other, but that doesn’t overwhelm me, nor does it lead to me minimizing, but I’m able to connect and see interactionally that we’re both in distress, that when this pattern plays out, that I’m not just connecting to how distressing this is to me, but also that I get it. 

That it’s hard for my spouse, whatever attachment style, seems to me to be an aspect of interaction. I think so. So, yes, having compassion for the other in this moment. I think that’s a flip of a switch to the positive in a lot of ways, Kaleb. Because often our attachment styles do not provoke compassion. 

No, we’re consumed with their own distress getting written somehow and more offense. Yeah. And then we fill the vacuum with lots of untrue stories about ourselves, about our spouse, or about the relationship. Yeah. All right, Kaleb, we talked about a pleaser, an avoider, and secure attachment. 

Yeah. Are there three that sum up attachment styles, or are there others? So, there are a couple others that come into play. So, sometimes called vacillator is another style and chaotic. And these two attachment styles often flow out of trauma in childhood or addiction or abuse that happens, and so the message becomes very confusing. 

So, it’s an intense kind of emotional response at times and then at other times, not at all. And so, it can become very, very confusing and distressing. How is a person going to react? Who knows? And that makes for a difficult environment for both. We won’t unpack those two necessarily, but just to broaden our understanding of this. So, there is a lot here with attachment styles. Does attachment always revolve around crisis? So that’s when we would say the alarm system goes off for attachment. So yes, the need is heightened in these moments. 

So, when there’s a disconnection, that’s when the alarm system goes off in the brain and we’re seeking ways to protest, disconnect, or avoid to deal with it. So, yes, that’s when it plays out. You can almost view it this way when connection or attachment is broken, we go into repair mode and some of us have a bad way to repair and there are better ways to repair, but that pleaser and distancer are poor ways to repair attachment. 

So that’s why crisis is what we’re talking about. I think that’s helpful. I think that gives us a little bit of perspective to say, oh, I can see where this fits in my life. It’s not like every moment in time in the relationship that this is playing out. Okay. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Kaleb, I can tell that there’s more to be said on this topic and perhaps we’ll say more in time. 

Sure. But thanks for giving us this little bit of guidance in a very huge and important topic. Yeah. Glad to be with you. To our listeners, thanks for being along. I trust and pray this is helpful. You’ve probably been able to place it, whether it’s in your marriages or in your relationships, I think this comes into picture in all sorts of relationships. 

So, thanks for being here and we wish you God’s blessings. 

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