– Marriage Counseling and Attachment

DISCOVERING THE COMPONENTS OF ATTACHMENT THROUGH MARRIAGE COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE, TN

References “Attachment in Psychotherapy.” By David Wallin

We all have a vague notion of what attachment means in relationships.  Marriage counseling in Nashville, TN can be a helpful place to educate couples on exactly how and why attachment works and what is necessary to foster this type of connection. At its core, attachment theory works from the basis that we “attach” to the significant people in our early life through repeated patterns of interactions.  Some of these patterns are helpful and will foster healthy ways of relating to our partners and friends for the rest of our lives.  Other patterns were survival mechanisms we employed as infants and toddlers to keep some level of connection to our caregivers, but ultimately, do not foster the deep connection we long for as adults.  It isn’t entirely necessary to understand and elucidate the type of attachment we created with our first caregivers, usually our parents.  Of course, knowing how we attached to our first loved ones is important, but it isn’t a necessity.

Marriage counseling helps couples understand that we all, individually, have adopted certain ways of connecting with those we love.  We all do this.  There is no way of escaping this reality.  Even if we were orphans and left in cribs for unattended hours everyday, we find ways of connecting to and relating to other people.

Marriage counseling can help each partner come to more fully embrace their particular method of reaching out and receiving connection from their loved ones.  In a seminal work on attachment by David Wallin entitled, “Attachment in Psychotherapy,” he helps explain how this phenomenon of attachment doesn’t stop at childhood.  He writes, “There turns out to be a rather extraordinary consistency between the nonverbal behaviors that mark the interactions of infancy and those we can observe in the interactions of adults.  Studies of these earliest patterns of preverbal communication and their parallels in later life reveal some of the ways in which—inescapably and usually outside conscious awareness—we affect and are affected by those with whom we interact.” (p. 118).  This is a more recent development in therapy where we place an importance of attachment on more than just the childhood years.

Most people are aware that a large percentage of communication happens more through non-verbal, rather than verbal, cues.  When our spouse raises an eyebrow, or rolls their eyes, or turns slightly away, we pick up on these cues whether we realize it or not.  These non-verbal cues we pick up on influence how we continue in our conversation with them. Perhaps we become more defensive, or more distant, or more nervous simply due to a highly nuanced body position of our spouse.

As a marriage therapist, we are trained to pick up on these non-verbal cues between partners and help each partner interpret, more consciously, what happens inside their body and what their reaction indicates.  No specific reaction is either right or wrong, or good or bad.  All of our reactions inform each other and the therapist of what might be happening inside our emotional hearts.  If we don’t take the time to become more aware of what is going on inside us, or how we typically react to such actions, we are doomed to continually repeat patterns that may not result in our intended outcome.

Attachment is for adults as much as it is for children.  We are much better at attuning to the non-verbal cues of infants, because we know they can’t talk.  However, as we become adults, we still communicate non-verbally and we need to understand the implications of this reality.  If you are looking for help in your marriage in Nashville, TN, then I encourage you to reach out to a marriage therapist that can help you get back on track.