This is part two of my summary of a workshop that took place on January 13th, 2011, here in Albuquerque and was entitled Couples and Affairs: Managing the Clinical Challenges. The workshop was put on by Michael Ceo. I signed up for this workshop because the brochure said that the presenter would use attachment theory (among others) to frame the topic of Couples and Affairs. Ceo did not disappoint and made a number of interesting connections between affairs and attachment. This report will focus on the connections that the presenter made between affairs and attachment theory. Lets continue on. (Part one was posted on March 1st, 2011.)
Ceo next turned to a section he entitled Characteristics of People Who Can Access Secure Attachment. Here are the secure attachment characteristics that Ceo identified (again, tweaked for clarity with hyperlinks added):
- Regular Buddy/Ease of Leadership
- Attuned Connection
- Emotional Balance
- not too aroused by chaos
- not too boring
- Able to Engage in Mental Time Travel
- able to connect past/present/future
- Able to Modulate Fear States
- Internal Attunement Allows for Mindfulness and Mentalization (more on both below)
- Able to More Easily Access Neuroplasticity
- View of the World as a Playground Rather Than as a Dangerous Jungle
Before we move on, I’d like to point out that “mentalization” is a concept that may not be familiar to most. Mentalization (as well as mindfulness) can be thought of as describing what are known as “mind in mind” operations, that is to say, the ability of person A to keep the mind of another person (person B) in person A’s mind. Empathy—“walking in someone else’s shoes” so-to-speak—is a mind in mind operation. Therapists (if they are psychologically minded) will use mind in mind operations to bring about a therapeutic effect. For more on mentalization, use this link to access a “cheat sheet” I wrote entitled Mentalization Factoids. For my cheat sheet I culled information from the book The Neuroscience of Social Interaction—Decoding, Imitating, and Influencing the Actions of Others (edited by Chris Frith and Daniel Wolpert, 2004).
Ceo next turns to a section entitled Profiles of Marriages and Individuals at Risk. Quoting Ayala Pines, Ceo makes the following statement:
Why do we choose the lovers we choose? Attachment styles influence not only the way people act in romantic relationships but also in their sexuality.
I would add that attachment styles also influence the way people act in their caregiving relationships. I go a step further and argue that you cannot look at attachment, caregiving, and sex relationships independently of one another. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that acting out in one area—say, in the form of sexual infidelity—is about trying to draw attention to either attachment or caregiving or both. And the overarching problem may be centered on wrestling with how to balance and harmonize the grand system that holds attachment, caregiving, and sex. By now most of you know that I call this grand system the Grand Bowlbian Attachment Environment (GBAE). See my post of February 1st, 2011, for more on the GBAE. Writing in his 1996 book The Politics of Uncertainty: Attachment in Private and Public Life (summary available), Peter Marris reminds us that “when a lover is discovered to have been unfaithful, it is the meaning of an attachment relationship as an organizing principle of life [my emphasis] that makes the loss so traumatic.” Looked at from a naturalistic systems theory perspective (the one Bowlby used to frame much of his work), a sexual infidelity (or an attachment infidelity, or a caregiving infidelity for that matter) suggests that the Grand Bowlbian Attachment Environment is breaking down or otherwise losing coherence, and, as a result, our ability to organize and give meaning to our lives (e.g., our organizing principle) is in jeopardy. Even though Ceo seems to be looking at the behavioral systems of attachment, caregiving, and sex in isolation, there’s still helpful information to be gleaned here.
Ceo simply states that people with a secure attachment style tend to be more faithful. (For more on the various attachment styles, click on this link.) Here’s what he lists for people with an anxious/preoccupied attachment style (with tweaking):
- They tend to cope by pulling away or clinging
- They tend to perceive marriage as confining
- An affair for them is perceived as gaining access to space
- An affair for them is valued for its inherent level of limited closeness
Here’s what Ceo lists for people with a dismissive attachment style (source: Elizabeth Allen) (with tweaking):
- They tend to have childhoods characterized by very few genuine interactions with parents
- They tend to have Inner Working Models that center on rejection and abandonment
- To forestall abandonment and rejection, they become emotionally self-absorbed, independent to a fault, all the while suppressing their own need for closeness and intimacy
- Dismissive men had twice as many affairs as men with other attachment styles
- 74% of married men with a dismissive attachment style had at least one affair
What Ceo mentioned next is rather interesting. In contrast to temperament theory, most attachment researchers hold that we can express different attachment styles with different primary attachment figures. As an example, in childhood, one may express an insecure attachment style with one’s mother and a secure style with one’s father. Ceo told us that a secure attachment relationship with a spouse may reflect an earlier secure attachment relationship with one parent while at the same time an insecure attachment relationship with a lover may reflect an earlier insecure attachment relationship with the opposite parent. Intriguing idea. In the next section, Ceo suggests that the above psychological splitting (more on this in a moment) can take place in a way that reflects an early relationship with just one parent instead of two. Ceo’s description of how this works is a bit cryptic, so allow me a fair amount of paraphrasing here (again, for the sake of clarity).
The next section Ceo turns to is entitled Fractured Attachment Style. Honestly, I’m not sure if he’s referring to what’s know as disorganized attachment or not. (Again, for more on the various attachment styles, click on this link.) Let me present my paraphrased rendition and we may have to leave it at that. I’m going to use a bullet format here because my sense is that it will help to alleviate some of the confusion I experienced as I listened to this section during the presentation. Here’s what Ceo lists for people with a fractured attachment style.
- Persons with a fractured attachment style usually had an unstable, non-nurturing attachment relationship with one parent or the other (typically the mother)
- As an adult, the person is split psychologically (psychological splitting is a concept usually found in psychodynamics and centers on splitting the world into “good” objects and “bad” objects)
- The part of the person that seeks out “good” objects will seek out a spouse who provides care in a stable and nurturing manner—here stable and nurturing care compensates for the care not received as a child
- The part of the person that seeks out “bad” objects will seek out a lover that mimics or recapitulates the troubled mother-child attachment relationship
Here’s how Ceo sums up this pattern:
This split answers the question, “Why does a person in a seemingly stable, healthy [e.g., good] relationship have an affair with an unstable [e.g., bad] individual high on the borderline scale [as in borderline personality disorder]?”
We can see depictions of the split Ceo refers to in the form of the Madonna–whore complex that is a staple of popular media, such as movies, novels, TV, etc. (For more on this theme, see Bram Dijkstra’s book Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Culture.)
Before moving on, I’d be remiss if I did not point out that the Internet and Internet relationships (as talked about in part one) are being used as “good” objects. Internet objects are dependable, consistent, predictable, perfectly caring, perfectly nurturing—very much like pornographic objects. The Internet has definitely socialized what up to recently was a rather private process—pornography. (For more on this theme, see Frederick Lane’s book Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age.) Maureen Katz, writing about what she calls the “not-so-neighborhood web link” in the edited volume Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics, quotes John Berger (of Ways of Seeing fame) when she tells us that “the spectacle creates an eternal present of immediate expectation: memory [and, along with it, time travel] ceases to be necessary or desirable.” As a society we drink and take drugs (both legal and illegal) to forget and to have a “present of immediate expectation.” And now it would seem that we drink from the fountain of the Internet (and Internet relationships) for the very same reason. As Katz puts it, “The way in which images are communicated to us, the techniques that create that imagery, and the way in which we receive those images perpetuate an ideology where relations between people are confused with relationships between things; humans are degraded into abstractions.” Honestly, I think Katz does a great job here capturing the essence of the pornographic process. All of this begs the question: “As Bowlby’s attachment theory espouses a connectionist position—connecting past events to present attachment behavior—are its current-day proponents taking up a position of ahistoricity (see part one) in an effort to conceal, deny, or otherwise erase this connectionist position?” In other words, are current-day attachment types searching for the “eternal present of immediate expectation” (quoting Berger) that denies the very time travel that attachment types purport to be advocates for? Hopefully the irony is not lost on the reader. Again, I commend psychoanalysts their desire to stay within the historical field of Freud’s work.
The next section that Ceo turns to that has attachment theory implications is entitled Anger Vocabulary. Here’s how Ceo describes this section (with a bit of tweaking; my comments in brackets):
Language is the tool we use to connect with others. Words can be used to form empathetic connections with others, to enter someone else’s mental world [again, often referred to as mentalization by attachment researchers—see above]. By being able to build [Inner Working Models] of other’s inner reality, a bond is created that has the therapeutic effect of bridging [and assuaging] one’s existential loneliness. Our basic need to be understood empathetically [e.g., to be mentalized] needs to be understood and affirmed.
Ceo essentially says that affairs are an assault on our need to be empathetically understood. He tells us that the language typically used to describe affairs contains imagery that speaks to the experience of having had an empathetic connection shattered. Consider these examples:
- violated
- devastated
- eviscerated
- adrift
- uprooted
- ashamed
- blind-sided
- intrusion
- punched in the stomach
- can’t swallow this
- hopelessness
- shot below the belt
Notice how many of these images are body-based, like “eviscerated” and “punched in the stomach.” And also notice how many have a sense of not being able to engage in time travel anymore, like “hopelessness” and “adrift.” In part one of this summary, I suggest that, at their heart, attachment relationships express a desire to get to core body experiences such as relaxation, warmth, numbness, anesthesia, analgesia or relief of pain, orgastic release, and energy (pulling from Antonio Damasio’s work). Affairs seem to punch at or otherwise eviscerate this core body experience, to attack the “body in the mind“ (as Damasio calls it). Writing in The Politics of Uncertainty: Attachment in Private and Public Life, Peter Marris reminds us that time travel “is a vital defense against being overwhelmed and disabled by the grief of losing the future in which so many hopes and plans are embedded.” Although beyond the scope of this summary, it would appear that attachment relationships are in large part about allowing us to develop the cognitive ability to engage in mental time travel. Mental time travel gives us a buffer against experiencing complete and total loss in the present moment. And what makes the future appear to us is, in fact, the predictable and consistent patterns of the past. Simply put, affairs shatter all that: they shatter predictable and consistent patterns, they shatter our ability to engage in time travel, they shatter the “future in which so many hopes and plans are embedded” (quoting Marris).
At this point, Ceo turns to the topic of Treatment Models. Here are some of the treatment models that Ceo covers:
- Confrontational Reality Testing
- Psychodynamic Approaches
- Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Models
- Ego State Therapy (which is another psychodynamic approach)
- Strategic Family Therapy
Notice what’s missing? Yup, any treatment model that specifically uses attachment theory. Given that Ceo uses attachment theory to frame the problem of affairs, I’m a bit surprised that he doesn’t use attachment theory to frame a solution. But this too points to a glaring problem: there are very few treatment modalities that are framed by attachment theory that are appropriate for adults. As Ceo points out, even though Bowlby’s theory of attachment is helpful as far as framing psychological problems is concerned, it doesn’t appear to be helpful as far as framing solutions appropriate for adults. There are solutions aimed at infants and young kids (and their parents) (Circle of Security would be an example here), but very few aimed at adults. When was the last time you heard a therapist tell a client, “For heaven sakes, stop paying me good money and go out and find an appropriate primary attachment figure!” (I hate to say it but this is the type of thing Milton Erickson might say to a client).
By way of summing up, here are the types of things that Ceo points to that could indicate that healing has taken place following an affair (regardless of the treatment modality used):
- Forgiveness and self-forgiveness
- Inspiration: a new marital or partnership “vision”
- Increase in Trust and Safety
- A return to a sense of humor
- Change in language from “my way” or “your way” to “our way”
- Re-scripting the history of the marriage (partnership) to integrate the story of the affair
- A hopeful sense of renewal in the marriage (partnership)
As an observation, I’m a bit surprised that there’s nothing about grief and mourning on the above list. Because, simply, to get to a new marital or partnership vision, the one that died with the affair will have to be mourned. Loss, grief, mourning, and recovery … these are all well within the purview of Bowlby’s attachment theory.
