Category: attachment

Reader Response: Dividing Family Loyalties

Many thanks to M who took the time to write me about his experience with family loyalty. Here is his letter, in part:

“I am writing because I have been on the wrong end of this issue. That is, my wife has put the needs of her parents ahead of me and our marriage. We married in 1987. In 1995 we made the fateful decision to move in next door to her parents. Problems stared within a few months of moving in.

When a spouse puts parents (or really, anyone else) as a higher priority ahead of the needs of the marriage and their spouse this is the biggest domino that falls causing a cavalcade of other bad actions and decisions…The anger that is festered, self-doubt, damage to self-esteem causes so many poor decisions from how your money is spent, time and priorities are allocaated, how the children are engaged, infidelities and job effectiveness.

Unlike if this happens with friends or worse, a spouse has an affair, in these cases the offending spouse can make those people disappear from the relationship and the relationship has a chance to heal via distance, deeds and time.

When it is a parent or family member, in my wife’s case she was unwilling to stand up to her parents (mostly her mother) and say my husband comes first. When a spouse does not stand up …the family member takes full advantage of this weakness and manipulates the entire engagement. In my case, this continues to damage the marriage. The relationship with the in-laws only worsens and cannot heal or improve. The constant conflict is beyond exhausting.

You may ask why did I not see this before we got married. We met and married and started our life together 2000 miles away from her hometown. Consequently, I did not have the opportunity to witness this enmeshed relationship prior to 1995.

My wife in 2017 moved in with her mother. And I am now at 60 years old alone, trying to put the pieces of my life together.”

Netflix’s “The Crown” & Joy in Marriage

Netflix’s major release of the second season of “The Crown,” a lavish and brilliantly acted biography of England’s Queen Elizabeth II in her very first years of her reign, is worth every moment of your time. Writer Peter Morgan is creating a masterpiece of historical drama.

At it’s core are the conflicts that face a young woman whose father dies relatively young and has the British monarchy thrust upon her at 25. We’re witness to the parallel sacrifices of her husband, nuclear family members, and all those who serve the royal family. As her husband Prince Philip chafes under the demands of his marriage to the Crown, his roguish behavior brings increasing pain and anguish to Elizabeth. Despite the developing pressures, Elizabeth suggests a small party to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. And it is at this dinner party that Philip makes a brief speech that describes the core of marriage’s worK:

(laughter …) “Ten years has taught me,
The secret of a successful marriage is actually to have different interests.
Well, different interests, not entirely different interests. It’s a funny business.
One sees the whole of the other person. You see even that part of them that they don’t see themselves.
And presumably, they see that hidden part of you.
One ends up knowing more about one’s partner than they know about themselves.
And it can be pretty tough to keep quiet about it.
So you have to come to an accommodation, an arrangement, a deal if you like.
To take the rough with the smooth.
But the extraordinary thing is down there in the rough, in the long reeds of difficulty and pain,
that is where you find the treasure.
So I would like to propose a toast in the name of love, in the name of our beloved country, in the name of steadfastness, in the name of another ten marvelous years.
I give you mon petit chou, Lilibet, Elizabeth, The Queen.”

(The Crown, S2E4, “Beryl”; starting 19m.00s)

What brilliant insight – spoken in Philip’s voice – of the hard but joyous human work of living closely with another person, and knowing more about them than they do about themselves; and vice versa. And rather than using that knowledge as a weapon, the happiest marriages reach an accommodation, an emotional arrangement, to take both the best and worse of their partner and accept this as the wonder of what it means to be loved well by another human being. “It’s there were you find the treasure,” says Philip. Yes, indeed. This is what it really means to love another person. To know all about them, accept them, and be accepted and cherished, despite this deep knowledge, in return.

Thank you for saying it so well, Mr. Morgan. May it be so for all of us.

Sometimes it IS About You

As a family therapist and systems thinker, I view the conflicts and discussions in my therapy office as shared events and problems. We are all connected; what I do effects my spouse, my children and other close relationships, just as what they do effects me.

But there are times when one person’s habits, behaviors, attitudes, or choices are the source of a system’s pain. A problem frequently has a source. And it just might be you.

One of the most pained expressions I hear after couples therapy is the complaint that “therapy is always about me” and never focused on their partner. I hear it most frequently from my male clients. This reflects, I believe, the fact that men don’t often start conflict conversations in their relationships, leaving their women partners to do all that heavy emotional lifting. If their troubled patterns have been going on long enough, and the woman, despite how often she requests help or change, is always doing the complaining, the man is inevitably backed into his corner. Of course he feels that therapy is always about him. Because he has to travel so many emotional miles to catch up to where his partner has been.

In other situations, it may be that addiction is stealing away all the relationship and family stability. Or infidelity and secrets have damaged the sense of safety and closeness. Or one partner’s failure to care for their health, or work life, or family of origin problems weighs the entire family down. While all of these issues have system impacts, it just might be true that therapy, at least as we begin to unwind the issues, may truly feel like it’s All About You.

Attachment Parenting : You’re Mom Enough Without It

The cover of TIME magazine (5/21/12) with the beautiful 20something mom breastfeeding her 3 year old son had me shaking my head.

What WAS she thinking taking that picture, and having her full name on the magazine cover? Ten years from now her son is going to have to face his friends when they ask him what it was like to suck his mother’s breasts. Because they have proof. A million covers of TIME magazine, internet pages and downloads later. Really. The social insensitivity of that photo takes my breath away.

As for the topic, the so-called Attachment Parenting style advocated by Dr. Bill Sears, well. That, too, has it’s serious problems. Let me be brief:

Attachment Theory describes the emotional or relational attachment between a developing infant and mother. It was first studied in depth by John Bowlby (and later by Ainsworth, Main, Cassidy, Hazan, Shaver, and others) in the 1950’s. It posits that the emotional attachment between mother and child is the main determinant for that child’s internal sense of self-in-relationship throughout life. The mother, if she is relatively consistent in her caregiving, responsiveness, and mirroring of the child’s emotions, creates a “safe haven” for a developing self against the world. That same mother, as her child begins to reach out to the world beyond her, creates a “secure base” from which a child explores the world and can return to mom safely and with support for a developing independence.

This science has been studied for the last 50 years, and has developed a deep collection of research, data, and process that I subscribe to as a relational psychotherapist. About 55% of us are fortunate enough to have mothers that welcomed us to the world, sheltered, fed, changed, disciplined, loved, laughed, cried and protected us well enough that we emerged from our infancy able to approach others for support, and not worry too much about relationships. This is called having a “secure attachment” style. The rest of us, because of our mother’s own anxieties, environmental stress, illness, or other issues develop an anxious, withdrawing, or mixed attachment style that we carry from childhood through adulthood at about a 75% rate.

Now, here’s my issue: There is nothing in the research of Attachment Theory to indicate that mothers must breastfeed their infants and toddlers, co-sleep with them, or never put them down in order to create secure emotional attachment. Nothing. What the research indicates is that mothers who do their level best to hold, look at, speak to, and provide consistent emotional responsiveness to their child’s distress, and support to their developing independence despite issues like also being a spouse, or working, or using daycare, or tending to other children in the family, or having friends or hobbies, usually produce relationally secure children. Period.

So if you love your children, are relatively secure yourself, have the most stable marriage or partnership you can create, have good health, and manage the details of your life pretty well, you don’t have to give up your body, mind and self out of the fear that your child isn’t getting what they need. Pending unseen catastrophes, they will, they can, and they do.

Most of all, I’m sad that mothering can feel so overwhelming to some of us that following the direction of one single doctor seems safer than following one’s own common sense and the collective wisdom of the millions of mothers and fathers who have gone before us. Attachment parenting? Dump the pseudo-science and let your child sleep in their own bed. It’s safer for them, and you may actually get a (mostly) full night’s rest even when you’re up at 3am to nurse, change or rock them back to sleep. Honest.