Echoes
Posted By Lonesome Loser on November 28, 2009
Here’s a post for those of us who like questionnaires, charts, graphs, all the various accoutrements of science that make us feel things are more official.
Briefly, attachment theory is a psychological theory of relationships that suggests our relationship styles with parental figures in early infancy predict our relationship styles as adults. In other words, our relationships with parents and early caregivers echo down through the years, informing our adult relationships. Now, this is potentially interesting for us sufferers of unrequited love, in that there is some research that suggests people who frequently fall in unrequited love tend to have an anxious-avoidant (also called fearful-avoidant) attachment style. This is a style of relating to others characterized by relatively high levels of anxiety in the relationship as well as high levels of avoidance of closeness. I suppose that sounds a bit like unrequited love, no?
Other attachment styles include secure, characterized by an ability to form relationships with others and not worry excessively about being rejected or seen as clingy; dismissive (low anxiety-high avoidance), characterized by active avoidance of close relationships but no (conscious) anxiety about them; and preoccupied (high anxiety-low avoidance), characterized by constant worry about being abandoned or rejected while still being able to form close relationships with others. Of course, very few of us fit neatly into the exact prototype of a category, there are many variations on the general theme.
Now, bear in mind that people with any attachment style can and do fall in unrequited love. The difference may be the frequency of it happening, as well as the meaning we make of the experience (how positive or negative is it, how quickly are we able to recover our self-esteem, how well are we able to illuminate aspects of our self through the experience). See some initial survey results on this site for the meaning some of us have made of our unrequited love.
At any rate, please go here (off-site) to take a brief questionnaire (designed by a research psychologist in the field of attachment) to determine your attachment style. It takes about 5 minutes and is very interesting. Then, please pop back to this post and take the poll below — let’s see if we can get an indication of our attachment styles. Mine is secure, heading towards preoccupied.
I find psychological representation very confusing to sa\y the least.
Much better the biological (behaviourist) approach that gives a clear definition of “Unrequited Love” – An infantile bond recognition pathway, that has failed, is dysfunctionally repeating itself in adult life. Hence we do not form an actual bond with the ‘adored one’ which explains why our adoration is never retured.
With “infatuation”, a Pair Bond is formed between the partners which uses a co-extensive brain pathway. Hence the close similarity in the ‘feelings’ described by each catagory.
I have suffered 2 Bonds and 2 ULs plus 1 PROPER LOVE my wife!!!!