WHEN THREAT GOES UNDETECTED
People with a secure attachment style, like Stan, are characterized by
something very real but not outwardly visible—they are programmed to
expect their partners to be loving and responsive and don’t worry much
about losing their partners’ love. They feel extremely comfortable with
intimacy and closeness and have an uncanny ability to communicate their
needs and respond to their partners’ needs.
In fact, a series of studies aimed at accessing subjects’ unconscious
minds (by measuring how long it takes them to report words that flash
quickly on a monitor, as described in chapter 6) compared the reactions of
people with anxious, avoidant, and secure attachment styles. The studies
found that secures have more unconscious access to themes such as love,
hugs, and closeness and less access to danger, loss, and separation. The
negative threatening themes didn’t get through to them as easily. However,
unlike avoidants, who didn’t react to these words initially but did react to
them when they were distracted by another task, secures continued to
overlook them even in the distraction condition. Unlike people with an
avoidant attachment style, secures aren’t concerned with threatening
relationship thoughts even when they are caught off guard. In other words,
they don’t have to make an effort to repress these ideas; they simply aren’t
worried about these issues—either consciously or subconsciously! What’s
more, when secures were specifically—and in this experiment, consciously
—asked to think about separation, abandonment, and loss, they succeeded
in doing so and did become more nervous as a result, as measured by skin
conductance tests (which measure the amount of sweat on the skin).
Remarkably, though, when they were told to stop thinking about these
topics, their skin conductance abruptly went back to normal. So it seems
that what may come as hard work for some—to keep an even emotional
keel in the face of threat—comes effortlessly for someone secure. They
simply aren’t as sensitive to the negative cues of the world.
This stance influences every aspect of their romantic relationships. They
are:
- Great conflict busters—During a fight they don’t feel the need to
act defensively or to injure or punish their partner, and so prevent