Attached

Another disabling thought pattern that makes you keep your partner
at a distance is “seeing the worm instead of the apple.” Carole had
been with Bob for nine months and had been feeling increasingly
unhappy. She felt Bob was the wrong guy for her, and gave a multitude
of reasons: He wasn’t her intellectual equal, he lacked sophistication,
he was too needy, and she didn’t like the way he dressed or interacted
with people. Yet, at the same time, there was a tenderness about him
that she’d never experienced with another man. He made her feel safe
and accepted, he lavished gifts on her, and he had endless patience to
deal with her silences, moods, and scorn. Still, Carole was adamant
about her need to leave Bob. “It will never work,” she said time and
again. Finally, she broke up with him. Months later she was surprised
by just how difficult she was finding things without him. Lonely,
depressed, and heartbroken, she mourned their lost relationship as
the best she’d ever had.
Carole’s experience is typical of people with an avoidant attachment
style. They tend to see the glass half-empty instead of half-full when it
comes to their partner. In fact, in one study, Mario Mikulincer, dean of
the New School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel
and one of the leading researchers in the field of adult attachment,
together with colleagues Victor Florian and Gilad Hirschberger, from
the department of psychology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, asked
couples to recount their daily experiences in a diary. They found that
people with an avoidant attachment style rated their partner less
positively than did non-avoidants. What’s more, they found they did so
even on days in which their accounts of their partners’ behavior
indicated supportiveness, warmth, and caring. Dr. Mikulincer explains
that this pattern of behavior is driven by avoidants’ generally
dismissive attitude toward connectedness. When something occurs
that contradicts this perspective—such as their spouse behaving in a
genuinely caring and loving manner—they are prone to ignoring the
behavior, or at least diminishing its value.
When they were together, Carole used many deactivating
strategies, tending to focus on Bob’s negative attributes. Although she
was aware of her boyfriend’s strengths, she couldn’t keep her mind off