While Emily was with David, in terms of relationships, she lived her life
in the danger zone. She felt like a tightrope walker without a safety net,
anxiously struggling to keep her emotional balance as she went
through endless cycles of activation, with only rare, brief respites of
feeling secure before the cycle began again. Her thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors were governed by the fact that David was not truly
available to her. She felt an almost constant sense of threat to the
relationship. She was always busy trying to minimize it by staying close
to him—be it by spending many precious hours online at work
pretending to be someone else or by constantly talking about him in
analysis or to her friends. In this way, she kept him in her mind at all
times. All these seemingly erratic thoughts and behaviors—activating
strategies—had one goal: to establish closeness with David. Had
David been consistently available to Emily, these activating strategies
would have been nipped in the bud instead of escalating out of control,
and she would never have had to leave the relationship comfort zone.
Now Emily no longer finds herself stuck in the danger zone. Her
husband is loving, caring, and most important, available. She is still
very aware, however, of the powerful force of an activated attachment
system. Were she ever to enter another relationship with someone
who wasn’t consistently available, she would most likely revert back to
her old “obsessed” self. The thought that something like that could
happen again sends chills down her spine.

LIVING IN THE COMFORT ZONE: RYAN AND

SHAUNA

Ryan and Shauna were coworkers who fell in love. They’d been
together for several months when Ryan left that workplace to take a
high-paying job with a prestigious firm. For the first time, the couple
didn’t spend their workdays together anymore. When Ryan went on his
first business trip with his new colleagues, he missed Shauna and tried
to call her. The call went to voice-mail after two rings. He knew that