Secure Attachment Theory

Attachment styles influence relational patterns between a married couple and their children. These attachment relational patterns known as anxious, avoidant, and secure base styles are a product of the interactions experienced in early childhood with their caregivers. It affects people’s intercommunication with others all through their life span. Individuals’ attachment style involves a systematic pattern of relational assumptions, emotions, and behavior that develop from the subjective constructs definitive of attachment experiences throughout their lives. Negative relational patterns increase the likelihood of marital violence in the home. When experiencing stress related life issues, conflicts may arise due to substandard communication skills leading to physical violence, aggressiveness, resulting in harsh spousal disputes. A positive upswing in marital and family harmony occurs when healthy communication skills develop along with secure based attachment characteristics, such as, humility, gratitude, and forgiveness of self and others. These characteristics provide coping mechanisms that establish a positive self-identity and healthy social interaction with others. As the anxious and avoidant relational styles exercise these positive characteristics, in time, they develop a positive view of self and others while learning to work through life stressors, which benefit the marriage and family.

Her research finds that, “Intimate partner violence is experienced by at least 1.3 million women each year, who make up 85 percent of the victims.” (McVay 4). Further stating that programs continue to be funded that are ineffective for these women that are experiencing the abuse. Shockingly Kristie also found a link between attachment and partner violence, showing that “…the influence of insecure parental attachment bonds creates an individual who often develops anxious adult romantic attachment patterns leading to a greater propensity to enter into a violent intimate relationship.” (McVay 4). Understanding that these predispositions occur in childhood is pivotal in understanding how these things blossom and continue to grow throughout life within a person’s character. That parent-child relationship plays a role into all other intimate relationships. In fact, “personality/behavior problems all stem from early developed attachment patterns.” (McVay 17). Analyzing adult attachment patterns showed why some people cling to violent intimate relationships as well. Proving that just as “…infants struggle with dissociation and rejection from their caregivers, so do adults suffer from separation from their intimate partners.((Feeney, 1999) Mcvay 19). Another important aspect is defining just what intimate partner violence (IPV) is. “(IPV) is perpetrated or threatened physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, financial, or stalking violence, which includes willful intimidation perpetrated by a current or former intimate partner against another.” (McVay 54). This proves that intimate partner violence is not only physical but also emotional. It is something that negatively affects the partner, it is hard to detect, and can affect anyone, sometimes even without them recognizing it. After her study, she found that if the relationship doesn’t pose extremely dangerous

Attachment theory is accepted by most psychologists and psychiatrists as the best explanation for how we develop the capacity to form relationships with others and relate to our environment. It asserts that the methods we use to relate to others, manage our needs, express our demands, and shape our expectations for the world are rooted in our relationships with our early caregivers. Through these interactions we learn to balance our feelings and need states with others and to establish our varying degrees of independence, dependence, power, and control. Attachment also impacts self-esteem through the experience of conflict with caregivers.

His ` attachment theory” is largely focused on the infant’s and their caregiver’s affectional ties and the

2. Traditional attachment theory describes four patterns of attachment, secure, avoidant, resistant, and disorganized. These four different attachment patterns do have an effect on a child’s interpersonal functioning. Children with a secure attachment tend to be more open and active in the future.

Domestic violence is a problem which spans across socioeconomic class, race, culture, religion, sexual orientation, age, and gender. This paper focuses on intimate partner violence, but that is not to downplay the seriousness, importance, and validity of other types of domestic violence.

Domestic violence, also known as Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), is a topic widely debated by many in the criminological field, with scholars arguing various theories, motivations and triggers. This essay will be contrasting and comparing two theories: the positivist model general strain theory (GST) and feminist theory and will attempt to address the issue of explaining IPV. This will be done by critically comparing each theory, with an analysis of how each best defines IPV and explaining each of their advantages and disadvantages. This essay will also explore the concept of GST, explaining how mental illness and childhood abuse may later develop into violent tendencies within a relationship. In contrast, the essay will investigate the impacts

Traumatic bonding may be categorized in Bowlby’s attachment theory as anxious-ambivalent, as the abusers in traumatic bonding intermittently abuse their victims rather than consistently. This hypothesis states that abusers do hold some attachment to their victims, contrary to their actions. The separation process induces anxiety, despair, and prolonged or extreme emotions, including anger (Sable 1992). So, the abuse in a traumatic bond could stem from a psychological and physiological deformation in the understanding of what is considered a healthy bond. The abuser may believe his or her actions are the only way to show the victim love. Likewise, the victim may believe the actions are performed because love exists in the

First, there is dissonance between the comfort, love, and security expected and desired in the romantic attachment bond and what is experienced within the violent romantic relationship. This dissonance itself results in a clash between expectation and reality, which can result in psychological trauma (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). This dissonance is especially pronounced among women whose internal working models of intimate relationships have not been damaged by prior abuse (e.g., in childhood). However, women whose internal working models were already damaged by earlier childhood abuse or other trauma are at an even greater risk of PTSD as a result of their previous traumatic experience. In these cases, DV/IPV exacerbates and compounds the effects of the woman’s prior trauma. Second, regardless of the working models women may have regarding the romantic attachment relationship, DV/IPV inherently denies psychological and emotional union with the other person, which also further exerts traumatic psychological effects on the individual who has experienced DV/IPV (Levendosky,

Many relationships go through domestic abuse, but Kaufman & Jasinski (1998), asserts that most of the abusers are men. Moreover, Rosenbaum & O’Leary (1981) showed that men who abuse their partners are unassertive. An abundance of men intimidate and turn violent towards their partner in order to achieve what they want, since they lack confidence to show others what they need (Fanlk, 1977). Since many batters feel anxiety and lack emotional needs (Dutton, 1998), they are unable to eloquently express their feelings, thoughts, and emotions in a non aggressive way (Winters, Clift, & Dutton, 2004). In order to help treat abusers, Winters, Clift, and Dutton (2004) conducted research using Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) from Bar-On (1997). EQ-i

Ths experiment focuses on how common intimate college couples in relationships are prone to some sort of violence. This research experiment attempts to go in-depth on the motivation for those engaging partners in the relationship, which is a vital component to understand. The common perspective in the field of domestic violence is the women’s use of intimate partner violence happens in the context of self-defense. However, there has been an insufficiency of reliable evidence to support this claim. This current study dives deeper into the motivation for the perpetration of

While there are many influences that may shape a person’s experience with love such as culture, one interesting factor is the attachment style. Called the attachment theory, this theory suggest that people used their attachment styles they had with their caregiver when they were younger and used that as a model when pursuing a romantic relationship during adulthood. There are three infant attachment classifications that may influence future relationships: secure attachment style, anxious/ambivalent attachment style, and avoidance attachment style. To further elaborate on this theory, we shall look into three people: Carly, Derek, and Jake. Each one has been exposed to different attachment styles and as a result will experience different effects on forming intimate relationships.

Barnum, E. L, McGovern, K.M, conducted a study to examine the relationships between attachment security, childhood sexual trauma, sexual self-esteem, and subjective well-being. The researchers predicted that lower levels of secure attachment, higher presence of childhood sexual trauma while lower levels of sexual self-esteem contributed to lower levels of subjective well-being. In this study, there were 213 undergraduate students participated from Midwestern university. This study was based on the theories of attachment from Bowlby (1973) and well-being by Lent (2004). These theories gave the reseachers a framework to build the hypotheses for this study. In this past research, the researchers concluded that lower attachment security would be

In today’s society, it is viewed as an act of women power but what people tend miss is that women can do masculinity. Women are encouraged from a young age to act like men. They are told to be independent, be in control, and to “suck it up” when they cry. Conflict in a relationship is created because of these traits. Each partner has a set of expectations they want their partner to meet. Abusive characteristics arise when one partner start to become controlling because they want their expectations met but the other partner is not able to meet their expectations (Meza-de-Luna, 2013). According to Murphy and Smith (2010), those who are not familiar with abusive behavior may ignore many warning signs of abuse from their intimate partner. Abuse develop from ordinary relationship disputes. An example of this is jealousy. Minor jealousy is usually not seen as a big deal. This behavior is not seen as controlling until one’s partner limits what a person can and cannot do. If the partner does not cooperate and violence becomes an issue, this is when abusive behavior

They hoped to find the meaning behind what causes attachment change in the relationships of couples that took part in this investigation. "Having evidence that socio-demographic factors ( race, martial status, age, gender) maybe associated with attachment change" (Seedall & Butler, (2015) P. 217).