Why is it difficult for us to build relationships?

We should strive to create happy relationships – such an idea dominates the public mind today. But this is a wrong setting. Happiness can be experienced by a lover, but in a relationship it is worth looking for something else – understanding and acceptance, according to cognitive psychologist Yakov Kochetkov.

In his lecture “Love, affection, deep convictions. What prevents you from being happy in a relationship? it explains how our core beliefs and attachment style make it difficult for couples to interact. And why understanding plays a key role in creating a harmonious union.

What is attachment like?

Attachment is not just a feeling of closeness, but a stable characteristic of our relationship. We are attached to partners, parents and friends and communicate with them in a certain style. It largely depends on how our parents treated us in early childhood. English psychologist John Bowlby, the creator of attachment theory, identified several more styles of attachment. There are many classifications, but by and large there are four of them.

1. Anxious attachment

If the mother constantly takes care of the child, she is afraid that he will fall, get lost or that something will happen to him, then he develops an anxious style of relations with people. It is difficult for such a person to endure separation from loved ones, as he is afraid that he will be abandoned. He experiences severe anxiety and even depression.

2. Secure Attachment

If your mother has been there for the most part, comforting you, and understanding when you need to feed or change, you form a secure (normal) attachment. Even entering into a relationship, an adult with this style can imagine himself outside of them: he is able to endure not only separation, but also a break with a loved one – he will be very sad, but later his sadness will pass.

3. Avoidant attachment

In this case, the person distances himself from close relationships. It looks different for everyone: someone simply does not leave the room and spends all the time at the computer, while someone, on the contrary, may have many partners, but he does not stay with any of them for a long time. Such a person remembers how often he was left alone in childhood (or his parents were cold, and he felt that they did not need them), and now wants to protect himself from heartache.

4. Ambivalent Attachment

This is the most destructive style. A person can become strongly attached to someone, and then quickly and very sharply push him away. Later, he will regret what he did, try to get his partner back, and then push him away again. This is how Laura Palmer from David Lynch’s television series Twin Peaks behaved.

Those who have developed a safe attachment style think little about relationships, they are engaged in something else – work, travel, creativity. In all other cases, life turns into a constant search for relationships and into endless reflections about them.

Where do core beliefs come from?

In cognitive psychotherapy there is such a term – “deep beliefs”. This is what we think about ourselves and other people, about relationships. These are the building blocks that make up our “I”. They are very stable, this is the core of our character. Core beliefs are usually formed during childhood and adolescence. How does this happen?

As each child develops, he or she accomplishes several vital tasks. First of all, he learns to be independent, build realistic boundaries and express his emotions. How parents react to the first steps of the child in these directions will depend on his attitudes.

If they are allowed to show independence and be autonomous in childhood, he will form the belief: “I can be alone, I can cope, I will succeed.” If they cursed, forbade something, then the opposite: “I am dependent, I do not decide anything, I need someone who will help me with advice, protection.” Growing up, such a person is already striving for a dependent relationship.

If the parents criticized the child often, then he will grow up with a great doubt about his competence, which will extend to everything: both his work style and his relationships with other people.

It is important for each person to be able to express their emotions, but at the same time remain within certain boundaries. I have the right to be angry, but I have no right to hit another person. I may cry, but then I will find the strength to take on the work that I promised to do.

It is important that parents, by their example, show the child the boundaries of what is permitted and at the same time accept his emotions. A child who expects that in response to his tears or anger he will receive only anger and contempt, begins to criticize himself harshly for his emotions, to reject them. And this is a big problem.

Not surprisingly, many types of psychotherapy focus on teaching a person to accept their emotions and the emotions of other people. So, as we go through all these stages, we develop positive or negative beliefs about ourselves and other people. The first ones say: “I am needed”, “the world is a safe place”, “I am independent”, “I am competent and can cope with different tasks”. Negative beliefs tell us otherwise.

Conflict of Belief

Deep beliefs are a kind of glasses through which we observe the world. They greatly narrow our field of vision. If you are convinced that “all men are bastards”, you will find a lot of evidence for this. A person who trusts the world sees many good people around him. Therefore, in our adult relationships, different core beliefs collide with each other and create conflicts.

When two people come together, two universes meet: all generations of ancestors, all family rules, stories fall on each other. Who should wash the dishes? How should a woman behave? And the man? Partners have to agree on everything, but this is not always possible.

For example, a man has an attitude: in order to feel masculine, he should not express his emotions. Here he does not express them. And his partner, a woman with anxious affection and the conviction that no one needs her, on the contrary, expects declarations of love from him.

He hides emotions, she tries to ask for them, but does not get what she wants. She understands that she does not need a partner, she gets worse, and he thinks that he has ceased to be interesting to her, and begins to move away. There are many examples of such vicious circles.

How to break the vicious circle?

Our beliefs are like holes in the side of a ship. They are above the water level. When the sea is calm, water is not poured into these holes, the ship continues to sail calmly. But if a storm starts, the water begins to flood into the holes, and the ship begins to sink.

For each of us there is a storm, a level of anxiety and anxiety that can sink a ship. Cognitive therapy allows you to work with core beliefs and change them. But this is a very complex and long process. It is unlikely that you will be able to quickly help a couple in a storm situation.

But it would be a mistake to think that without dealing with your past, without healing all your wounds, without changing your beliefs, it is impossible to build a relationship. This is not entirely true. Research in marital therapy shows how useful for relationships are techniques that teach us to communicate with each other, and techniques that teach us to accept the emotions of another person.

The ability to talk, hear, and understand each other is much more important to maintaining a relationship, and more realistic than trying to change beliefs. No matter how difficult your childhood experience may be, the ability to recognize the reasons for your behavior, discuss them with your partner and sincerely accept his feelings will significantly reduce the effect of any destructive attachment style. This is not easy to do, but it is a road worth going.