4: Love

Love and Intimacy

Love and intimacy go hand in hand. Love is the physical, emotional, sexual, intellectual, or social affection one person holds for another. A thesaurus lists related concepts to love which include adore, desire, prefer, possess, care for, serve, and even worship as similar concepts. Intimacy, on the other hand, occurs when mutual acceptance, nurturance, and trust are shared at some level in a close relationship. In order to understand love in human relationships you must first understand how the self either enhances or inhibits your capacity to love.

The Development of the Self and Attachment Theory

Your sense of self, or your perception of the unique personal identity and traits that make up who you are as a unique person, apart from other people (in other words, what makes you, you) is developed by interactions with others, and is highly shaped by one's caregiver or parents. When you were a newborn you were totally dependent upon the adults in your life to take care of your needs and raise you in a safe environment. You had to be fed and clothed, bathed and held, and loved and appreciated. While your caregivers provided for those basic needs in your life, you attached to them and they attached to you. An attachment is an emotional and social bond that forms between one person and another. Humans are considered highly motivated to form attachments through their lives.

Attachments are crucial to human existence and are essentially the emotional context of those relationships we all have in life. As an infant you learned to trust those who cared for you. You learned they return once they are out of view, and they can be depended upon. Eventually your brain allows you to love the person you are attached to and to care for them, whether or not they are giving care to you. You learn then that your attachments facilitate your needs and wants being met. How you attached as an infant and young child shape (at least in theory) how you will likely attach as an adult. If you had strong attachments in childhood then forming adult relationships should be easier for you. If you had weak or interrupted attachments in childhood then forming adult relationships, especially loving ones, will be more difficult for you.

Emotional Development 

At birth, infants exhibit two emotional responses: attraction and withdrawal. They show attraction to pleasant situations that bring comfort, stimulation, and pleasure. And they withdraw from unpleasant stimulation such as bitter flavors or physical discomfort. At around two months, infants exhibit social engagement in the form of social smiling as they respond with smiles to those who engage their positive attention. Pleasure is expressed as laughter at three to five months of age, and displeasure becomes more specific: fear, sadness, or anger between ages six and eight months. This fear is often associated with the presence of strangers or the departure of significant others known respectively as stranger wariness and separation anxiety which appear sometime between six and fifteen months. And there is some indication that infants may experience jealousy as young as six months of age (Hart & Carrington, 2002).

During the second year of life, children begin to recognize themselves as they gain a sense of self as object. This is illustrated in the fifteen month old child’s ability to recognize one’s own reflection in a mirror. (The classic mirror test or rouge test involves showing a toddler a mirror after having secretly rubbed red coloring on the child’s nose. Children who are younger than fifteen months of age may try to wipe the color from the mirror. But a fifteen month old child may wipe the color from his or her own nose.) Once a child has achieved self‐awareness, the child is moving toward understanding social emotions such as guilt, shame or embarrassment as well as sympathy or empathy. These will require an understanding of the mental state of others that is acquired at around age three to five and will be explored in our next lesson (Berk, 2007).

Measuring Attachment Styles

In the late 1960's psychologist Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues conducted a classic model for studying styles of attachment, which involves having a caregiver and child come into a strange room filled with toys and observing the child’s reactions. A securely attached child will play with the toys and bring one to the caregiver to show and describe from time to time. The child is content and secure as he or she explores the situation. An insecure‐anxious child will cling to the caregiver and refuse to go and play. An insecure‐avoidant attachment style is indicated by a child who is neither curious nor clingy; rather the child sits and waits until it is time to go.

Attachment styles vary in the amount of security and closeness felt in the relationship and they can change with new experience. The type of attachment fostered in parenting styles varies by culture as well. For example, German parents value independence and Japanese mothers are typically by their children’s sides. As a result, the rate of insecure‐avoidant attachments is higher in Germany and insecure‐resistant attachments are higher in Japan. These differences reflect cultural variation rather than true insecurity, however (van Ijzendoorn and Sagi, 1999), keep in mind that methods for measuring attachment styles have been based on a model that reflects middle‐class, U.S. values and interpretation. Newer methods for assessment attachment styles involve using a Q‐sort technique in which a large number of behaviors are recorded on cards and the observer sorts the cards in a way that reflects the type of behavior that occurs within the situation.

In the years that have followed Ainsworth’s ground-breaking research, researchers have investigated a variety of factors that may help determine whether children develop secure or insecure relationships with their primary attachment figures. As mentioned above, one of the key determinants of attachment patterns is the history of sensitive and responsive interactions between the caregiver and the child. In short, when the child is uncertain or stressed, the ability of the caregiver to provide support to the child is critical for his or her psychological development. It is assumed that such supportive interactions help the child learn to regulate his or her emotions, give the child the confidence to explore the environment, and provide the child with a safe haven during stressful circumstances.

Evidence for the role of sensitive caregiving in shaping attachment patterns comes from longitudinal and experimental studies. For example, Grossmann et al. (1985) studied parent–child interactions in the homes of 54 families up to three times during the first year of the child’s life. At 12 months of age, infants and their mothers participated in the strange situation. Grossmann and her colleagues found that children who were classified as secure in the strange situation at 12 months of age were more likely than children classified as insecure to have mothers who provided responsive care to their children in the home environment.

Figure 4.2.1: People who had relatively secure attachments as children go on to have more secure romantic attachments. [“couple-1822585” by Sasin Tipchai/Pixabay is in the public domain under CC0 1.0.]

Dymphna van den Boom (1994) developed an intervention that was designed to enhance maternal sensitive responsiveness. When their infants were 9 months of age, the mothers in the intervention group were rated as more responsive and attentive in their interaction with the infants compared to mothers in the control group. In addition, their infants were rated as more sociable, more self-soothing, and more likely to explore the environment. At 12 months of age, children in the intervention group were more likely to be classified as secure than insecure in the strange situation.

Forming Attachments 

The significance of early attachments: An attachment is desire for physical closeness with someone. The formation of attachments in infancy has been the subject of considerable research as attachments have been viewed as foundations for future relationships, as the basis for confidence and curiosity as toddlers, and as important influences on self‐concept.

As we explore styles of attachment below, think about how these are also evidenced in adult relationships.

Secure Attachment Style

A secure attachment is one in which the child feels confident that needs will be met in a timely and consistent way. In North America, this interaction may include an emotional connection in addition to adequate care. However, even in cultures where mothers do not talk, cuddle, and play with their infants, secure attachments can develop (LeVine et. al., 1994). Secure attachments can form provided the child has consistent contact and care from one or more caregivers. Consistency of contacts may be jeopardized if the infant is cared for in a day care with a high turn‐over of caregivers or if institutionalized and given little more than basic physical care. And while infants who, perhaps because of being in orphanages with inadequate care, have not had the opportunity to attach in infancy can form initial secure attachments several years later, they may have more emotional problems like depression or anger, or be overly friendly as they make adjustments (O’Connor et. als., 2003).

The following: anxious, avoidant, and disorganized are insecure attachment styles.

Anxious Attachment Style

An anxious attachment is marked by insecurity and a resistance to engaging in activities or play away from the caregiver. It is as if the child fears that the caregiver will abandon them and clings accordingly. (Keep in mind that clingy behavior can also just be part of a child natural disposition or temperament and does not necessarily reflect some kind of parental neglect.) The child may cry if separated from the caregiver and also cry upon their return. They seek constant reassurance that never seems to satisfy their doubt. This type of insecure attachment might be a result of not having needs met in a consistent or timely way. Consequently the infant is never sure that the world is a trustworthy place or that he or she can rely on others without some anxiety. A caregiver who is unavailable, perhaps because of marital tension, substance abuse, or preoccupation with work, may send a message to the infant he or she cannot rely on having needs met. A caregiver that attends to a child’s frustration can help teach them to be calm and to relax. But an infant who receives only sporadic attention when experiencing discomfort may not learn how to calm down.

Avoidant Attachment Style

An avoidant attachment is marked by insecurity, but this style is also characterized by a tendency to avoid contact with the caregiver and with others. This child may have learned that needs typically go unmet and learns that the caregiver does not provide care and cannot be relied upon for comfort, even sporadically. An avoidant child learns to be more independent and disengaged. Such a child might sit passively in a room filled with toys until it is time to go.

Disorganized Attachment Style

A disorganized attachment represents the most insecure style of attachment and occurs when the child is given mixed, confused, and inappropriate responses from the caregiver. For example, a mother who suffers from schizophrenia may laugh when a child is hurting or cry when a child exhibits joy. The child does not learn how to interpret emotions or to connect with the unpredictable caregiver.

How common are the attachment styles among children in the United States? It is estimated that about sixty five percent of children in the United States are securely attached. Twenty percent exhibit avoidant styles and ten to fifteen percent are resistant. Another five to ten percent may be characterized as disorganized. How would this compare with adults in the United States? (We will look at this in our lesson on early adulthood.)

Falling in Love and Its Effects on the Self

As adults, one of the very first symptoms that you are falling in love is that you begin to feel better about yourself when you are with the other person. One of my students commented in class, “That's true for my boyfriend and me. We started off just hanging out with mutual friends. Then we were talking a lot on the phone. But, both us felt that feeling of wanting to be together more often and feeling good, you know safe together.”

It can be argued that you can only be in love as much as your self will allow you to be.