Relationship Conflict - Dare to Repair!
Attachment Styles
There’s a lot of interest in attachment styles on social media and I’m surprised by the number of clients who seem to know about their own attachment style. John Bowlby, a psychologist in the 1960s started developing attachment theory after doing research into the distress children experience when separated from their caregivers. The theory grew from there and was added to over the years, by other therapists and academics. Now attachment theory underpins many approaches to individual and couple therapies (for both children and adults alike) and even shows up in quizzes on the internet!
There are four main attachment styles: secure, avoidant, ambivalent (aka anxious/preoccupied) and disorganised. Securely attached adults find it easiest to form trusting and meaningful relationships. Those with avoidant tendencies may avoid intimacy and yearn for space, while those with anxious attachment tend to crave connection and fear abandonment. Adults with disorganised attachment styles have usually experienced some kind of childhood trauma or neglect and struggle with intimacy for fear of being unmoored or hurt or just plain confused. It’s worth mentioning that our attachment styles are tendencies and not fixed and all of us can grow and develop beyond them.
Repair Styles
So whilst knowing about your attachment style can be really useful in how you approach your partner and tend to behave in intimacy territory, I’m wondering where the research and quizzes are about repair styles. So much of the focus on relationship conflict is about the lead up to it and the middle of it but what about the after?
John and Julie Gottman, in their 40 years of research and couples counselling discovered that 69% of problems are chronic - meaning - they’re not going to go away! So if only 31% of our issues are solvable, what do we do with the rest? What do we do with those unsolvable problems that keep occurring and are not going to go away? We need to get good at cleaning up after them! We also need to get good at talking about them, but that’s another blog post in the future!
How good are you at saying sorry? It’s a prickly, thorny thing, the art of repair and not for the faint hearted. Especially if most of your arguments are about who is right. The need to be right is a bona fide relationship killer. Terry Real, the creator of Relational Life Therapy, is fond of saying, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be married?” When we argue, we get so armoured that we become more and more protective of our opinion, our perception and our memories of what happened/what was said. All of which are, of course, right. But right only in our eyes. Not in the eyes or ears of our partner, who is of course, also right. So, two rights, when at odds, don’t make a harmonious relationship, they make a mini war. A far more useful approach when the ‘I’m rightism’ is going off is: I see you, I hear you and it’s different for me…let’s work this out together.
The Art of Repair in 3 Easy Steps
I was not good at repair. I found it hard to lose face. To eat humble pie, as I used to see it. My husband was and is a master at it, thankfully. As a result, he’s taught me a lot about the art of repair and our 3 children too. Good relationship qualities need to be modelled and as the majority of us have not experienced good repair in action, it isn’t surprising that we struggle with it. But that doesn’t mean we have to accept this as we can change and learn how to repair by following these three easy steps:
STEP 1
Take responsibility! Being accountable and having the guts to to say, “I did this, I said this, I own it” with NO BUTS to follow. I recommend removing any and all buts from any attempt at apology.
STEP 2
Show some remorse! This needs to be authentic. And is different from guilt (I’m such a mess, I’m broken, I’m this or that, in other words, me, me, me). If you’re not able to step into your partner’s shoes and say with feeling, “I’m sorry for how it affected you, by making you feel…”, you need to ask them some questions, to dig a little deeper so you can understand what it is exactly that has hurt them. “I don’t understand yet, will you help me understand? Tell me more…I really want to understand.”
STEP 3
Plan for the future! “Next time, I’m going to do things differently. This is not going to happen again.” And again, no buts. It’s also worth exploring any patterns or cues here that may trigger a reoccurrence.
Saying Sorry is Hard
Conflicts are normal. Attachment injuries, as they’re called by the attachment folk, are also normal. I call them rupture moments and I go tracking for them when I work with couples. There’s often a biggie, going back years, that’s never been attended to and repaired properly. A moment when one of you felt seriously let down by the other; painfully disrespected or undermined; publicly shamed; lied to; or abandoned in a time of need. There are so many possibilities - all very human. But if the repair doesn’t happen the wound festers. Alternatively, there may be lots of little ruptures. Nothing big. But the pile gets bigger, the longer the repair is missing and again, the wound festers. The good news is repair can happen retrospectively, if both parties are willing. But it takes time and patience and a lot of good will.
Have a think…who in your life is good at saying sorry? I’m guessing there aren’t that many. I’ve mentioned it before (here), but there’s a moment on Netflix where some positive repair is modelled in the show Nobody Wants This. I found it refreshing because I know how important repair is. And like many meaningful things, simple in theory but so much harder in practice. It’s especially scary if you take a risk and you offer an apology and it’s thrown back in your face. But that’s one of the reasons why it’s hard. What if it doesn’t land well? Hopefully this won’t be your experience the next time you dare to repair and if it is, you at least know you gave it a shot…what have you got to lose, other than pride? And what have you to gain? Connection, harmony and secure attachment. Forget humble pie, try harmonious frittata instead!