At this point in my summary series, I’m turning to what goes wrong in relationships. As a pre-cursor to this post, go back and read the following two posts, that explain childhood and adult attachment.
When relationships are done right, both people experience “attachment.” Of course there are different levels of relationship, so we see this most significantly in parent-child relationships, and in the marriage relationship. Attachment is just a fancy term for what we all experience as true: We long to be deeply connected in human relationships. I wrote about this earlier as well: Because God is relational (has connected relationships within the Trinity), and we are made in His image, craving human connection is part of our God-given design. We see this with babies and their moms from the first moments after birth, and we experience this hunger until the day we die.
Another key aspect of attachment is that it is experienced EMOTIONALLY. You don’t just want to share information with your spouse or close friend—you want to feel that they heard you and value you. You don’t want your spouse to just intellectually agree that you have shared factual truths. You want to feel understood, respected, and loved. Before you remark this sounds too touchie-feelie, remember that God is an emotional being who experiences anger, pain, joy, hunger, loss, loneliness, etc… Thus, the experience of these emotions is a significant part of what it means to be HUMAN.
Attachment in marriage is about you asking your spouse, at a deep heart level, Are you there for me? Laying this emotional foundation of human interaction, tomorrow I’ll unpack what often goes wrong when there is conflict. Oh yes, come back tomorrow. I positively THRIVE on conflict!! (Where the "I'm being sarcastic now" button?)
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