How Childhood Experiences Affect Love

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-15 16:05

Most of the fair sex seem to support the second option. In the hope that they will win the jackpot. While research shows that children who grow up with secure attachment styles, who feel cared for, supported, and grew up confident in their thoughts and feelings, are more likely to build healthy, lasting, and lasting relationships.

But those whose emotional needs were not met in childhood are more at risk of manipulation and dependent relationships. Especially women, although this also applies to men.

Attachment theory holds that these people are insecurely attached. Looking deeper can be categorized into three styles

• anxious-anxious,
• dismissive-avoidant
• fearfully avoiding.

These are not only patterns of behavior, but also the ability of a person to manage and independently regulate negative emotions. Especially when it comes to assessing the ability not only to love another person, but also to thrive in a relationship, to overcome inevitable disagreements, ups and downs.

People need love

Babies who are fed, dry and safe, but lack personal contact, cannot develop, and in fact can die. This gives you a pretty clear idea of how important attention and attunement - or, simply, love and care - to our species is. Our mammalian relative, the monkey, is less likely to die due to such hardships, although its brain and neural systems are forever changed. As the authors of the brilliant book "General Theory of Love" write.

"The absence of a mother is not an event for a reptile and a devastating trauma for a complex and fragile mammalian brain."

People not only need love in order to thrive in infancy, but they also need it in order to develop optimally. Those whose emotional needs are not met in childhood and adolescence develop coping mechanisms that are inadequate in the long term and interfere with their ability to maintain relationships and overall well-being.

Attachment theory describes working or mental patterns of relationships that are unconsciously drawn from an individual's experience. They come not only from the daughter's own personal experiences with her primary caregiver and other family members, but from her understanding of how relationships work in her family of origin. These observations include behavior modeled by her parents in marriage, and between her parent and another or new spouse in the event of divorce or remarriage.

We learn about love through the love we show and the absence or presence of love in our family of origin.

Insecure relationship models

Mechanisms for overcoming an unloved child are developing. And mental models of building relationships in the future, based on childhood experience, operate mainly unconsciously. This is, of course, part of the problem, because, being invisible, they influence and shape the behavior of such a daughter or son. In the blink of an eye, he or she can push away, feeling threatened or uncomfortable. Sometimes admitting that he is turning to defense, but more often acting unconsciously.

These mental models influence behavior like a sieve through which all our experience is poured.

If your working relationship patterns are primarily about secure attachment, you believe in true connection and intimacy, and you want both to be together. It doesn't necessarily make you a love guru. But you know that sometimes errors occur and not everything works out. However, you trust your own beliefs and believe that other people can be trusted too. You have a positive outlook on yourself, and you can calm yourself down when you are in stress or recession.

An insecurely attached child sees things in a completely different way. If the mother was unreliable - sometimes emotionally present and sometimes not - he grows up fearing both those in need of love and those who can provide it. Attachment style will be anxiously concerned … He will constantly worry about whether he is loved, whether the relationship is genuine, and whether the partner will remain faithful or betray her. She or he will continually expect signs that things are not what they seem. For this reason, the reaction to words or actions will be stronger than necessary. Difficulty in being highly sensitive to deviations. And it has a big effect on mood when feelings of danger or neglect arise.

The two avoidant styles differ from each other in how they see themselves and others, and what motivates them. Their filters are different from the anxious-anxious ones. The avoidant person learned, first of all, to protect themselves from the pain of love and attention, which was either offered inconsistently in childhood, or consistently withheld. Such a child has learned the pain of love, and acts accordingly, donning one suit of emotional armor or the other.

Scared Avoidant really wants to be connected - values others highly, but is simply too afraid of what might happen. He distances himself, defends himself and runs away quickly.

On the other side, dismissive-avoidant is fiercely independent and doesn't see that he needs a close bond. He prides himself on being an island for himself. In fact, she has a high opinion of herself - she considers herself a strong person and does not need other people or their support. And lowly values others.

Early and late interactions with the mother not only form mental patterns of relationships:

• safe or fraught
• reliable or unreliable
• trustworthy or demanding self-defense

- they also form the ability to independently regulate and manage negative emotions. While well-to-do children learn healthy coping mechanisms when they are sad, scared, or lonely, toddlers who develop without maternal adaptation and responsiveness have problems with self-regulation. When they experience painful emotions, they shut off the feeling or it overflows.

What unloved daughters and sons know about love:

Love is a deal.

Children of narcissistic, controlling, and combative mothers know that love must be earned. You will not be loved just for who you are. And for what you do. And if they are dissatisfied with you, love will be canceled. As they reach maturity, they tend to be clueless about the dyadic nature of healthy relationships and what constitutes emotional returns. They often mistakenly see abuse or even abusive behavior as a necessary price you pay to be loved.

2. Love is conditional.

When the mother uses withdrawal from love and attention as a way of punishment. This creates emotional confusion in the child. If I did what she said, she would love me. If I didn't, I would be bad, unworthy, unattractive.

Children who are rewarded with love for being who they are. What they want to see, and not what they really are. They just can't believe that things are different. They are suspicious of relationships.

3. Emotions (and true feelings) need to be hidden.

Mothers (and fathers, for that matter) who use shame as a way to control their children teach them that showing emotions (like crying) makes you an object of contempt. Fighting and controlling mothers often tell their children that showing feelings is a sign of weakness and need to be tougher.

This only underscores the need for the child to reject their feelings and hide whatever they can, replenishing the emotional intelligence deficit. This can cause an individual to pretend to have feelings that they don't feel or deny those they have. Which, in turn, can make you feel like a cheater and fear being exposed or abandoned. This is a terrible race.

4. That love must be sought and sought.

An unloved child does not have a sense of belonging to a family of origin, what then should he belong to? This lesson teaches not only that love is not freely given, but that it is a rare commodity that you should be lucky enough to find. Of course, an unloved daughter or son also does not understand that in order to feel worthy of love, you must first love yourself.

5. Love makes you vulnerable and weak.

The pain that a child experiences when love is divided into smallest parts, not given at all or canceled, making him feel unloved, alone or unhappy, is not risky. Many simply close down, deciding that love is too risky if you don't want to be the other person's emotional dinner. The most evasive, paradoxically, can become predators themselves, especially if they value narcissistic traits and control over love highly. Thus, one can simply build himself a high castle to hide, while the other goes in search of people who will raise his self-esteem.

6. Love hurts.

Of course, securely attached people suffer from both grief and rejection. There is no magic shield that protects you from human feelings. For all of us, a broken heart is more than just a metaphor. But healthy attachment can give us experiences that speak to the positive power of love that an unloved child cannot receive. He has already learned that love hurts, and every rejection or disappointment is just another proof.