Staying Connected in Your Romantic Relationship

Relationships are essential to life as a human. At one point in evolution, they were necessary for physical survival. The situation is not quite so dire in contemporary human interactions, but we still depend on others for our connection and sense of well-being. Young children who are not touched or given the opportunity to connect with a caring adult may fail to thrive. Even our successes as adults only yield positive mental health benefits when they are supported and celebrated by those with whom we have meaningful relationships. In short, connection is a need, not just a want, for most people living in today’s social world.

When we are babies, our automatic goal is to establish meaningful and secure connections with our caregivers. In infancy, we connect by touch, eye contact, and facial expression. If we are touched affectionately and see ourselves reflected in the eyes and warm facial expression of our caregiver, we feel safe and cared for… securely connected.

As toddlers, we develop deeper connections when we stumble and get hurt and then run to our caregiver who comforts, reassures, and uplifts us. As young children, we connect when our caregiver remains steadfast and available even as we have tantrums and express our upset. In middle childhood, we feel secure and connected when our caregiver follows up on providing comfort by also providing guidance and new strategies to tackle life’s challenges.

And, of course, as adults, we feel connected when our close friends and family members provide all of these same functions… and we have the (ostensibly) ultimate connection when one special person adds romantic love and sex to the mix (footnote on non-binary relationships, etc).

In short, connection, as I have described it here, has most of the ingredients of secure attachment at its core. In the book, Character Strengths and Virtues, Cindy Hazan’s chapter on love goes so far as to define romantic love as secure attachment. Only about 55% of the adult population have secure attachment styles, and I am by no means implying that the other 45% do not experience strong romantic connections; but it certainly can be more challenging to establish and maintain them.

In childhood, when the normal (secure) ways of connecting are blocked, children resort to secondary compensatory strategies by, to some degree, deactivating or hyperactivating their attachment (connection) systems. People who do not receive that warm embrace, eye contact, and caring facial expression, whose tantrums and complaints are not tolerated, tend to shut down their emotional systems and desires to have deep connections. Rather, they settle for superficial connections and the “belief” that other people will want to connect with them by striving for high achievement in work, school, and sports. Everybody loves a winner… right? They can believe that other people are connected or want to connect without actually having close, intimate relationships. This is a description of dismissing/avoidant attachment.

Then there are those who had caregivers who were very inconsistent in meeting the child’s bids for connection. This type of caregiver acts like a connection slot machine. If you keep investing in it long enough, it will eventually pay off… right? Because they learn to work so hard for that connection in childhood, as adults, these individuals tend to overvalue connection and experience high levels of anxiety and distress when it is lost or there is a perception that the connection may be fleeting. They therefore try too hard to stay connected, are overly attuned to rejection, and get angry when they feel let down or their needs are not being met. This is a description of preoccupied/anxious attachment.

And, of course, there are innumerable combinations in which the levels of avoidant and anxious attachment mix within any one person, given their history. The point is that the ways they learned to deal with connection problems in childhood will tend to be the same way they deal with those connection problems as adults.

When Connection Can Be Lost

• We get too busy or stressed in our adult lives. When work, school, or even outside family and social influences stress our emotional systems, we may turn inward and have a self-referential focus. When this happens, we can lose track of our partner and fail to see, reflect, or validate them. We might not listen well, not tolerate their negative emotions, have poor eye contact, avoid touch or the expression of affection.
• We become too sure of ourselves and the correctness of our ideas or positions. When we become inflexible on an issue, we can no longer be a secure base for our partner to explore their thoughts or ideas on the issue. They will lose connection with us because we are no longer safe for them to explore their ideas or thoughts about the world.
• We are emotionally hurt and angry (maybe because of some of the above patterns) and therefore are unwilling to tolerate or hold our partner’s expression of their strong emotion: “You hurt me so why should I care about what you think?!”
• Emotional or physical health experiences make it difficult for us to tolerate or enjoy affectionate or sensual touch. Sorry to say it, but just like the infant, an adult can tell us all they want about how valuable we are, but if they don’t touch us, we just won’t feel safe or connected.

How Connection Can Be Rebuilt

1. You are aware of your attachment-based propensities to pull away from connection or over-focus on and try too hard for connection.
2. You make eye contact. Look directly into the other’s eyes when communicating with them and “see” the person in there looking back at you.
3. You practice forgiveness. Work on self-compassion and accept your own connection failures… and then extend the same to your partner and forgive their failures to connect.
4. You keep the dialogue going. If you get too sure of yourself or entrenched in an idea that you foreclose on the topic, your partner will not only view you as disconnected from the topic, but from them.
5. You touch and hug. All social mammals connect by touching. It means you are safe with each other and implies connection (unless it is non-consensual or predatory).
6. You say goodbye/good night. When we break the connection with our partner because we have to leave, saying goodbye or good night (preferably with a hug and a kiss) implies that they can feel safe during the absence and implies an intention to reconnect again soon.
7. You plan dates. It is very important for relationship partners to feel chosen. I often tell the couples I work with that you should never stop dating your spouse. So, make plans to show your partner how special they are to you.
8. You engage in acts of service. I included this one for the more avoidant partners. When I talk about closeness and connection, I am sometimes told that it doesn’t matter how many hugs and kisses someone gives if you are so exhausted by housework, errands and the kids that you can barely breathe. Sometimes, you need the other person to show they care by simply taking on some of the load.
9. You can agree on sex. Often when one or member of a couple feels disconnected, they also want to disconnect from sex. But this sets up a spiral where the more desirous member of a dyad then feels even less connected and pulls back in relation to the other aspects of connection reviewed previously. If you don’t want to have sex because you don’t feel connected, then work with your partner to find a way to feel connected. And keep in mind that affectionate sex can, in itself, be a way of reconnecting with your important other.