¶ The 10,000 Things: Diving into Attachment Theory
Hello and welcome back to The 10, 000 Things. I'm Sam Ellis.
I'm Joe Loh.
And I'm Ali Catramados.
It's really good to see you guys. Yeah.
Today on the show, attachment.
Yeah, we're raw dogging it.
So, you
know, you don't want to, you don't want to. Grease me up for some small talk.
¶ Attachment Styles: The New Myers-Briggs?
First
attachment is basically the new Myers-Briggs. Yeah. That's true. It's what everyone's talking about in the dating world. Yeah. Okay. We are doing small talk. Uh, everyone knows their attachment style. Mm-Hmm. And where everyone, I say everyone in the navel gazing upper middle class inner city of Melbourne.
So why did you say everyone.
Well, that's everyone I know. You need to
expand your
I mean, that's
Just telling on yourself is fine.
That's my only
We are an inclusive show, aren't we?
That's my only sample size is everyone I meet dating knows about attachment styles. Yeah.
¶ Exploring Attachment Theory: Science and Personal Insights
But I thought I'd do a little explainer for the listener who doesn't know what they are. And it's actually grounded in quite solid science.
Your whole life is a New Yorker think piece.
Uh, unlike a lot of the stuff that's out there, I think it's quite grounded in, in science and it comes from, A guy called Bowlby in the fifties. Oh, shit. You've done your homework. That was my job. I have done my homework.
I've done my homework.
Just let me do a monologue. look, it's about attachment to the primary carer, usually the mother in infancy. And for practical purposes in, uh, modern, dating and relating, You end up with an attachment style from how you attach to your mother in infancy, and they can be categorized roughly in three categories, which is anxious, avoidant, or secure,
and disorganized. Well, then
there's combos of those, so you might have anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. You know, and you might switch from anxious to secure within a healthy relationship. And back. Um, like Myers Briggs, you can do a quick five minute online survey and find out what your attachment style supposedly is.
The difference between Myers Briggs This actually helps people and
it's grounded in some good science. Yeah. So there's like, I don't know, 70 years of clinical literature batch backing it up. It's very solid. It's solid. Certainly for infants. how solid it is for adults and how it plays into dating and relationships. I think, I think it's,
It's helpful in having that awareness of yourself in the dating context, because it doesn't, I don't think it dictates how you are going to be in a relationship. All it is, is identifying what your, I suppose, natural behavior is going to be, whether you then act on it or conscious of it and, you know, consciously decide. So, it's, it's, it's having that awareness at least of why am I feeling like this? And then being able to positively move forward with healthy behavior.
So it looks secure, or you might not be feeling secure, but you are behaving
¶ Anxious Attachment: Texting, turning into Teen Wolf, and Drowning Metaphors
securely.
The image that just came into my head was, you know, that, is it a Michael Jackson video where he turns into a werewolf? Thriller. Or, no, what am I thinking of? Michael J. Fox. Michael J. Fox. Teen Wolf. Teen Wolf. And he looks down at his hands. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, and he's turning into a werewolf. Anxious attachment is like that for me. Yeah. When I send a text message, don't get a reply, send another text message. The monster comes out. Don't get a reply, and then send another one.
Yeah. The treble text. Oh. Sure. Like, I will, like, what is happening to me? You know? Because I'm losing all my self respect and I feel like I'm drowning.
Actually, self respect is the wrong concept, but carry on.
I feel like I'm drowning. An anxious attachment has been, for me, anecdotally, in my own experience, the most accurate way to explain What's happening to me in those moments where I feel possessed and I can't I'm almost watching myself do shit that I know I shouldn't be doing.
Oh my god. We've got dangerous levels of agreement going on here Joe I'm so impressed
Well, firstly, what did you ever take the test? What did you come out as?
I didn't need to take the test because I'd already worked it all out for myself.
That's the most Sam thing ever. You would have to be disorganized.
Yes. Well done. I was going to ask you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, the most disorganized attachment you've ever seen. No, that's not true. I've seen worse than me. I was
I feel like I might give you a run for your money.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And someone else I know, and I won't name names. Joe, uh, you've done your homework, we agree on it, the same amount, it would seem, and you've been able to apply it. You've said that nothing else you've come across has given you the ability to understand your own behavior to like these specific behaviors so usefully and powerfully. And that's, these are literally all of my thoughts.
And I guess my little preface to the thing is like what Ali said before about, Natural behaviors, and we don't mean healthy when we say natural.
Yeah, it's just what's our go to. What's the brain thinking versus what it should be doing. Yes.
And the only thing I would sort of add or correct to anything you've said so far is just these things are impacted by the father as well, but yes, the mother tends to be, you know, the primary. The, other thing that I wanted to add, these are adaptive strategies and that they're correct in the sense that they worked for the person who learned these strategies and they are not maladaptive in all circumstances. So to take away the jargon, you aren't.
wrong with everything you're doing, this was the right thing to do for you when you were little.
So if you weren't getting the attention that you needed as a child, crying out and asking for that and then getting the attention reinforces that, that if I behave this way, that's how it's going to get it.
This is how I get reassurance. Yeah.
And similarly, like with, avoidant, it's like, Oh, if I, you know, Expressing my feelings is going to cause a problem for me. So I'm going to not say anything at all, or I'm going to withdraw. And that's how these things become very entrenched.
So God's cruel joke in setting things up this way is that anxious people tend to be attracted to avoidant people.
Yes. It's not, well, no, it actually just makes, at first I was really puzzled by it, but once I understood what was going on, I'm like, Oh no, no, this makes complete sense. And I would just substitute the word attracted with compelled to pursue. And that's a very different thing because the objective, but it feels the same and it creates chemistry. And so this is why people keep repeating patterns. Yeah.
It's like, is it your pattern or is it your type? And that, that's what I was saying to Joe in that. Yeah. Yeah. Like it. Yeah. Yeah. It feels completely normal, yeah, to have somebody either, yeah, pulling away from you or doing that. So, because that was your experience, yeah, as a child. So it, it, yeah, it feels really familiar and that's why I like, oh, that's, this is chemistry. So
¶ Disorganized Attachment: Navigating Dating and Self-Discovery
can
you describe, uh, disorganized attachment and how it's played out in say, the last five years of your dating life?
So yeah, I, well, disorganized attachment, which is, it's rooted in trauma or it's linked very much to childhood trauma. So yeah, it's a combination of anxious and avoidant attachment style. So it's, it's really contextual depending on who you're with.
And if I could just butt in for two seconds, what will make this much clearer to understand is when we say that someone's, you know, dominantly the anxious style, it means the majority of their strategies when it comes to creating secure attachment, that's what everyone's seeking. So we haven't spelt this out clearly enough. The fundamental assumption behind all of this work is that primary human drive is secure attachment. So not even sex or food.
So before those things, and there are studies that demonstrate this, the monkey that prefers the soft thing that reminds itself of its mother over the food. So profound is our desire for secure attachment. That's the underlying theory of this whole thing. Therefore, When our attachment is threatened, it is literally felt as a threat on our existence, our life itself and the purpose of life itself has all been threatened all at once.
Without secure human attachment, we cannot survive and we certainly cannot thrive. Money though has a way of creating an illusion that we can meet all of our own needs without other human beings. And so many of us have a fantasy if we had enough money, we wouldn't need to rely on anyone for anything. But the truth is, no one can live a full and happy life without music. secure attachment with other human beings.
So we might end up with a dominantly anxious or dominantly avoidant style, or like Ali and I, we're an absolute nightmare of a patchwork of strategies across all these different circumstances. And there's no real pattern to it until you've observed it for long enough. And then you can see, Oh, all of these responses make sense in their own way. Oh sorry, carry on with disordered words.
We'll come back to your personal experience of it within a marriage, which will be different from experience of it within dating, but yeah, Ali, get back to where you were before. So I just wanted to get all that straight just in case anyone's confused up front about that.
Yeah. Anyway, go for it.
So I've certainly been in what I would say felt secure in adult relationships. I've felt secure. I haven't,
you know what it feels like.
Yeah. I know, I do know what it feels like. And I think, like I said, it's contextual because whoever I'm with is for whatever reason, not making me feel anxious by their behaviors. So they do give all the attention or whatever that I need. And similarly will pull back when I, I need that.
And so I know how to not make you feel smothered.
Yeah, exactly. So it's, and it's, uh, and that's what makes me feel secure. So it's been interesting. Yeah. So my two long term relationships, yeah, we're both secure relationships and I felt secure in those while I was in them. It was, yeah, going into dating has been a totally different, a minefield. So yeah, like I, yeah, you send them, you're like, why is this person, why am I, you know, I say to my girlfriend, like, why am I going psycho over this, like, not getting a text back?
Why is this driving me crazy? Like what is it specifically about this person? And it's, it's, yeah, there's something that I'm not getting from them. And we mistake that for like, yeah, some sort of attraction or a desire. Ultimately, we want to be chosen, like that's a very human thing to want to be chosen. Like, Oh, I want to be the exception to the rule. I want this person yet to choose me for whatever reason. And similarly, I just
want to be married. I don't care who too.
Yeah. And then, and similarly with the, like when I've displayed avoidant tendencies and it's when someone has. Being overly, you know, communicating yeah. Like felt smothered and it's like, I don't know what to do with this. Oh, this is like offputting. I, I don't know. Yeah. I'm, so, I, I withdraw and being very aware of those behaviors, I think it's made the choice for me not so much about like, um.
You know, modifying all of my behaviors, obviously not being completely crazy and psycho and like, you know, and, and giving into every urge or whatever, but you know, it should be healthy and normal, but the, whatever normal is, but it is, it's made me consciously aware of who I'm choosing to be with and what feelings I'm feeling when I'm with them. And if I'm feeling secure and stable with them, that's, That's a better feeling than, yeah, that's, that's what I'm going with.
And that's, that's the one I should be pursuing rather than the one that's making me feel a bit crazy about myself.
Correct. Like from what Sam said that we will feel like we won't survive unless we get secure attachment.
Yeah. It's like a threat to our life.
Yeah. It's fight or flight. Have you ever had that in the last five years of dating ever had that, what I'm describing, a feeling of drowning, which is what Sam contextualized as feeling that I won't survive. Feeling like I won't survive is just, I would describe as feel like I'm drowning, like I'm running out of air here and all that's happened is someone has left me on read for three hours.
I prefer the drowning metaphor to the more clinical language I've used. It's powerful. Cause it's, yeah,
it's. Have you had that though? Yes. As a disorganized style.
Yeah, absolutely. I felt it. It's, But that it's, our brains are designed to keep us alive, not and to keep us safe. Not to make us happy.
But let me ask you this. You say it feels nice when you go into secure attachment or towards secure attachment, which you, you believe you're capable of?
Yes. Right. But it, it. Sometimes that can be mistaken as boring.
Yeah.
That's what I was going to say. How do you compare that feeling of going towards secure attachment to that feeling of relief and exhilaration when that person you're anxiously attached to does give you the attention?
Oh, that's thrilling and intoxicating.
It's like heroin, I need some more.
Oh yeah, it's just, it's fun. It's feeding something in the brain that's probably extremely unhealthy, but it feels, it's euphoric. It's like, Oh, I finally got the thing. Yeah, I got chosen. I was, that's the one I want. So there you go.
That's the, that's my last eight years of dating summed up. Basically, I'm addicted to that feeling of relief when that person who you're not sure wants to be with you gives you the full attention,
it's extremely validating,
on for even if it's for an hour, that I can stay high on for days, whereas someone calmly and stably consistently saying they would like to Hang out with you. I just, I have to try and trick myself into wanting that,
It's not so much about tricking yourself.
I know that feeling though.
It is. It's like, yeah, my psychologist is like, just give it time and, go back to your list of things that you want and are looking for in a relationship and see if it's actually ticking all those boxes and you feel secure with it. That's, That's the healthy goal, like work towards that and just give it time. The thing with the, the anxious and the avoidance sort of stuff is that that all sort of happens quite quickly and you get triggered by it extremely quickly. Like with some people,
within two weeks, it's like,
yeah, you're not yourself.
My whole life depends on what this person thinks of me.
Yeah. And you're, and you're making really like, yeah, I'm making really bad decisions and you know, things that are not healthy and impulsive. Yeah.
How is that explained by people who don't know about attachment style? Is that explained as. I've met the one or this is hot and sexy. Absolutely. Because we have this clinical knowledge that yeah, not it's, it's in the zeitgeist in Melbourne, but I don't know how many people know about it.
So can I just say this, even if it's in the zeitgeist, the vast majority of people have not grasped the topic properly. And I know this because I listened to about six different podcasts on the topic. So I'm absolutely down the rabbit hole on this. I'm an evangelist. I'm completely sold on it, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. Well, tell us about your experience. I mean I'll absolutely go there, and I'll Yeah.
But I just want to say this first, the practitioners These themselves gently express a degree of frustration with the fact that people don't actually understand this properly. And the two big misunderstandings are, that avoidant is narcissism and that avoidant are bad people and that anxious are victims and avoidant are, you know, abusers, which is really, really, really, really, really Dreadfully unfair.
And it's completely inaccurate. And completely inaccurate. And
the people that are walking around believing that are really doing themselves a disservice because this is a story as we talk about in therapy, stories that help us to hide things and hide from things and stories that get us away from the truth. And this is one of them because that story protects that person from the need to change anything they're doing. And it, It enables us to place the locus of the security onto someone else, which is the whole problem.
When we're, whether we're doing anxious or avoidant or disordered, it all boils down to the same thing that we feel our security depends on what this other person is doing. And we're not paying enough attention to what we can control and what we need to do differently.
And Becoming more conscious of triggers and patterns of response and just inch by inch cutting those back and not going as far each time and then eventually not even acting on the trigger at all and recognizing that we can't feel securely attached. All by ourselves, but experiencing a feeling of security just in our own body. That's where we have to begin. And when people talk very vague in vague terms about self care, I think we need to be much more specific, creating safety for ourselves.
And then we can start to respond
¶ Beyond Romance: Attachment in Friendships and Self-Care
to other human beings.
Because that was one question I had from what you said before was, well, this need to attach is
Fundamental.
Fundamental. What about people who are single, like my mum's been single for 20 plus years since my dad died. Well, she'll have really good friends. She has great friends, but is she attaching to, see attachment to me. I only experience any intensity of it, really, in romantic relationships. Well, sure.
And this, and this is, this is why romantic relationships have become the focus for all of the discussion about attachment theory. But there's a whole area we're neglecting here, which is friendships and children, parent relationships.
Exactly. Yeah. Like there will be, there will be people who, yeah, have that anxious feeling every time their parent calls them or avoidant
towards their parents or that,
yeah, there's some sort of. Yeah, similarly with friends. It's like, Oh, my friend hasn't called me back. What have I done wrong? Like that will feel those feel, you know, I want to apologize. What have I done wrong? And they're feeling that with all of their attachments.
All my friends having feelings again. I just can't cope.
Yeah.
I'll get anxious if I say something particularly nasty to Ali, which I'll do because me and Ali texts all day, every day.
The reason you're still friends is you can say mean things and she finds it. She deals with it. Relatively well, yeah, but I will get anxious if it's like, Oh, I think that could be it. I think she might not talk to me again, but
semi regularly, no, it's, it's about then me putting in a boundary with myself and going, you know, I'm just going to take a step back, calm down. Well, you know, I'll tell her, I'll say like, that's why I found that really offensive.
All I'm saying is, I guess. I can feel that some sense of that same sense of Uh, drowning in a friendship context, but even then it's nowhere near as intense.
Okay. And this is because
you feel relatively secure that, you know, Oh, she's just taking a moment or like, yeah,
I don't know, but I, I more rationally than in the romantic relationship think if that person never talks to me, I'll be okay because I have a map in my head of say a hundred friends that I have, right? With a romantic partner, I'm a monogamist, one person at a time. I'm only ever thinking this person. And as you know, like, and plus I'm imagining maybe 30 years together of a future and being on a boogie boards at 70, you know, like, like I, I will do.
Disordered attachment going on so much. Yeah. This is crazy stuff.
But like, because there's all this going on in my imagination of the future, when they suddenly don't reply to a text or they suddenly. Cancel a plan or whatever it is,
it's very painful.
Yeah. It's the loss of your imagined future.
Whereas one of many friends suddenly not talking to me for a few hours doesn't hit the same way. Right.
But there's a different, like, it's not like I'm going to, in the context of yeah, us, I, I haven't just gone like, Ghosted for two weeks or whatever. And you've never heard like, I don't, so I think maybe, yeah, you know, yeah, she just might need a couple, like you said, a couple of hours or it could be, you know, even if it was a few days, it's, it's, it's different to then, yeah.
Like somebody just sort of going no contact in the, without any explanation in the dating context, which happens all the time for a variety of reasons. So,
so I guess what's happening here, if you want my opinion, is that you, you're experiencing a degree of secure attachment with friendships. And so you're not highly likely to panic about friends withdrawing. So friends are not going to trigger your anxious attachment too easily. And you're actually pretty good with doing boundaries avoidant tendencies either. But
it's because your expectations around. Friendships and what you will get from friendships is different to what your expectations are in a romantic context.
That's other thing is your expectations with friends are actually quite balanced and achievable and sane. And those are what your Intimate relationship expectations need to be also
I mean, I'm always testing with friends, so I will do things like
Yes, you do. You are a raptor testing the fences. Yes, it's true.
Well, there's testing in terms of can I attack or say something might be offensive to the dominant, you know, cultural norms of our community or whatever, and see what happens .And like since the last episode we recorded, both of you call me a cunt on the, independently about different things, call me a cunt on the group chat.
Show gossip.
Yep. Behind the scenes.
But like, that's one tip, but the other tip, so that's one form of testing. But then when we then meet up and it's all fine in person, then that's true to me, that friendship is stronger.
Oh, I agree.
Oh, I can go right out there. And explore ideas I find interesting and, and be called a cunt for it.
It's brought us closer together.
Yes.
And then come back and that person, but I wouldn't, you know, because I've only ever been in the first six months of a relationship in the last eight years, you never quite get to a point where you're like, I can push this and see what happens.
Yeah.
And then you've got to the other side of it and seen it's going to be okay.
And if you push it and see what happens, usually it's over. So, and I want to push it. But the other thing I'll do is sit there and delete every whatsapp message I have and try to not text anyone first and it's a test to see what friends I actually have and then I wait and as I'm waiting sometimes I'll start to feel a bit anxious but again it's not, it's not the level of intensity of when I'm sleeping with someone it gets really ramped up.
And of course I've psychoanalyzed you a lot on this show and I'm gonna do it again because I love it.
We've talked about this before that The dominant focus for your, where you're putting your personal energy and like a lot of thought going into romantic relationships, which I won't criticize you for, but it is maybe a little bit outsized and the expectations that you have on those are higher than they are on friendships and, and your friend provided a very useful idea about, you know, looking for the magic vagina and so on I think that one is, is adjacent to all of this, right?
and we talked previously about relationships with parents. We've gone into that on and other episodes of this show and really gotten into some interesting territory, including a recent ish show that I felt was one of our finest, where we were really exploring that crossover between the parental relationship and the intimate partnerships later in life and recognizing that For example, we've all had problematic childhoods and not just run of the mill stuff either.
I think we've all, we can all really nail our colours to the mask and say we all had quite difficult childhoods, compared to the average. Uh, I,
I, I don't identify as that. And now we're not I, I agree that both of you have. I, I can't really say that.
And we're not claiming victim status here. The purpose of this statement, Joe, is Uh,
I just think you two have much more dramatic stories, actually, about your childhoods than I do. Yeah, but it's, it doesn't
It doesn't matter. They're picturesque, but they're not.
Yeah, what it's had on you.
I had things happen to me that another kid would be fine with. But it might have You could say being sent to a military Hare Krishna boarding school would be fine for some kids. It probably would be, you know. The horrific things that happened to Ali would be not okay for anyone. Not good for anyone, yeah. Me is very subtle kind of stuff, really. But I've been thinking back on some of those.
I don't, I just want to pick you up on that because I don't strongly identify as someone who had a dramatically bad childhood. All right. Well, certainly I came into adulthood lacking some fundamental sense of security.
So we're going to agree on that. Yeah. And, and, and that's all we really need to proceed with what I'm going for here, which is to recognize that. I can think of so many stories you've told me, not just about childhood, but the teenage years, the twenties and thirties, where there were times when I think you felt completely alone and that there was no one you could really count on. And that's what we're talking about here. That's what secure attachment boils down to.
Feeling that you, it's not that someone is there for me. That's not quite it. It's I am capable of creating and sustaining relationships where this need can be met and I can meet it for others and I want to meet this need for others as much as I want it met for me. So this is about not I will find the person that will give me security, it's I will be the person. Who will make choices that will move me towards security. And I've just met this person, they're awesome. We cooked dinner together.
It was such a vibe. I'm picturing our future now, slow down, be in the moment and remember that you're still in the driver's seat and you know, everyone here has various ways of getting out of the driver's seat, right? I'm an expert. That's it. You know, Ali's into astrology. I'm into it too, to a degree. I enjoy it.
Yeah. I love it. I love it. It's middle class white woman. It's like my culture.
And Joe sneers at astrology meanwhile, but looks for signs, which is, you know, the same bloody thing, if you want my opinion. And me, I look for signs, uh, oracles of all kinds.
I don't know. No, I disagree with that too. I would say I get signs whether I want them or not.
Oh, well, that is an interesting take, actually. And that is
what I don't believe in is coincidences.
I know that feeling.
And that is anyway, that's a side track. I want to know, Sam, how Disorganized attachment, which is what you've described, how it's played out. Well, you can go back to your dating life or you can talk about your married life or both.
I'm happy to, whatever you're interested in.
I think because the only value of this podcast is, is our personal experience, because someone could listen to experts like psychologists talk about attachment styles, but what's your experience with your attachment?
Yeah, well, connecting it to personal experience is critical to help it. We're
just putting, like, what you've learned to one side, like, uh, academically to one side. What's your personal felt experience of attachment stuff?
Well, the second I started learning about it, I was like, this is very interesting. It was making a lot of sense. It was resonating deeply with personal experience. To me, like, learning stuff and like that the chemistry of Ooh, this is interesting.
It's always been pretty much identical to Ooh, this is triggering feelings of I'm interested because it relates to personal experience like anyone on the spectrum can tell you like it's it's all about it's all about our special interests all the time but and so this has become a special interest but It's not for no reason. It's resonating with lived experience very deeply.
And that's kind of what I was trying to get at before with getting out of the driver's seat and we've all, we all find ways to do that. And therapy is just all about getting back in the driver's seat and taking control of what you can and should take control of.
I would so much rather tell my psychologist, it's like I'm a Sagittarius and it's not because I have mental illness. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
And I would rather exasperate mine by banging on about stuff that doesn't relate to what I can control and need to control. And so attachment theory has really given me some powerful clues about what I actually have a responsibility to be doing differently, like to myself and for others. So to childhood, boarding school was and I'm not getting out the string section here to like, I'm not panning for pity. It's just, yeah.
It's just a fact that, um, you know, there was a room full of children there who were away from their parents at a young age.
Well, I think I was about six, and there were kids there who may have been younger and some who were older, and everyone in that dormitory was crying the first night, and most of those kids wet the bed, and, you know, little by little, uh, people, young people, children, the children in that room, one by one they stopped crying, and one by one they stopped wetting the bed. And one by one they Adjusted to this new reality because that's, you know, children are very adaptable.
Now here's where attachment comes in. You learn strategies based on the circumstances you encountered and you learn things like who in this situation can I count on and how can I get attention? How can I get? Care from adults. How can I attract nurturance? And these aren't the, like, conscious questions you're asking yourself, but, you know, years later you go, Oh, I see. And maybe if, well, for example, you can, just classic childhood strategies, I did all of these, you can act out.
That'll get your attention from adults and caregivers, you can punch another kid, you can swear, you can do, get into a fight with your siblings, you can, steal stuff and stash it and try to create a feeling of security that way. That's something I did. You can, try and be the perfect child and attract, um, You know, approval from adults that way, you know, it's like, Oh, let's figure out whatever the game is here that we're meant to be playing. Let's play it. Let's win it.
That's um, very related. That one's hitting. That one's hitting.
Yep. I'm going to be the model student or whatever it is, whatever these fucking hoops are. Okay. Hoops is it. Great. Let's jump through them. And you know, so for, for obviously for me, it was religion And there are ways to excel here in this. We need to learn, we need to know scripture. Okay. All right. Well, I will fucking learn the ass off this scripture and I'll, I'll be able to recite slabs of it to adults and I'll impress the shit out of them. Now, so that's post hoc rationalization.
I didn't know what I was doing as a child. What I was doing was being drawn to the things that got approval from adults because then there was a chance that with that approval, there might be some nurturing, there might be some fucking parenting. because, you know, I was well bonded to my primary carer, from birth through to age six and then separation from the primary carer. So it's a complex picture. It wasn't like horrible abuse and neglect in the home, no, not at all.
They did a good job when I was there. They were quite good parents, like by objective standards. When I was in the home, I received the right kind of boundaries, I got the right kind of nurturing. I got listened to most of the time, I didn't get dismissed constantly. These are classic things that cause attachment issues, by the way, that's why I'm listing them. I got a degree of help regulating my emotions and like, you know, recovering from tantrums and things like that.
And it was not super difficult to win their approval or anything like that. but you know. There were still like mistakes they made within the normal course of parenting within the house, but like all of that by itself might have led to a mild, some mild attachment issues, nothing too serious. Their own relationship was very problematic, but it also had good seasons. So they, you know, they were able to work through their issues as a couple as well.
So again, that's another very healthy thing to see. So there were, and I saw people, Two people who were struggling with a lot of things, but were able to give each other support and really stood by each other as well. So like I had some good, some good role modeling in there, in amongst the normal sort of challenges of life and childhood, but the boarding school stuff was really going to throw a spanner in the works, no matter how good a job they did at home.
Because it's a very unnatural situation in many respects and quite natural in other ways because you make a community with your peers and you do bond really well with the other children and so like meeting other people and getting, learning to get along well with them quickly has never been too much of a problem for me. but how's this manifested in adult life?
Well, one of the things that happened is I would be quite comfortable in institutional settings where the expectations were clear and where the goals of the game were clear and how to win was clear, how to be the best at whatever was clear. And then in circumstances where it was a bit unclear or ambiguous or whatever, struggled greatly. unfortunately though. You can lose yourself in this process. Okay, so my job here is to be the model, whatever it is, and then attract the approval of others.
And this is how I will get secure attachment. And this is not just romantic. In fact, I think for a long time, the area I struggled, with the most was actually looking for those parental figures and mentors and people like that and actually would find them. But it became about pleasing them and not about learning through this relationship what I needed to learn. And, but some of those people were quite good at steering me. A lot of people were steering me towards this constantly.
The wise people that did emerge were often telling me things like in my late teens, early twenties, were telling me things like, but what do you want? And I didn't know how to answer that question. Like who are you? And I'm like, I don't know. And I probably had some clever answer like, well, no one is any one thing and, you know, I am whatever the situation, you know, we're all different people in different contexts and, you know, well actually
Is this why you spent 10 years at uni?
Yeah, yep, yep, yes, that and being disorganized and not liking to write essays, yeah, but yeah no no that's right uni was a nice safe environment in many ways absolutely bit of a shelter.
Well you said you knew how to perform in an institutional environment, and
how to win the approval Adults.
Yeah, I'm sure your lecturers loved you, but then were like, Sam, you've got to get that essay in.
Oh, it would drive them insane. Yeah.
Like, I'd love to pass you, mate, but like, you've really got to write something. Like, you know this stuff better than everyone else in the class, but you haven't written it.
You haven't written a damn word. What's the matter with you? Yeah. And, and no, I can't make different rules for you. Yeah. So this is one of the, this is one of the areas where it.
But you haven't gotten into any romantic relationships yet.
Well, I wanted to demonstrate that attachment. It can be problematic and it can affect all manner of relationships. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go on Ali.
I was going to say, like in the context of my childhood and so having an autistic mother, which I wish, I think who struggled to attach to us for a variety of reasons.
And she didn't know she was autistic.
Didn't know she was autistic. And then having a father. So that, I suppose, was what made me anxious. And then having a father who was quite volatile, who had his own mental health struggles, again, he also didn't know, so it was best to avoid lest you trigger something. And what, like, as an adult, outside of a romantic context, it has created, a hyper independence from a really young age.
So it, like, I, I, Completely related to, yeah, like, you know, wanting other ways of seeking approval or getting attention and things like that. But it also very much came back to, I cannot rely on anyone but myself. And I, that is something I still really struggle to reach out and ask for help of the people I care about.
Like, if it, like, you know, it's, I have no issue, you know, say calling a doctor and saying like, I'm, you know, Um, this is the problem why I'm not coping with it, but I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to manage it. I'm yeah. And it's the same. And that is with a lot of things, but that's, it's so rooted in like, yeah, that it doesn't just affect romantic relationships.
To be approved of by others, which I must have in order to, for them to want to be around me. So I ended up with this quite one dimensional idea of what it took to Have the approval of others that I have to be, I have to be perfect. I have to be very consistent. I can't, I can't show weakness. Other people can't handle my true feelings that therefore I have to manage them myself. And well, it's true.
Sometimes you do have to manage your own feelings and that's actually your responsibility, but, but if your whole approach becomes, let's hide all the undesirable things about myself, um, because. They are a threat to attachment.
Yeah, you become avoidant and you're like, and it's almost like, I'm going to spare this person my chaos. I'm going to spare this person my volatility or whatever it is. I've got to work it out myself. So yeah, so you either become avoidant. And, and that's how it, yeah, it can manifest in some ways. It's, it's very, yeah. Well,
that's how the disorder, the disordered style comes in or the disorganized attachment because in both of our cases, because there were, there were reasons to use clinging approval seeking type strategies. And there were also reasons to use these avoidant type strategies.
And because of course in the, because we're experiencing it on both ends of it, the, the The strong feelings of the parent that we can't contain or deal with, and Also, I'm going to guess in your case as well, confided in a little too much, maybe by adults as well.
Yep.
Because of the, you know, what appeared to be the maturity of that, you know, the ASD team. Yes. And you know, knowing They're still doing that. Yeah, still doing that. Being privy to things we really shouldn't be doing. Oh yeah, like,
yeah, like, like last weekend, my sister and I, like, having to put really clear boundaries in with my parents, it's like, Nope, this is, No, we're not doing this. We're still, yeah. Yeah, that's right. And then on the other side, Oh, my strong feelings here can't be contained by these people. These people do not welcome these strong feelings.
So Sam, I don't want to let you off the hook of romantic relationships.
I'm saving the juicy bit for last. It's a tabloid.
Come on, mate. Like, we want to be salacious. We want to get into, it's hot and steamy, it's the early noughties. Yeah. You're strolling down Brunswick Street. How is your, uh, attachment stuff playing out?
Yeah, actually. Oh man, I really want to talk about the early noughties, but can I start in like, say, 95, 96?
Sure. I just want to hear about how attachment played out in romantic relationships across your life.
Dude, that's the only thing that matters to Joe, and this is the problem.
Well, the parental friend stuff
is all very well, but I can't root my mum, you know? That's right. I mean, I could try, but it's not right.
There's some rooting going on, you know, otherwise they'll tune into another podcast.
Hey, look, let's get the rooting out. So, let's say my first proper, my first proper girlfriend, God bless her. I still think about her in the sense of like, Oh God, I was such Uh, I would have been a real nightmare, and I'm so sorry, and I hope you're alive.
That's where I'm at with, anyway, shout out if you're, oh my god, naming names! No, I'm not going to name second names, but, I genuinely hope you're okay, because, uh, I was,
you caused some damage,
right. So what you're saying is by the time you hit 16, you're fully primed to create attachment chaos,
to absolutely leave havoc in my way and, and not knowing why or meaning to at all and very much having the best of intentions and constant, like the parents that these people will like all had the same assessment, more or less that, he's a good guy.
Away you go. But what they didn't know, that, well yeah, I am, uh, but I have feelings that I don't understand and these get triggered when I feel close to people and they're about to happen right now with your daughter. So sorry. Yeah. But I didn't know. No one had explained attachment theory to me and this is how I really wanted to introduce this subject. Why the fuck did no one explain this to me before now? Yeah. Like, God damn
¶ Navigating Attachment Styles in Relationships
it.
Yeah. Like it really is. It's only come across my radar in the last five years in dating and that, yeah. But prior to that, it's like, Oh, that would have been really useful information. God damn it. Yeah.
It entered the zeitgeist, at least in Melbourne. Oh, very much so. I don't know where else, but like it entered the zeitgeist and then it explained a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah. But yeah, it has been around since the fifties and sixties.
Oh yeah, man. It's as old as the hills. But like, so that anyway, so the first girlfriend, like she, absolutely nothing wrong with it, but I started getting the avoids and I didn't know why. And I was, I was just like, okay, what's happening here?
I said this anxious sort of queasy feeling like, and it wasn't all the time, I was getting along really well, you know, there was no problem with the physical attraction or anything like that, but I wasn't going down a long list of, you know, things that are wrong with you at first, right? but what I didn't know until years later is. The second I felt like this person's feelings now depended to a degree on me and what I did, and that I had the capacity now.
The door was open that I could hurt this person. That feeling of having a responsibility for someone else's feelings, that brought out the avoids very strongly. I want to be somewhere else now and I don't want to continue seeing you. But I didn't know why and I didn't have any way of explaining it to myself or to her and so I just kind of kept trying to be in a relationship for a while until eventually I'm like, no, I can't do this. And she's just like, what have I done?
You know, like it was all gone so well. And I'm like, I don't know. I just don't know. Like I just all of a sudden I was just like, I can't, I can't, I can't. And it was experienced. So it's experienced differently sometimes, but there will tend to be anxiety.
¶ The Anxiety of Avoidant Attachment
So this is one of the misconceptions about the avoidant style. That they don't experience anxiety. It's all there in the name, anxious attachment, right? Well, some people have suggested renaming these things, but you know, too late now. But the avoidant type will often experience a lot of anxiety.
Well, the avoidant behavior is rooted in anxiety.
It's getting away from the source of anxiety. Yeah. Now the clinging style, which I kind of think of it more, you know, the anxious style, which can also lead to avoidant behavior, because that might be a better strategy than trying to get the person. Yeah. It's like, Oh, Oh, I must, they must, they must, they must, I now depend on them and what they do. And the avoidant is like. Oh God, they now depend on me and what I do. I can't handle this. This is making me anxious. And yeah,
so I've had a couple of those classic.
¶ Exploring Past Relationships and Attachment Dynamics
Like, just clinically, what you described, classic, like, the first relationship after the relationship with the mother of my children was like, must be like, you could study it as a textbook case of avoidant and an anxious, attached person trying to have a relationship.
And, uh, and in the end, this is so, sounds so teenage, but at the six month mark, I It got to a point where I wanted her, I wanted to be able to call her my girlfriend and she did not, this is two people in their late thirties, she did not want to be called a girlfriend, but was happy to continue the monogamous relationship we were already having. And it, it seems so important to me that I'd be able to say to people that I have a girlfriend I ended it.
So, I mean, that's where that particular dance, but yeah, the avoidance, but I remember I've kept it in my phone, an email she sent from the avoidant point of view, and it clearly, which surprised me because she was ice cold the entire time. It surprised me how much turmoil she'd been through trying to sort of give me what I needed. And in the end, she'd had to say "I'm not in love with you." That was about a month before the, you know, end of the relationship.
Yeah. And, yeah, like, that's, that was a great moment because I started to feel a feeling, pretended I was okay, got up and walked outside and then felt this incredible, like, like, stomach ripping out kind of feeling, right? Yeah. was interesting, like, that I could, certainly wasn't going to show her that, you know? Mm. Mm. so I mean, that was what, that was, and that's before that I'd had a secure long term relationship and two children, right?
So I know that I'm personally, I don't know about you two, but I'm capable of secure attachment. Maybe Sam, you've found it in your marriage at times, at times, and maybe it sounds like you found it in the relationship with the father, with your father of your children.
¶ The Journey Towards Secure Attachment
I mean, I guess to speed things up a bit, Sam, can you give me like a, Just a pattern from through to your wife, that period of being single, you know, being single or having shorter relationships. What was the pattern that when you look back, you see, just attachment wise, what do you see like in concrete terms that someone who knows nothing about attachment could understand?
Well, it's pretty clear looking back over it that You know, it's perhaps less interesting and salacious than it should be, but basically not having any difficulty meeting and forming initial attachment with friends and intimate partners and meeting appropriate people.
Um, to have friends and intimate relationships with, by and large, choosing the right kind of people, not just for me, but in general, like just by objective standards, people themselves fairly capable of secure attachment, not, not too problematic in, you know, any kind of obvious way. even with all the exasperating shit I put them through, most of them were still actually fairly easy to be around. and just of hitting within three to six to 12 months.
A major, anxiety and panic and revulsion and a desire to be somewhere else. these are people who were like, you know, attractive intellectually.
stylish, they had pursuits and in desire for an independent existence, they weren't smothering me, they weren't like, well, not a great deal anyway, you know, and they weren't, placing a sort of unmeetable expectations on me, for emotional nurturance, they weren't like doing massive amounts of trauma dumping or telling me endless stories about friend problems or, or quite capable of accepting just the, okay, okay, I think I've heard enough about.
All that, you know, whatever, could kind of deal with me pretty well. But sooner or later, I'd be like, yuck. Yeah. But all right. So if you go back, I've got to go
before you go back to say, yeah, like existentialism, if you're looking at it through that lens instead of attachment, or
actually that's a very good lens. It's related
to think of like the strokes, you know, is this it? Yeah, yeah, six month, the six month mark to me is, is this it?
Well, but it's the wrong question.
I've done that, and we've done that, and we went away, and you met my friends, and here we are, and it's Sunday morning, and is this it? See,
none of those things are the test.
Like, is this it forever? None of those things are the test. And then that's where, I don't know if you'd call that avoidant, but I'm heading for the door, man. Oh, 100%. And so I always put it through that lens of whether it's like a Jack Kerouac or a, or a, all those songs about, you know, There's nothing prettier than looking back on the town you left behind. I'm going to be out riding the rails.
Admittedly, I was just, you know, catching a tram in Fitzroy or something, but like when you're in your twenties, you just, you move on and you dump people. You don't even really care that you've hurt them that much. And you've just, it's how you, sorry, I'm speaking for myself. I tell myself a romantic story and I move on and I'm riding the rail and I'm onto the next little town and whatever, right?
You've men in, just menaces.
And I'm wearing one of those, you know, like a Humphrey Bogart hat. Yeah, yeah.
Horrific.
That's what it's like.
Hey look, can I
just, and I'm not thinking attachment theory, I'm thinking romanticism, essentially.
All of that stuff made sense to me, except for the part about not caring about the hurt, because the thing that gave me the most difficulty was the idea that this person was now Securely attached to me. That was, that was the issue, like, oh, I'm securely attached to them. Yeah, that's not too bad. Cause look, this person, as I've described people so far, partners who were
appropriate,
trustworthy, highly trustworthy people. Goddammit. Like you could give them your children and your keys and your bank account and you'd have nothing to regret. But I'm telling you, I have chosen outstanding partners and then completely driven them insane. Like over like 12 to 24 months, sometimes within six months, but like,
you don't get a free pass on your behaviors just because you have. Disorganized attachment.
No, no, no, no, no. You still have a responsibility.
Because we all have that, that chain, causal chain of thoughts, emotions, actions. And we all have to be responsible for our actions. Absolutely.
We have to be responsible for what we can be responsible for.
I mean, it's only to reflect and like, is there something I can overlay over this?
Of course.
But we always do. As much as we, who knows if we have free will, but we certainly are the illusion of, I can make this decision, I can, I can break up with this person or I can stay with this person and work on it. You know, like we certainly seem to have that agency. And when we
Well, I would expect Experience a conscious sense of agency, but then I didn't know what to do with it. I would find myself unable to exercise it.
It's like waiting, you're anxious and you're waiting for the text and you're like, and the, yeah, I'm like, I'm going to, like you, I want to send the text. I want to send the second, the third, the fourth text. And it's actually turning around and going. I'm not going to send the text and follow up. I'm going to sit with those feelings and process them and like, why am I feeling anxious about not hearing back from that person? So that's the change in behavior.
So we are perfectly capable of doing that. But then like, yeah, I think, I mean, we've all done that. We've all been the crazy ex to a certain extent to somebody else.
Absolutely. Like, yeah, everybody. Yeah. We've all done something.
I mean, like, I do not believe anyone who. Has not done something that wasn't a little bit crazy.
Everything my exes have ever done was all proportional and reasonable if you understood what had passed between us. Yeah. I literally can't.
Whether it was in response to their behavior or yeah. Something that came from yourself. It's just, we've all done that, but hopefully yeah. With the awareness of knowing the attachment styles, well yeah, I'm anxious. Okay, I'm going to sit with this anxiety and I'm not going to project my anxiousness onto this other person. I'm going to work on that myself and find something else to do and feel good about myself. And like you said, it comes back to that self care of, yeah, what do I need?
What am I needing in this moment that I'm not getting from that person that I can give to myself?
And it's not about 10 hours of streamers. It's about. The goal we should be striving for, like, you might have different ways of measuring this, but like when we've experienced this feeling of insecurity, either way, whether it's I'm feeling smothered or this person won't reassure me, like whatever it is, this person won't dole out my dopamine biscuits or this person's asking too much of me, whether that's true in reality or not. Right. But that's getting triggered. I can't handle your feelings.
You can't handle my feelings, whatever that, that's kind of what it boils down to. And then you go, okay, I need, I need. What I'm aiming for here is to be able to accept that these feelings are happening for like habituated reasons. These were adaptive strategies other times it's not working for me now. I don't want to keep doing this, but my primary responsibility right now is not to try and dismiss this feeling, but I got to, I try and understand what's happening.
And then the goal I'm shooting for is I can sit alone with my thoughts that if I can do that for at least some of every day, I stand a reasonable chance of being able to actually partner with somebody, like, we have that responsibility to ourselves and to the other before we can start placing expectations on others. Am I able to sort of tell more of an anxious type story because I've done a whole lot of avoidant.
one of these wonderful people decided to put a healthy boundary in place one day with me, like about, say, the six week mark. No, not even, like, three weeks in. And I was already head over heels with this person, and rightly so. we were very well bonded. And then I'd done inconsiderate, I can't remember what it was, Enough to be pretty annoying and for that person to call me out on it, fair enough.
And read me the riot act, but proportionately, it was like, this made me feel this way, use the right kind of language. And I know you didn't do this on purpose. You sometimes are unaware of what's happening for other people, you're not, know, always tuned into that and. You couldn't see how much this was not working for me. Anyway, I'm going for a run now." And then she went for a run. Five minutes later, I'm completely spiraling and I'm like, well, that's it then. That's it then. It's over.
It's over. And it's like, just as strong a feeling as with the first girlfriend, like, Oh, she likes me. I gotta go. You know, it's the, it was the exact same sick, anxious feeling. Oh, I have. I've deeply wronged this person. How could they ever want to be with me now?" Like, okay, too far, you know? So it's just, it's just too far in all cases.
I mean, I think my anxious attachment I can't look, I don't wanna make it a totalizing theory of why I act in the world, but I will say my anxious and attachment has pushed me towards many a preemptive strike. In the last eight years,
that's a great way to do it,
you know, like it's like, "Hmm, I'm getting out of here, you know, well, absolutely. Before this person hurts me in a way that I won't be able to recover from."
you self sabotage,
so this is over.
Well, start with the statement. "I won't be able to recover from" and replace it with, "I will be able to recover from", and then you won't have that first part of the problem. Which is, "I have to now avoid something."
Yeah, I mean, but you're describing a dating landscape where you're picking appropriate people. I'm just talking about the ones that have fucked me up in the last eight years where I picked the wrong person and ignored every single sign that they were the wrong person.
But you're controlling the outcome by sabotaging it and, or, yeah, like, and
Well, no matter what happens at six months, it's over.
But you're controlling the outcome. That's your way of taking back control in a situation where you feel anxious and you don't feel in control. So it's like, okay, well, I don't like this feeling, so I'm going to pull the plug now. So at least you have some sort of ownership over it and it's managed your expectations of what is going to happen. Cause you're like, oh, well we broke up because I decided to break up with them. Yeah.
That's right. And retaining that feeling of control. Yeah. See, what I eventually realized was this desire to be in control and have the right answer was actually fucking me up.
Mm-Hmm.
And I needed to let go of it. And that the, so
how anxious or avoidant did you feel when you decided to get married? Oh. Or were you in a secure zone where you're like, this is heaven?
Well, it's hard to explain. When, when I made a proposal of marriage, I felt secure and like you'd have to, wouldn't you?
Yes. Well, you wouldn't do it now.
Now, of course, I was also very well aware of my own personal history I didn't have the right language for it, but I had figured out a couple of things which was like, okay, I get really freaked out when I feel like someone else is counting on me. Also, I feel like I want to be able to count on someone. Hmm, I need to be able to square this circle somehow.
So I think I sort of had just enough self awareness to I want a good partner and I keep seeking it out and I also need to be a good partner and I had often quoted an article to various girlfriends. This article by Keli Goff called Why You're Not Married and it's aimed at Women and it's a very kind of mid 00s sort of think piece. but there's a great line in there, which is especially relevant at the time, but maybe even more so now.
Many men do not want to get married, not because they're They don't understand what it means, but precisely because they understand what it means, they know that a high commitment and responsibility and investment is expected from them. And that is the purpose of it, that you enter marriage. In order, you are deliberately choosing to make a large and sustained investment in this other person and the relationship between you.
And it was that it's a, it's a responsibility and that you're entering it in front of witnesses. The gravity of that was horrifying to me. But I also recognized. If I want a good partner, I have to be prepared to do the work to be a good partner. And I could not think of any reason why this person was not deserving of my commitment. And if I was being honest with myself, I'm like, well, no, this person actually is more deserving of a commitment than I am, let's face it.
And, uh, it's not like I'll never do better. It's like, I don't want to do better. Like, if I can't be happy with this person, I can't be happy with anyone.
Oh, that's so sweet.
Yeah.
Oh, thank you, Joe.
I'm going to use that.
Oh God, yeah.
With like five different women.
Yeah. Well, as Albert Camus said in the 20 letters towards the end of his life to different women, you were always the one.
Oh God. Oh my God. You're all menaces really, like,
it's just I'm joking! I'm joking.
It was a good riff, Joe, but you have triggered Ali's, uh, Ali's feeling that men are all selfish cads at the end of the day.
Well, Sam's been in the fucking, you know, trenches of marriage for how long? Yeah, 13, 14 years. And what percentage, uh, secure, what percentage avoidant, what percentage anxious in that 13 years?
Oh, shit, yeah, it's about. It's probably about third, equal thirds, honestly. Like, yeah, like there's been times when I've very much been pursuing, uh, my wife's approval.
Right, so the dance doesn't stop just because you go down to the chapel or whatever.
No, that's the day, that's the day you really commit to doing the dance. Yeah. And getting better at it.
What about you, ali? In your marriage, did you have a dance? Or was it just, ah, we're secure, we're baking fucking sourdough and whatever?
Um, no, I mean, there were definitely times, yeah, where I would have felt the anxiousness and probably the avoidant more so in that I think a common or feedback I would say from all my relationships is that I haven't, yeah, opened up or lent on them or asked for help in any way.
So that would have been, so yeah, that hyper independence was very much still, uh, Thread throughout all of my relationships, so it's still there, but I think that's something I've been so much more conscious of the last five years and dating and
I think it can make men insecure if you're not needy.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. It's like, I need nothing from them. I don't ask anything from them. And it's like
Let's, let's, let's de gender this for a minute. I think it can be a problem for any partner. And any friend or parent for that matter, if the person is not turning to you for anything.
Yeah, it's like, well, what am I here? Like, yeah, I want to help you.
sufficiency is completely, it's like Fort Knox, you know, you're not dropping that and you've been given no reason, especially because things haven't worked out in previous relationships. There's nothing telling you at 40 years old to stop. It's not about becoming like, yeah, dependent or giving that up, but it's, it's learning to be comfortable with asking for a bit of help or opening up and leaning on my partner and because it doesn't feel natural, but it is.
Start off small. It's not. It is. It's small. Ask for a cup of tea. Yeah. No, I'm serious. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. The cup of tea guy. Yeah.
¶ The Importance of Self-Awareness and Vulnerability
Yeah. We've all been there, but can I just say we haven't dispensed any advice so far, but this is a really useful point to like insert some advice.
Well, I would say heading towards the conclusion of this. I haven't been able to get you to say much about your marriage, but let's just say Oh, no, no. I actually want to say more. Which is fine. Even in a public sphere, you have some right to privacy. Yeah. But, I think 30 30 30 split of, you know, between your attachment styles within your marriage is interesting.
Yeah. And I guess it makes me reassess, well, if I can find someone who's got, who tends towards a secure attachment and start to soak up some of their secure attachment, juices, does that mean that one day I'll be completely securely attached? Yeah. And yes, but not find that boring. Right. What you're saying is, Oh no, no, no, no.
The dance will continue. No. When I say the dance continues, what I mean, one of the things I picked up from, like a podcast about Jung, was this, the Jungian, so one of the sort of concepts of marriage, which was, and, but we, I think you can work this for a friendship as well. If it's sustained and committed that two people hold each other accountable.
And they hold a mirror up to one another and they, help the other person, both through love, nurture and accountability and arguments, all of those things, uh, to gradually shed their illusions and to stop clinging to kind of outdated fantasies and, and nightmares that aren't serving them. And to let go of mother father fantasies and To just slowly, slowly become two adults who can be there for each other.
I've had that figure in my life since, since, I mean, I had my partner and we had kids and, you know, that's the person you confide in. And we did that for eight or nine years. But since then I've had a figure in my life who it's a text conversation.
So I would call it a written correspondence of that person, uh, like holding up the mirror, sometimes loving, sometimes It's attacking, holding up the mirror, holding you to account, uh, and it's generally been a female friend who I'm not sleeping with. At the moment it's Ali, but I'm confident if Ali, if I piss Ali off enough or she couples up with someone and disappears or whatever, one of her many elements finally kills her I think she'd be capable of being your friend.
Friend and someone else's partner at the same time. I was gonna say, I feel like I've never been the type to actually really neglect my friendships. Yeah, but that's okay. No, no. But what I'm saying is Yeah. Yeah. For whatever reason, there's been that person in my life.
You've good at, you've been good at finding that.
Yeah. And I, and hasn't. Sometimes it's been someone I'm sleeping with, sometimes it's turned into someone I'm sleeping with. It's definitely not going to happen without me.
No, it can't be your partner's job alone. I think this is an important thing.
Well, yeah, but I, but I do feel dependent on that person, but that's because I need to test reality. Sure. Day, most days, because I'm completely isolated.
You need to ping the matrix, I know.
My grip in reality is shaky, you know? Oh no, I think it's a firm grip, but it gets tested. It's interesting how easy it is for me to connect in with it though, like, in the last week or two I've started doing something I haven't ever done, which is walk.
I've just been walking around my neighborhood, walking along my river, and that connects me to reality, because just seeing other people walking, riding and jogging is enough of reality, but sitting in my bed at home can be like a The dark days of COVID and I don't know what's going on anymore. And all I've got, the only portal I have to the world is my phone, which is a scary place to go.
So many relationships failed during COVID, including friendships and housemates and so on. But yeah, marital and, you know, intimate relationships failed in epic numbers. And people would make jokes like this was around each other all the time. Well, yeah, that is part of it. Absolutely. But the real issue was people, So, in a lot of cases, familiarity and contempt, absolutely true.
But what was often really going wrong was people were not getting those other forms of support and outlet that enabled the relationship to breathe. To be
have, yeah, to have that healthy balance, you're placing all of that, all of those expectations and wants and needs on one person.
Which is anxious type stuff.
Yeah. And there's no way that a partner is, you know, Able to fulfill all your needs. Like if they meet like 60 percent of your things, you're doing really good. Like that's why it's so important to foster and nurture those other relationships and those other attachments with your friends and through your work or whatever it is, you know, family and kids and all that sort of stuff, because you've got to be able to draw from many different cups.
If you're just continually drawing from one person, yeah, exactly. And that, when we were in that forced isolation of, yeah, with just one person, there's only so much, yeah, you can. Draw on absolutely.
So yeah, it's been a good episode. I think we should wrap it up But I want to in terms of what happens next as three people who roughly understand attachment styles Sam in the immediate future. It's probably about trying to go towards secure attachment within your marriage. Yes And well with and, and you.
Well, no, with myself first, this is the whole thing. Say it with me. I'm a person capable of initiating, creating, maintaining, sustaining, secure attachment. Mm. I am capable. I can do the things that create this. Mm. And I can. Find in others that ability to also, to reciprocate. So that applies to friendships as well. Yes. Yeah. And, and, you know, employers and, you know, the people, you're caught, you're enforced relationships at work. Colleagues you have to work on a project with.
There are so many manifestations of this. and I've realized the equal importance of all those things. And obviously, The whole point of marriage is you are putting that person first a lot of the time and You need to be willing to do that to make it work But it can't be all the time and they're not gonna be able to put you first all the time But I found myself equally going. Come on, show me some approval. Look, I've done all these great things."
Or other times, oh boy, "you've got a lot of feelings there. What do you want me to do with all of those", right? And, you know, been on the receiving end of those responses myself as well. And also other times where this is the feeling of security is not always It's not always epic and entrancing. It can just be like, it's very simple and reassuring and ordinary and mundane and being comfortable with that.
So like, if you're looking for drama and like powerful feelings all the time in your intimate relationships, well, you'll find it.
You'll find it on the dating app. And you'll find it, yeah, that's right. And if you want, you know, that, well, so called fiery chemistry, but, but,
but I'm here to tell you there's plenty of fiery chemistry and there's also some very normal mundane sort of moments, which I absolutely treasure and, I remember when I first encountered this in an intimate partner of someone looking at me with without judgment and feeling that and then an understanding and accepting and being able to communicate without malice and without judgment what I was doing that was upsetting them without making me feel like a bad person. Like what?
It's a really, it's a hard one to to put boundaries in, which I really sucked at doing. I didn't want to put them there and I didn't want them being put there for me. I hated all of that. And just being able to communicate needs and experiences using simple statements like I feel that, or I would love it if, not you never, you always, like it's just really simple stuff. The language we use, taking responsibility for that. And we can't assume the other person is doing things to make you feel bad.
stop making assumptions. Assume, never assume. It makes an ass out of you and me. A person has done a thing. It's made you feel guilty. Don't go "you did that to make me feel guilty" I think that's a huge
¶ Language of couples counselling
mistake.
to me, that's like you're in the death spiral. Like I did the couples counselling and they said, and we started to practice the, when you do this, It makes me feel like this. And we're having these conversations in the kitchen. Like when you do this, it makes me feel like this, you know, how we learn in couples camp and she'll be like, fuck you. And it's like, or, or you can use that same phrase when you are a fucking asshole. It makes me feel like, you know, that's funny though.
So to me, sorry, in my personal experience, once we got into using the therapy language in the couple, we were fucked. Oh, okay. No, no. When we finally broke up. Sweet relief, I've never had to talk in an artificial way since, so the strategy makes sense but maybe
Can I just say, speaking that way now feels more natural to me, and now when I say, it's like, it's like when
Oh, felt very imposed on me. It doesn't, it's,
it's uncomfortable but you, you, you, the more, it's like with anything, the more you practice it, the more you feel comfortable with it, yeah. It's all that, that's the parallel
I'd say to do all that stuff, but it seems very bolted on.
Put it this way, if I, if I find myself saying now to anyone, my child, my partner, you know, Someone I work with anyone if I find myself saying you always you never I hate myself like I hear those words and go yuck That's so unfair. Yeah, and it doesn't that reflects poorly on me like apart from being unfair on the other person and I don't want to sound unhinged.
I've become a bit cynical I used to think everyone should do a lot of couples counseling before they break up and now I'm more like just break up Oh, no, no save the time and money I think either approach would be okay. My approach is fine Worst case, you find yourself at the cinema on your own, it's not so bad. Anyway, Ali, uh No, well, that's, well, that's the whole point.
You're at the cinema alone and it's not so bad. In fact, yeah. It was all, you should be loving life. Yeah.
It was all, because I'll say, you always could've walked away because,
'cause for all the anxious attachment, because for all the anxious attachment stuff I've done and for all the avoidant I've done, don't lie like. Oh, I'm suddenly alone, happy days.
Yeah. Oh, there's a piece to that. There's a piece to not triggering your, any of those responses and emotions. There is a piece to that. That's very worth, worth considering and protecting. And before you decide to bring someone in who could potentially disturb that piece.
So, Ali, you're out there, you've got your shingle out on the market. would, were you into, are you trying to go towards secure attachment? Are you, or are you looking for the most exciting Melbourne fuckboy who's gonna like, give you like really intermittent attention, but lavish it on you and then withdraw it and then
So I'm gonna, like I would tell my psychologist, I'm absolutely looking for a secure attachment. You know, relationship, which I, I, I really am, but I would also say I'm human and do get sucked into occasionally, like
those anxious, avoidant Melbourne fuckboys, those little hats they wear. Yeah.
And if they're like, you know, six foot four, it's just, it's all over. Yeah.
I try to be that one of those guys, you know, height makes up for so many other deficiencies.
Are they cute or are they just tall?
Anyway, you didn't answer the question.
No, no, I, I, I'm ultimately, genuinely, genuinely looking for a secure, healthy relationship. If I'm going to, this is the thing that there is a distinct difference. If I, because I am very protective of my peace and I am quite happy living in my mad cat lady era and anyone I'm choosing to bring in, In a more sustainable, long term way, it's going to have to be a stable and secure attachment.
In saying that, am I happy to ruffle my piece for a couple of weeks for a fuckboy because he's, you know, he's quite cute and all that sort of stuff and I'm having a lot of fun. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I'm not going to be a hypocrite.
I must admit, I found it very refreshing in my early twenties to encounter, uh, girls who were like that, who were just, yeah, not at all, interested in secure attachment. and mainly interested in fun, and discovering, wow, gee, this feels quite different, and it's not triggering my anxious attachment, it's not triggering my avoidant attachment, it's triggering my anxious attachment, and now I'm pursuing them, and isn't this interesting, the boot's on the other foot.
So it can be fun just to, like, remind ourselves of, Especially those of us lucky enough to have disorganized attachment, we can experience all kinds of fun feelings.
And that's the thing, like, yeah, at the end of the day, it's, it's whoever I'm choosing to bring in, like I said, it's, I don't want them disturbing my peace. It's one thing to have, you know, yeah, like I said, a couple of days where you've been fucked around or whatever versus, you know, a long term healthy relationship that's going to be secure. There's that's yeah.
And Ali, I do input. I put all my information into you and do call you my autistic AI co pilot, so you know everything about
Just doing all the psychological and emotional labor for Joe, just
So you know everything about my dating, do you think I'm capable of going towards a secure attachment? Have you seen any signs of, like, green shoots of like, oh, maybe he'll actually get off the fucking chaos train?
Do you try this Joe? So Ali, I'm going to let you answer that question, but can I just butt in first and say, like, for example, when you send that text message and don't get the response, right? So this is one you're going to have to really work on and just basically just desensitize yourself to it completely. But it's all about the perspective shift, imagine you're in the theater by yourself watching a movie I've been in both places. Woe is me. My life is at a real low point here and or.
I'm in there by myself. I'm having a glorious time. I'm just loving this. I'm not worried about what anyone else thinks about this. I'm all about it. oh, I've texted someone, they haven't texted me back. Well, that's one less text conversation I have to manage right now. Like it's just, it's just pure perspective.
I know what to do if I text someone and they don't text me back. I just delete their number. Oh, well. So, I mean, there's a difference between being alone and lonely and it's being comfortable with being alone and realizing you're not in fact lonely in that you have other relationships that are just as fulfilling and can give you those other things that you need and that you're not feeling alone.
You're trying to fill a void and that's, so to answer your question, I do think you certainly have the capacity to rationalize it and understand your behaviors, I think more so than a lot of other people.
It's not that you don't, but I do think like a lot of us, you just, those other feelings You know, with the, the more volatile, insecure, you know, that is so intoxicating to you, I think you do struggle to, to, yeah, to, to, to not Yeah, I mean, if someone is clean and sober from substances, the closest I get to a hit It is some kind of erratic woman.
And so can I just like just really focus your mind on the idea that you can have secure attachment and in fact you have experienced it many times.
I can have it, but how do I not find it crushingly boring?
So the real objective is. Figuring out why when it does present itself, you find reasons to discount it. So a classic avoidance strategy. Even though you experience a lot of the anxious stuff, why are you checking me back? You also do classic, you also do classic avoidance stuff, which is I do. Yeah. Oh, oh, she's this, she's that.
But what about checking out after six months every single time? That's pretty avoidant.
So, so what's going on there is. It, see, I know these two things seem so different to you and like, well, like just, they cannot be resolved as one thing, but it's so clear to me just sitting at a distance and I'm going like, it's the same basic thing in both cases where you're going like, Oh, it depends on this person and to, and to text me back and then I'll feel okay. And then in the other circumstance. Boo, boring, yuck, I'm out of here. It's the same thing. They aren't exciting me.
It's not working for me. They're not giving me what I need. So it's, it's just the exact same thing. So in both cases, you're placing the locus outside of the self and that's the first mistake. One of the things, the analogies I wanted to draw here between experiencing secure as Hot and sexy and experiencing, the avoidant and the anxious stuff as not that, you know, as like, Oh, this isn't fun.
It's actually, I actually don't need this in my life and I don't want this in my life and I'm moving away from it and I'm taking responsibility for it, et cetera.
That's where I should be right sitting here right now. Well, I think you are.
I think you're reaching for it. The analogy I wanted to make was with when I started to work out my body stuff, and it, so for example, hating my own body for many years. And, um, being, you know, being very negative towards it and punishing it and mistreating it in many ways and, and then kind of coming around to a more positive thing. And then lately encountering body neutrality and going, yeah, actually I like that. That's more ASD. I'm going to be, I'm going with body neutrality from now on.
And also figuring out how I felt about other people's bodies. And at different times, uh, classic, I'll admit to having like, Not the right standards, expecting the wrong things or unrealistic things in other people's bodies. right the way through to, I've really, I've broken through I finally had the revelation, of just seeing bodies, of just seeing bodies.
For what they are and it's just kind of accepting the basic humanity of myself and of other people It's so liberating and then you find the sexy in yes the body it because of the pur it's so hard to explain
That's the Ram Dass. Yeah, like treat people like you would trees like we don't go out the forest and look at a tree This tree is misshapen. Yeah. Yeah, it's got like It's got like, you know, twisted bowels or whatever. And we say, what the fuck's wrong with that tree? You just go, Oh, look at the way that's grown. But there is something, people like that, right?
There is something deeply beautiful about that calm, stable, secure attachment. That when you have experienced it, it is something to strive for. It is like, like I said, the first response might be that it's boring, but actually that boring is, is really lovely. Like that, that sort of, because you, yeah, there's a level of intimacy
Is it kind of like a chamomile tea compared to a double espresso or something? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, you, you take pleasure in what it is. That's a big adjustment if you're a double espresso guy. Yeah. Okay. But it can be just as exciting. Like it's. Because if you're sitting there drinking the chamomile tea and thinking, this isn't a double espresso, then you're fucking it up. Like you're doing it all wrong. You're just like, Oh my God, this tea is amazing.
Stop thinking about what it isn't. Tune into what is happening right now. It sounds like you don't expect me to go towards the chamomile tea just yet. No, but it's the wrong metaphor. It's, it's like, it's a delicious meal. It's the meal you're having. Nutritious and balanced. It's what's happening right now. So, join the church of what's happening right now. So, like, forget about the future plans, the weekend away, or that nasty thing they said, or, you know, the shit from China.
Be here now, and, like, this person is a human being, and they're, it, how amazing is it to be right here next to this other human being, and, like, our, like, atoms are, like, you know, our force fields are, like, mingled, and It's cosmic. Like it's like, it's the creating sacredness and like, and not going, you are going to meet needs and I'm going to have needs
¶ Concluding Thoughts on Attachment and Personal Growth
met. So it's not that such a tragic way of contentment that it's a deep contentment that you feel. It's like I said, it's a, and it, it. Play so nicely in with your peace. And it's a, it's a lovely, yeah, yeah. It's a lovely feeling. No trip. It's a trip. It's the real adventure begins when, 'cause you are mistaking like all the drama for the actual meat and potatoes. Yeah. But the actual drama, the actual adventure is the person itself and what's happening between the two.
It's, it's not, it's not big city. Transactional, intense sex, an act of communion, and going towards the oneness out of the illusion of the separate self. And that's the real issue, it's like I can do that on my own, see Yeah, haha, you're very good at this. I think that Ali thinks that I she has a lot of evidence because I say I'm sitting here on my own and I'm spiraling and I'm bored and I don't know what to do.
Yeah. But what she doesn't say is when I spend Half an hour with my man, Henry Schuchman, seeing through the illusion of the separate self, sitting on that same bed, going through a step by step process where finally I fully let go of this self, this Joe illusion. That's my oneness, but the oneness that people experience is oneness with one other person, gets you a lot closer to the oneness that is reality, loving awareness, yeah. Yes. Then complete separation. Well, exactly.
Loving awareness of what? And being, experiencing the loving awareness of the other, which really used to freak me out. And also it's like, I'm 44. Can I go towards something that's just a bit quieter? Well, yeah, but also it can be so, but it also tunes you into a different world. You know, like quantum foam, right? You know, the bubbles in the gravity.
It's like that when, when you really zoomed in the level, it's like when I'd be stoned and I'd be practically hallucinating, like the level of detail in reality was just like overwhelming. And so when you're really tuned in to like other human beings, you see one of the signs of attachment disorder is you are really, really getting too much data from like the other, what's happening with the other person now. But this also can be intoxicating and fun. Mm-Hmm.
but so in, in that more normal se or that healthy, secure situation where you've, you've got the communion going on and there's all this texture and subtlety in it, and it's like, it's still delicious. Like that's, I think that's a great place to end it. Yeah. Thank you. I hope it's been illuminating for the audience. Yes. I've learned things. Yeah. I'll give a shout out to Dr. Morgan's podcast, Let's Get Vulnerable, which is about attachment.
I was going to mention this earlier, Ali, Joe telling us that you're Fort Knox and you've got your security, through, complete and utter independence. So Dr. Morgan has, you know, says it over and over. So the answer here is let's get vulnerable. So, but we have to get vulnerable in a way that's safe and appropriate. And so it's like baby steps and just going, okay, I'm just going to create a very slight vulnerability here and see what happens with that.
And you know, and eventually we can go the full Monty and actually stand there and be seen for who we are. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'll see you next week, guys. See you next week. See ya.