Relationships and attachment

You already know how it goes. The same kind of argument, the same feeling of not being enough, the same distance that creeps in after a while. In close relationships it shows most clearly, because there is nowhere to put yourself out of the way. Perhaps it is the need to hear that you are loved, perhaps the fear of being left, perhaps that a no never quite passes your lips, or that you pull away just as things are becoming close.

Most people have never been helped to understand why. You try to change what you do, and for a time it goes well. Then the pattern is back. There is nothing wrong with your will. The pattern simply sits in something you learned long before you could put words to it.

How you are with other people as an adult took shape early, in how things went when you were small and needed somebody. Attachment, attachment style, secure or insecure attachment are different words for the same thing. If you learned that your needs were too much, that feelings were dangerous, or that you had to perform for anybody to look at you, then you carried those strategies with you into adult life, and there they show in how you handle closeness, conflict and vulnerability.

If your attachment was insecure, it was once wise. That was how you managed. But the same strategy can stand in the way of the very relationship you long for, and relationships that hurt often arise because you recognise the pattern and find your way back to it without noticing.

It can be understood, and it can be changed. All it requires is that you look at yourself instead of at the other person, and that is often the hardest thing we ask of anybody.

Over a week at Aspö kursgård, on an island in lake Båven, you work with your own patterns, needs and reactions. You do it in a group of about twenty people, with course leaders who are there all week. What makes the patterns visible is that you live closely together with other people for seven days, and then you do what you usually do, without having time to think about it first.

Step 1 requires no previous experience. The group leader Lena Birath writes: ”Det är i relation till andra som våra sår uppstår, men det är endast i relation till andra som såren kan läka.” In translation: “It is in relationship with others that our wounds happen, and it is only in relationship with others that they can heal.”

If you want to work in particular with your adult relationships, there is Step 3a. That week is about attachment, closeness, how the two of you talk to each other, boundaries, needs and what you do when you disagree.

Step 3a requires that you have taken Steps 1 and 2 first. The reason is simple. You need to have looked at your own childhood patterns before it is possible to work with how you are together with another adult.

Many couples take Step 1 at the same time. Each of you makes your own journey during the week, but you make it at the same time, and you come home with the same week in your bodies. Couples where both have been tend to say that they found another way of talking to each other afterwards.

Step 3a is also good to take with your partner, and it suits you just as well if you are on your own and longing for a relationship. If the two of you are wondering whether it is something for you, ring us and ask. We have talked with many couples before you.