Chapter 3

Attachment and Commitment

When Steve was a kid, his parents always seemed to be fighting. When Dad would come home, Mom seemed angry, agitated, and worried. “Where have you been?” she would yell. A couple of times, Dad had moved out—once for a week, another time for two months—but he always came back. Steve worried that Dad would never come back. And he worried, too, that if Mom left, then Steve would be alone, without anyone to take care of him. He would sit in his room, crying and thinking, “They’re going to leave me alone.” He would often fake being sick so that he could stay home from school to be with Mom. It was where he felt safe. He couldn’t stand the idea of sleep-away camp. When Steve was eleven, he learned that Dad had been having affairs. Mom would yell at Dad, saying he was a bum and that she couldn’t trust him.

Like Steve, your history of close relationships may still be affecting you. Experiences from childhood and throughout your life can set the stage for distrust, worries about betrayal, and the feeling that you can’t rely on people. If your parents threatened separation, if there was sickness in the family—or death—you may have developed the belief that people you rely on will leave. Your jealousy fears today may reflect emotional injuries from the past.

Your Attachment Style

We differ from one another in how secure we feel in our attachment to others. Our attachment style begins to emerge during infancy. Infants tend to show one of four different types of behavior when their mothers or fathers leave the room.

According to attachment theory, infants have an innately predisposed tendency to maintain closeness to the main parental figure—usually, but not always, the mother.16 An infant’s attachment is based on the adaptive value of the relationship with a caretaker—for protection, support, food, and the opportunity to socialize.

When an infant begins to recognize that a mother’s return is predictable—that he or she can rely on Mom coming back—the infant builds up a belief that she is reliable, trustworthy, responsive, and caring. This provides a sense of security for the infant. It allows him or her to explore the environment away from the mother and to self-soothe in her absence. Alternatively, an infant may develop expectations that a caretaker cannot be relied on, does not care, or is not responsive.17 Attachment theorists believe that these styles continue throughout life and affect how we relate in a variety of close relationships—especially intimate relationships.

If your expectation of a committed relationship is that the other person is not responsive, not reliable, threatens separation, and cannot be trusted, then your adult relationships may be at risk.

Your Early Attachments

Look back on your attachments and relationships in childhood. Consider these common scenarios and see whether any apply to you.

Your Experience in Close Relationships

It’s helpful to look at your style of experience in close relationships because it can offer more insight into how you feel when intimacy begins to develop. Using this measure, you can evaluate how you feel in close relationships. Are you comfortable with closeness? Do you find closeness to be unpleasant, almost as if it is smothering or unnatural at times? Are you dependent—and needy? Are you anxious in your close relationships? Go through this Adult Attachment Scale for Close Relationships18 and think about how you respond.

The following questions evaluate how you generally feel, so think about your past and present relationships with people who have been especially important to you, such as family members, romantic partners, and close friends. On a piece of paper, respond to each statement with a number between 1 and 5 that corresponds to this scale. Answering with a 1 indicates that the statement is not at all characteristic of you, a 5 indicates that it is very characteristic of you, and the other numbers indicate degrees in between.

Adult Attachment Scale for Close Relationships

1

2

3

4

5

Not at all characteristic of me

Very characteristic of me
  1. I find it relatively easy to get close to people.
  2. I find it difficult to allow myself to depend on others.
  3. I often worry that other people don’t really love me.
  4. I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like.
  5. I am comfortable depending on others.
  6. I don’t worry about people getting too close to me.
  7. I find that people are never there when you need them.
  8. I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others.
  9. I often worry that other people won’t want to stay with me.
  10. When I show my feelings for others, I’m afraid they will not feel the same about me.
  11. I often wonder whether other people really care about me.
  12. I am comfortable developing close relationships with others.
  13. I am uncomfortable when anyone gets too emotionally close to me.
  14. I know that people will be there when I need them.
  15. I want to get close to people, but I worry about being hurt.
  16. I find it difficult to trust others completely.
  17. People often want me to be emotionally closer than I feel comfortable being.
  18. I am not sure that I can always depend on people to be there when I need them.

Your responses to these statements fall into three categories: closeness, dependability, and anxiety. By scoring your answers to the statements relating to each one of these categories, you can get more clarity around your style. Items with an asterisk need to be reverse-scored, which means that even though you may have written down a 1 to rate your experience, you would score it with a 5. If you rated something a 2, score it as a 4. And vice versa. Neutral scores remain a 3. Add up the scores in each category.

The Closeness Scale: This measures the extent to which you are comfortable with closeness and intimacy. This relates to your responses to statements 1, 6, 8*, 12, 13*, and 17*. A high score here indicates that you are comfortable with closeness and intimacy, and a low score shows that you have difficulty getting close or allowing others to get close to you.
The Dependability Scale: This measures the extent to which you feel you can depend on others to be available when needed. Your responses to statements 2*, 5, 7*, 14, 16*, and 18* are part of this scale. A high score here indicates that you feel you can rely on and trust others, and a low score shows that it is difficult for you to depend on others.
The Anxiety Scale: This measures the extent to which you worry about being rejected or unloved, and is related to statements 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, and 15. A high score here indicates that you are anxious about people in close relationships, and a low score shows that you are not particularly anxious in these relationships.

When you consider what your responses to the statements in the scale indicate about your style, you may gain more clarity by asking yourself these questions.

Like attachment styles, your comfort level with closeness is related to how jealous you feel. If you don’t feel comfortable with closeness, you are less likely to be jealous. This is because you may not rely on the relationship as much for your happiness. But your avoidance of closeness may also make it difficult to develop an intimate relationship.19 Someone is less likely to be jealous if they maintain some distance or are not close to their partner. Those with a secure attachment style are the least jealous.20

People who are insecure about their attachments are more likely to be jealous. If you are prone to anxiety in close relationships, you may be reluctant to get close because you fear losing the relationship. And, when you are close, your insecurity increases because you have more to lose and you fear you cannot cope with the loss.

Everyone differs in the desire for closeness, with some people feeling anxious about any threat to the relationship, and others feeling threatened by too much closeness. For example, the person who is the object of jealousy may feel that he or she is being controlled, engulfed, or overwhelmed by the demands of the jealous partner. He or she may therefore seek distance by putting up barriers to closeness that may feed into the jealousy narrative.

In close relationships, we often assume that we both want the same thing—but one person may want closeness while the other might prefer a parallel partner who is around, but never quite close to them. How does your partner feel about closeness?

Your Relationship History

You can also look at jealousy from the perspective of your personal history with relationships from childhood until the present moment.

Brian learned that his father—who had portrayed himself as a pious churchgoer—had a series of relationships with women other than his mother. But Brian’s brother didn’t tell him until he was twenty years old, establishing for Brian the idea that people will hide the truth from him. This early sense of distrust contributed to his distrust of his wife.

If your childhood has included infidelity by one, or both, of your parents, you may trust people less. This may set a bias in your mind and you may think, “People can’t be trusted in intimate relationships.”

If your parents were not responsive to your needs, or not reliably meeting your needs, you may be prone to believing that you cannot trust your current partner to be there for you. If your parents invalidated your feelings and perceptions in ways that taught you that you cannot rely on what you think and feel, you may be prone to jealousy.

Penny didn’t trust her partner. When she was a kid, her mother would get angry with Penny if she needed something while her mother was on the phone with friends. Her mother never had time for her needs. As a result, Penny thought that her partner also couldn’t be trusted because she believed that he would favor other people over her.

Your ability to trust people may also be affected by a history of problematic relationships. If you have chosen partners who are narcissistic and dishonest, you are more likely to believe that people cannot be trusted in relationships.

Zoey was attracted to cool, unavailable men. She had a series of relationships with men who seemed exceptionally unable to make any commitments to her. At first, this sparked her interest because she conflated the fact that they were unattainable with the idea that they were desirable. And Zoey believed she’d be able to convince each of them that she was the right one for him. This inevitably led to heartbreak. She had several underlying beliefs: that she doesn’t deserve a real commitment, that men who are unattainable are more interesting, and that the kind of guys who want commitment are usually boring. Zoey’s attraction led to experiences that confirmed that men would betray her, she didn’t deserve a loyal partner, and she was doomed to one rejection or betrayal after another. Choosing someone who was honest, reliable, and—perhaps—a bit more boring would help her recognize that relationships don’t have to be doomed.

In many cases, we could never predict that betrayal would happen. But it happened, and the effects stay with us.

Helen described her relationship with her husband as conventional—with three kids and a house in the suburbs, they celebrated holidays and attended church together. She thought she had the typical middle-class marriage, one that she could count on. But then, much to Helen’s surprise, she learned that her husband had been carrying on an affair for a long time. After the divorce, she learned that he had had several affairs during their marriage. This set the stage for future distrust.

Your Commitment and Investment

Jealousy may depend on your level of commitment and your investment in a relationship. During the earliest stages of a relationship, there is little investment—so jealousy is minimal. If you only had one date with someone, you don’t have much to lose. But as you get more involved, you have more invested, and you have more to lose.

When Steve began dating Rachel, he was attracted by a lot of things: she was beautiful to him, she had a great sense of humor, and she had a free spirit. Even though she came from a traditional background, she had experimented sexually and had lived on her own. He was excited getting to know her during the first few weeks of the relationship because he found her free spirit and experimentation with sex to be turn-ons. She was spontaneous, open, emotionally intense, and really interested in him. He felt little jealousy—Steve was just excited to be with Rachel. But after a few months passed and he fell in love with her, he became obsessed with jealous thoughts and feelings. He dwelled on her past experimentation and wondered if he was simply another experiment. The more committed he became, the more distrustful he felt.

Why did Steve suddenly become jealous? Because he had more to lose, but at the same time, he and Rachel were not in a settled commitment. During this middle part of the relationship, there is investment—but there is also uncertainty. You just don’t know whether the relationship will last. It could end. This uncertainty makes jealousy more common during the middle phase before you make a commitment to being together.

As most relationships continue for years, jealousy decreases—unless, of course, someone has an affair. In a well-established, long-lasting relationship, there is less uncertainty so there is also less jealousy.21 In a study of 100 college women, those in steady dating relationships were less likely to report jealousy than women not in steady relationships.22

Steve’s jealousy had a lot to do with developing greater commitment and greater investment. Because increased commitment during this middle phase is associated with a greater likelihood of jealousy, it is important to look at how you view your partner’s commitment. Some people are more likely to accept a promise of fidelity: “I won’t see other people” or “I won’t sleep with other people.” This can be sufficient commitment for them, enough to trust. Others have their own criteria for how commitment is expressed. For example, if a partner spends a lot of time with friends or alone, some might view him or her as lacking commitment. Or they may think, “He only wants to see me a couple of times a week. That’s not much of a commitment.”

We each see the development of commitment differently: some of us are patient and can allow commitment to evolve as the relationship moves forward in time; some of us view commitment in all-or-nothing terms. Consider these common beliefs to gain insight into your style.

This variety of ideas we can hold conveys that the two people in a relationship may have different ideas about commitment—especially when the relationship is developing. One person might want more independence, or may not be completely sure how they feel about the relationship. The other person might feel totally committed and sure. These differences can trigger a struggle. Commitment is usually something that develops with time and, in the earlier stages of a relationship, often one person is more committed than the other. One person can set up tests to see whether the other person has the kind of commitment that he or she is looking for. Negotiating commitment differences can be important to avoid putting your partner to the test.

Lynn felt that Mark lacked commitment because he often wanted to spend time with his guy friends hanging out, drinking, and going to parties—usually without her. She was patient at first, but after a couple of months she began to think that he just wasn’t interested in the kind of committed relationship that she wanted. When she confronted him, he finally did acknowledge that he didn’t like being “tied down” and wanted freedom “to be himself.” So she broke off the relationship.

Lynn and Mark had different interests in closeness and commitment, and wanted different things. Mark wanted a compartmentalized relationship, whereas Lynn was hoping to find someone who might be a potential husband. Rather than trying to force him to want what she wanted, she decided to look elsewhere.

In the early stage of a relationship, there is little invested and little that can be lost, so jealousy is less likely to occur. As you develop more commitment and spend more time together, there is more to lose if the relationship ends—so there is a greater likelihood of jealousy. But simply spending time together may not equate a commitment and, as we have seen, we often differ from each other in how we define commitment. Some of us are comfortable with our partners having freedom to spend time with other people, while some of us may want more signs of commitment to the relationship. If we believe that our partners are truly committed to our relationship, we are less likely to experience jealousy.

The two of you need to come to terms with how you define this commitment. The question is: Do the two of you want the same thing? Trying to coerce someone into complying with your wishes can set the stage for greater conflict.

Emotional Intimacy

Your jealousy will also depend on the emotional intimacy that you experience with your partner. The greater the intimacy, the more vulnerable you are to fearing the loss of that intimacy. We are seldom jealous in relationships that we view as shallow or casual. In fact, some people purposely wish to maintain superficial relationships so that they minimize the risk of being hurt by betrayal or rejection. If the relationship is perceived as superficial, then there is less to feel jealous about. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Eloise said, “I just want to be that party girl, you know, the one who dances on the bar drunk without her bra. I don’t want to fall for that nice guy who I could love, because I know he’ll hurt me. I know I won’t be able to count on him. This way, I know it won’t work out so I know I won’t really get hurt.”

Avoiding intimacy is more common than one might expect. We often assume that everyone is looking for commitment and intimacy, but Eloise was rejected by her partner a few years before and it led her to try to commit suicide. As a result, she equated intimacy and trust with overwhelming devastation. By maintaining a shallow persona, it was easier for her to reject anyone who was really interested in a serious relationship as a “loser.” If you are in a relationship with someone who avoids intimacy, and you want intimacy, jealousy can arise because you have conflicting expectations.

When intimacy issues are involved, some people may actually try to provoke a jealous response in their partners. Doing this is a way of seeking reassurance that a partner is committed because when he or she engages in jealous behaviors, you can feel reassured. However, the very nature of jealous expressions—interrogating, withdrawing, demanding reassurance, and threatening—can increase the uncertainty in the relationship. The object of the jealousy may back away, counterattack, or threaten to leave the relationship, thereby adding even more anxiety to fears of betrayal and abandonment. All the same, research shows that when we perceive that our partner is jealous, we believe that he or she will never leave. The result is that we test partners by trying to make them feel jealous.

Other reasons to intentionally make partners feel jealous include punishing them for something they have done and competing with them if they are flirting with someone else. In some cases, people even “hedge their bets” and flirt with other people to ensure they have an alternative should a current relationship end. They might flirt with other people to boost self-esteem and prove that they are still attractive.

If any of these motives for making a partner jealous ring true, you might ask yourself, “What kinds of things can I do to provoke jealousy?,” and consider the conflict that results. Is this conflict with your partner worth it? It often takes two to have a jealousy problem. You are not going to build security by playing the jealousy game.

Uncertainty and Worry

Uncertainty is the main issue in jealousy—and in anxiety. If you are uncertain about the relationship, you are more likely to feel threatened that your partner might become interested in someone else. This is especially true when you have some investment in the relationship. New friendships or opportunities for your partner to interact with new people may increase this sense of uncertainty, and you may begin to worry.

Uncertainty is an important element in worry: worriers equate uncertainty with a bad outcome and they view uncertainty as unacceptable.23 If you are prone to worry, you may believe that it will reduce or eliminate uncertainty, and that checking, collecting information, and seeking reassurance will eliminate uncertainty. You may think, “I don’t know for sure that she is faithful, and I need to know so I can relax,” “I can’t accept not knowing for sure—I need to know,” or “I need to know right now.”

Uncertainty and the Need to Know

While you might view worry as a way to get certainty, when you don’t find proof, you are left with the uncertainty that the evidence is still to be discovered. You think, “Maybe there is something I don’t know” and “I need to find out now!” The combination of a tendency to worry and perceived, or actual, uncertainty of the relationship will add to your jealous preoccupations. Research supports this, as the greater the perceived uncertainty in the relationship, the greater the likelihood of jealousy.24 Not knowing becomes believing that what you don’t know will hurt you. But as you demand complete certainty, your attempts to gain sufficient information will inevitably fail. Because the problem with uncertainty is that you can never have absolute uncertainty. In fact, you can be married for ten years and still not know for sure that you can trust your partner.

Brian had been married to Sharon for fourteen years, and his sense of uncertainty increased when she began taking more business trips. He said, “Because I don’t know for sure what she’s up to, it’s possible that she might cheat on me. I just don’t want to be caught by surprise. I think I can find out what is going on by following her when she is here and by checking her email. But it is driving me crazy. Then I begin questioning her, which really pisses her off, and she tells me that I am driving her crazy. She pulls away, which makes me feel worse.”

Brian is like a lot of people who are caught up in jealousy—to him, uncertainty is an intolerable condition and it predicts betrayal. He wants to avoid surprise, but he lives every day in the miserable clutches of his jealousy. “How can I ever know for sure?” he asked, his voice cracking as he tried to keep from crying.

Uncertainty and Geographical Distance

It’s true that geographical distance adds to uncertainty. Some people try to make relationships work even though they are separated by hundreds, or even thousands, of miles. And some do make it work. But the distance, which makes it difficult to see each other, can add to uncertainty. When I gather personal histories of relationships, many people tell me that they tried to continue with a high-school sweetheart despite attending colleges separated by hundreds of miles. Sometimes, it works. I have a friend who met his future wife when he was fourteen. She went to a college far from his, they married in their senior year, and they are still married today. So it can work. But not always. For most people, distance and uncertainty wear on them.

Julie was trying to continue a relationship with a man after he moved away. They had been involved for eight years, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult to stay connected. They would see each other every three months, he made little effort to visit her, and she constantly wondered what he was up to.

Uncertainty and Forming Attachments to People Who Are Already Attached

You’re likely to be filled with uncertainty when you form an attachment to someone involved with someone else.

Katherine met a man at her high-school reunion and had a fling that weekend. He was married, had several children, and lived hundreds of miles away. She continued to see him, hoping that she could either convince him to leave his wife or that she could “compartmentalize” this relationship and just accept seeing him when she could. She was sinking herself further into a no-win situation, as she struggled to balance anxiety and anger along with hopes of working things out.

The relationship was fraught with uncertainty. It may be best to keep things simple, with no triangulated relationships, no compartmentalizing, no settling for second best. You might think that you are sophisticated and can handle a situation like this, but my observation is that our human nature leads us to form attachments that we want to be exclusive. So fooling ourselves about accepting the arrangement is likely to backfire. In fact, the further you get into this kind of thing, the harder it may be to extricate yourself.