How Childhood Attachments Affect Adult Relationships

A child’s knowledge of healthy relationships is shaped at a very early age by parents or caregivers. Ideally, every child would be able to form a secure attachment with their caregivers. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.

Insecure attachments can stem from neglect, abuse, or anything that causes a child’s basic emotional, physical, and physiological needs not to be met.

Childhood attachments can directly affect adult relationships, potentially causing struggles in connection, intimacy, communication, and more.

Let’s take a closer look at childhood attachments and their potential impact.

Abandonment Issues

If your emotional needs weren’t met as a child, you might have insecurity in your adult relationships. You might feel like you need your partner by your side in order to establish a sense of self. This can cause dependencies and even a fear of abandonment.

Unfortunately, when you’re so preoccupied with losing someone, it can lead to toxic relationships. You might constantly need reassurance from your partner and worry they may leave at any moment.

Poor childhood attachments often lead to negative self-perception. You might not think you’re worthy of love or any kind of positive treatment in relationships. Again, that can cause you to feel like you have to defer to your partner in every way so they stay with you.

Commitment Issues and Instability

All relationships have their ups and downs. People change over time and some conversation subjects are triggering. Personalities can come into play in negative ways. But there’s a difference between normal ups and downs in a relationship and the instability caused by attachment issues.

Attachment problems stemming from childhood can create a push-pull cycle within your relationships. There might be times when you feel dependent on your partner, and times when you want to be alone and push them away.

As you might expect, that kind of cycle can be exhausting for everyone and wreak havoc on your emotional well-being.

Intimacy Issues

It’s not always easy for people to be vulnerable and it’s even harder when you have an insecure attachment style that began as a child.

You can’t have true intimacy in your relationships without vulnerability. But, because of the things you experienced as a child, you might have a hard time with emotional closeness. You might keep people — including romantic partners — at arm’s length as a way of protecting yourself from getting hurt.

Intimacy is about more than just the physical side of your relationship. It’s about open communication and trust. If you feel like you’re unable to have those things with your partner because of attachment issues, it’s likely to cause problems in your relationship.

What Can You Do?

Childhood attachments can impact all types of relationships, not just romantic ones. You might have a hard time keeping friends or staying at a job for very long because you aren’t able to interact well with co-workers. Childhood attachments can affect your entire life, so it’s important to get the help you deserve to move forward.

With that in mind, one of the best things you can do for yourself and your future relationships is to work with a therapist.

Therapy can help you develop a better understanding of how childhood attachments affect adult relationships. You might not remember everything about your childhood, and it can be difficult to walk down memory lane by yourself when there are negative things to look back on. But, it’s the best place to start when you’re on a healing journey. Therapy will help you get there while offering healthy coping strategies to improve how you see yourself and your relationships. Let’s start that journey together.