Interpersonal Relationships In Early Adulthood

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Adults high in the anxious dimension of attachment develop this tendency at a young age and carry it with them into adulthood, affecting both their interpersonal relationships and their own emotional well-being. A child develops high anxiety in attachment when their primary caregiver is present, but not always responsive to their needs (Garrison et al., 2014). This creates the image of an attachment figure who can be both a source of comfort and a source of pain and neglect. This creates feelings of uncertainty and doubt in the child as they are unable to trust the reliability of their caregiver in times of distress of threat. In response to the precarious nature of their caregiver, individuals high in anxiety develop an almost desperate need …show more content…
Relationship Quality
Early experiences with an unresponsive attachment figure will carry on into adulthood, leading lower qualities of close relationships in anxiously attached individuals. It is proposed that anxious attachment is associated with lesser relationship quality due to the over-immersion in the relationship on part of the anxiously attached individuals (Chung, 2014). Anxiously attached individuals are partner-focused in their relationships and rank intimacy and trust as a highly important factor in relationships, yet they have lower levels of trust in the relationship (Ren, Arriaga, & Mahan, 2017). This lack of trust is tied to increased fear of rejection and abandonment which lead to greater efforts to maintain the relationship. Many of these efforts can be extreme, intrusive, and lead to an inverse effect. Anxiously attached individuals are known to resort to hyperactivation and exaggerated strategies to keep a relationship in together (Garrison et al., 2014). One theory is that their hyperactive regulation strategies and emotional expression are used to