Can my attachment style do non-monogamy?

3 minute read

Introduction to Non-Monogamy and Attachment Theory

Are you considering opening up your relationship or exploring polyamory? As a depth psychologist and a long-time participant in non-monogamous relationships, I believe understanding your attachment style is crucial for anyone embarking on this path. Originally developed to describe the emotional bonds between infants and caregivers, attachment theory offers critical insights into adult relationships, including those that extend beyond traditional monogamy.

How Attachment Styles Impact Non-Monogamous Relationships

Identifying your attachment style—be it secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, fearful-avoidant, or disorganized—can significantly influence how you navigate the complexities of loving more than one person:

• Secure Attachment: I've observed that individuals with a secure attachment style typically struggle *if* they are over-confident about what that secure attachment means. Remember that secure attachment isn’t a guarantee of how you’ll feel in new relationships or a whole new relationship paradigm. 
• Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment: Those with an anxious style may experience increased fears of abandonment, which necessitates clear and consistent communication in their polyamorous relationships… in other words, exactly the ingredients for a smooth-running relationship of any structure. Consider getting support 
• Dismissive-Avoidant and Fearful-Avoidant Attachment: If you identify with these styles, you might find the emotional closeness and frequent communication required in non-monogamous relationships quite challenging. But don’t let that stop you from exploring; instead, use it as a chance to do some valuable inner work. 
• Disorganized Attachment: This style is characterized by a lack of a clear attachment strategy, resulting from a combination of both anxious and avoidant behaviors. Individuals with disorganized attachment may find non-monogamy particularly challenging as they often experience mixed feelings of both desire for closeness and difficulty trusting others. These conflicting emotions can make managing multiple relationships complex, requiring a heightened level of self-awareness and communication skills. This doesn’t mean you can’t do non-monogamy, though! I consistently returned as a result of disorganized attachment for many years. It took a lot of self-work, but I thrive in non-monogamy now, and I’ve helped lots of people navigate this path.

Truth time: All attachment styles can happily do non-monogamy, but most of us will need support along the way. Group learning situations can be perfect for this because you won’t see things just from your perspective; listening to other people share how non-monogamy feels for them can help you challenge your habitual attachment patterns.

Personal Growth Through Non-Monogamy

Non-monogamy is not just about having multiple partners; it's a profound journey of personal discovery. It challenges you to articulate your needs, develop robust communication skills, and foster deeper emotional intelligence. Engaging with multiple partners can serve as a mirror, reflecting back your deepest emotional patterns and offering a chance to transform them.

Building Confidence in Your Choice to Practice Non-Monogamy

Building confidence in choosing non-monogamy starts with self-awareness. By understanding how your attachment style affects your relationships, you can set realistic expectations, foster healthier interactions, and ultimately achieve a more fulfilling love life.

Effective Communication in Non-Monogamous Relationships

In my podcasts and sessions, I stress that communication is the cornerstone of successful non-monogamous relationships. Openly discussing feelings of jealousy, power dynamics, and relationship agreements can help maintain healthy relationships among all partners involved. This is especially crucial if your attachment style predisposes you toward insecurity or detachment.

Enhancing Non-Monogamous Relationships Through Attachment Theory

In my discussions on the podcast, including episode 148 of Playing with Fire: Can my attachment style do non-monogamy? I explore how understanding attachment theory can enhance relationship dynamics within non-monogamy. I recommend delving into resources such as Jessica Fern’s book Polysecure, which discusses attachment theory within the context of polyamory. These resources can offer further guidance and strategies for building secure, fulfilling relationships in a non-monogamous framework.

How to mis-use attachment theory

That said, don’t expect attachment theory to solve your relationship woes. In fact, when used badly, attachment theory tropes can be weaponized in adult relationships. Listen to the whole episode to unpack the nuances of applying attachment theory in non-monogamous relationships. While attachment theory is a helpful lens for understanding relationships, it is important not to over-extend any single psychological theory to explain every aspect of intimacy and connection. (Seriously–this is a big topic to unpack–go check out episode 148)

Conclusion: Embrace the Complexity of Non-Monogamy

Exploring non-monogamy is about much more than managing multiple relationships; it's about understanding yourself on a deeper level. Whether you're polyamorous, in an open relationship, or simply poly-curious, integrating insights from attachment theory can provide a solid foundation for all your relationships.

Next Steps in Your Non-Monogamy Journey

To better equip yourself for this journey, I encourage you to educate yourself further on attachment theory, maintain open communication with your partners, and embrace the personal growth that comes from these relationships. Join online forums, read relevant books, and consider consulting with a coach or counselor experienced in non-monogamy.

By understanding and applying the principles of attachment theory, you can navigate non-monogamy with greater empathy and insight, leading to richer and more satisfying relationships.

Episode 148 Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated, and may contain some errors.

Ken Hamilton 0:01
Hello. So today, let's talk about attachment style is like it's everywhere. At least in our world, it comes up so much.

Joli Hamilton 0:11
It does. I mean, it comes up in our personal world. And it also you can't scroll on Instagram for two posts without seeing something about attachment style these days, it seems. And so is there such a thing as attachment talk, there might be attached tag attachment talk?

Ken Hamilton 0:27
Yeah, could be. In this case, we're going to add it to the list of things to talk about in the context of non monogamy?

Joli Hamilton 0:38
Well, I mean, this is I feel like in some ways this conversation then it follows on the heels of us having interviewed Jessica Fern who writes about attachment theory and non monogamy in the book poly secure, we've interviewed Jessica and then Jessica and David, who wrote poly wise together several times. So it's, it's interesting now to be taking this on as a separate topic after having done those interviews. But I, I love the topic of attachment, because I think that it is extremely educational for us to sit with rather than just take it as like outside information. So that like somebody telling me, oh, I think this is something to really sit and ponder.

Ken Hamilton 1:23
And I think that there's a reason that it's in the air a lot. There's a lot to talk about. There's a lot to think about. So let's talk about what it is, what are we talking about? Well,

Joli Hamilton 1:36
let's so the words attachment style. That's the common way that people talk about attachment theory. But if we want to back out a layer and say, attachment theory, it grew out of the the theories of psychodynamic research, back in the 60s, late very late 60s, primarily the 70s, the 80s. And then it really started to pick up steam and attachment theory has been a huge part of the relational world since the mid early to mid 2000s decade. If you are working with someone who is taking attachment theory seriously, then they probably feel pretty strongly that attachment theory can explain a lot of our relational trauma. And attachment theory can help us understand why our patterns are the way they are and why our partners behave in ways that they do. That may seem absolutely insane to you. So attachment theory is great, because it helps us see more with more clarity how very different we can be from each other.

Ken Hamilton 2:44
Okay, so the theory helps us understand each other gives us another tool for understanding each other and

Joli Hamilton 2:50
ourselves. Right. So I like the definition, there was a study put out by cats and cats in 2021. And they just have a nice simple definition. The communications attachment is the communication of physical safety through proximity and protection provided by an attachment figure. Now when we're talking about attachment theory, it's important to note that we're, we're talking about a theory that was developed to research and look at the connection between an infant and their caregiver. And then later, quite a bit later, we took an applied attachment theory to adult romantic relationships, there's an argument to be made that we don't have enough data yet to just neatly say that whatever attachment theory can tell us about how we exist necessarily just lays on to our romantic relationships, where I know some of my colleagues are there, they are deeply committed to that idea to the idea that our relationships are just another place where our attachment patterns play out. And we should treat all relationships as attachment based relationships, because that's how we build healthy romantic relationships. I'm hesitant, I'm hesitant to do that, because I really believe that we need to be thoughtful about what our relationships are for, and actually engaged with the conversation of Hey, are we building an attachment based relationship? Because I'm not sure everybody is available for that. And in the context of non monogamy, we are often getting reflective about what it is that we're looking for in our relationships, and not all relationships really are for that. Right. So.

Ken Hamilton 4:34
Okay, that's, that's interesting. I was thinking in terms of what I've been reading, I kind of I kind of get the sense that it kind of makes sense. It has a certain amount of truthiness, that our attachment tendencies as infants, our attachment styles back then, might have a notable correlation to the way we enter relationships as adults. Right and We have data that supports that. Yeah. And so, okay, good. That's, that's useful information to have and to look into. But yeah, what you're saying is, okay, great. But what is the kind of relationship that we're having with this person? Or these people? I mean, I have, I have plenty of people in my life who I don't look to for emotional or physical safety. They that that's not the relationship I have. Right. And so if I'm dating, I mean, early, certainly early on in the dating process. That's not where we are I unless you're Ted Mosby.

Joli Hamilton 5:39
Did you watch How I Met Your Mother? Yeah, Ted's going all in early? Yeah. I appreciate just taking this subtlety like applying some subtlety to whether we are looking for our relationships. And this i Let's extend this beyond romantic. Are we looking for our friendships to be attachment based, I have negotiated with people around Hey, is this friendship one that we are looking to build an attachment basis? Like? Are we looking to be figures where each other can find a safe haven? Are we looking to be present for each other that way? And some of my friends have been like, Oh, yes, yeah, let's do that. And some of them are like, No, I actually don't I don't want to build that into my worldview right now, either, because they're feeling tapped out. They just don't have the bandwidth or because they're not ready right now to commit that level of connection. Yeah, it's

Ken Hamilton 6:34
not a small thing to to take seriously. volunteering to be an attachment figure for someone else even like, and there are levels to which you can you can go boundaries on it. Absolutely. But still taking it seriously, that gets you into a certain amount of emotional energy expenditure. Right.

Joli Hamilton 6:54
So the question that I find people asked me most frequently is, you know, they'll have taken an online quiz somewhere that tells them that they have say an anxious anxious preoccupied attachment style, or they have an avoidant dismissive attachment style, or they have a disorganized, which means kind of a mix of both, you're kind of playing at both ends of that spectrum of wind and anxious attachment style, if they get anything other than secure. The fourth one, often their question is, can I even do non monogamy like, how is this going to work for me, and the presumption is frequently that people who are more avoidant would actually have an easier time of it. But the the little bit of data we have on who is doing non monogamy that actually looks at what's going on in their attachment tendencies, actually doesn't point to that, the little bit of data, we do have points to the fact that people who tend more into the anxious realm, actually, they have a higher desire for more connection. And so they may actually choose non monogamy more frequently. That doesn't mean it's necessarily easier for them. But whenever somebody says to me, Oh, I you know, I have disorganized attachment style, or I have an avoidant attachment. So I don't know whether I can do this, I think, well, that, that doesn't actually give me enough information. I don't want anybody to decide that because of your attachment label. You can't do a particular relationship style. Because that's not contextualized into the whole of you, you're a whole person. And you have, we are all resourced differently. We all have different communities around us, we all want different things out of our relationships. And we're all willing to put in different amounts of effort into dealing with the discomfort of Oh, my attachment tendency is makes this like uncomfortable. Can I resource myself? Can I be present to that? Can I do the work? Can I learn how to create agreements and stay in agreements? And can I learn how to create repair? Can I learn how to be in connection even when I need space? If you can do those things, then whatever label that quiz gave you is far less important than whether you're willing to put in the effort full attention to your relationships.

Ken Hamilton 9:16
That yeah, you you painted a nice complex picture of, of how, how are well, what I hear you coming down to is what kind of energy do you want to expend in this relationship? And that there's no like, external objective measure for that it's it's going to be an internal perception of how much energy effort that you're putting in and also, you know, you and I are different people you have a PhD I've watched you I watched you study I watched you doing, you know your your higher education for decades and you've spend a lot of time learning about this stuff in detail. And you've I've also watched you having relationships, and really throwing yourself into them. I've been learning about relationships and things like attachment theory. And it's interesting, but my skills in these areas aren't anything like yours. So when, when I imagine, okay, so I'm going to be non monogamous. And I'm going to I'm going to reach out to multiple people, and I'm going to, I'm going to establish relationships, I'm, I'm going to be I think, well, I'm going to perceive myself as less. I don't want to say competent, that's too strong a word less less familiar with what I'm likely to run up against. If I'm like, okay, yeah, let's have an attach relationship. Let's, let's see what it's like to to have a two way attachment connection. I don't necessarily know what's going to come up.

Joli Hamilton 11:00
Well, and none of us really do. Because every relationship is so different. Yeah,

Ken Hamilton 11:04
we're also individuals, unique individuals.

Joli Hamilton 11:07
But what about the question of, you know, what does it mean? What does it mean to you to have an attachment based relationship? You know, I, a lot of people, imagine that everyone, like, if you are a person who really wants to build a lot of secure attachment connection, then you may imagine everybody wants that. But in fact, lots of people are actually looking for a casual connection. So there may be a whole group of people who are listening to this particular podcast and thinking, well, actually, I want my non monogamy to be more based around one person who I have an attachment based relationship. And then our other connections, I actually, and they might say this part quietly, because they might feel a little shamed in the non monogamous world, I don't want to connect to other people in an attachment based way. The other connections, I want to be more just sexual. And so those people might align more with the label of swinger or polysexual, or open relationships. And they might put some boundaries and limits on their emotional availability to other people. But I can't know that unless I really like I have to be patient and let people explain to me how they do their non monogamy, I can't just guess that even if they use the label, because I've had plenty of relationships with people who tell me that they're polyamorous, I could make the presumption that just in the word there, they're open to many loves that they are available for love. Now, I think of love as being connected to your to your attachment basis to really deeply connecting and counting on someone. Lots of people experience they use that label polyamory in there, but they really aren't available for that, because they're practicing monogamy or social monogamy in so much of their life, that they're not available to meet those emotional connection needs.

Ken Hamilton 13:01
And so do you feel so you were just describing? Okay, yeah, so I've got a relationship. And I'm thinking, Yeah, this is a love based relationship. Do you think of that as the same as an attachment relationship? Or related or like, what's the overlap? What's the Venn diagram between love and attachment?

Joli Hamilton 13:24
I think that's a super personal question. But I think, you know, for me, when I am, I am available to love people, even if they aren't available to love me. That's, that's my personal stance, like, it's none of my business, whether, whether they love me back, I decide to move in the world in love. And for me, I can then decide whether I'm going to provide that secure basis for someone, whether I'm going to show up for them emotionally. But unless they are willing to commit that to me through the act of negotiating, and making agreements and showing up over time, my experiences, lots of people will say the words that I love you or I care about you, and then not have the bandwidth to actually do those things, or even harder, not be able to do them in a way that I can receive, like their version of providing that level of support. Might not line up with what my embodied. Oh, yeah, I'll take he actually needs. And so I don't even the word love doesn't tell me enough. Yeah. This is why I count on agreements and renegotiating and reimagining agreements over time, to help me understand like, what are we doing together? What are we co creating right now? And does it meet the needs that we each have, rather than just assuming that the word love or the word polyamory is automatically incurring this, this set of attachment based connections and

Ken Hamilton 14:59
Both people involved in this particular dyad have the same mental picture of what that even means. Yeah. So we have all these, these attachment styles, and we're talking about them like, Okay, I'm, this is how I approach the world. And of course, we're very resilient, flexible, adaptable humans. And of course, it's a useful model that doesn't really capture the complexity of humans. So in a relationship, then, in non monogamy in particular, would you say that a person with multiple relationships is going to be like floating around in the attachment space, from, you know, they have one level of attachment in this relationship, one, in this one particular set of strategies with this partner, different strategies for another one? Well, you're

Joli Hamilton 16:00
touching on something that I think it's core to the way I work with attachment. I don't think we should decontextualize our attachment. When I am experiencing myself as having let's shift away from saying style, right? Because a style might feel or label I might say, like, Hey, I this is something I catch people doing. They say I'm an avoidant dismissive, or I'm an anxious preoccupied, they put the definitive article there and in front of it, and they claim it like a label. And they're like, so this is me, and now they start to identify with it, I'm going to ask you, and I would ask anybody who's working with me to treat that label as information, and not to wear it like a badge, not to put it on as a full identity. And here's why. in different contexts, you may actually test differently, you may you may wind up like the different metrics, even the ones that are validated the different psychometrics that are well validated and used in the clinical setting. I need to know the context in which I am asking you these questions. So if I feel like I've lost the thread of your question a little bit, but

Ken Hamilton 17:15
when? No, not at all, because I was asking about like, switching around, literally, no, you're answering it directly, because I was asking about switching around your your attachment strategies, or, you know, whatever you want to call them. But that's it relationships.

Joli Hamilton 17:31
So let's talk about the strategies if an attachment if I am showing up with attachment issues, right, let's say I am, I am experiencing anxiety, I'm experiencing a level of desire to cling and pull at you in the context of this particular relationship. But then I have this other relationship. So I was dating somebody this past fall, who I, I didn't feel any of that, if anything, I was exhibiting avoidant tendencies. And now I have in the past, gotten the label put on me as disorganized attachment. I feel no shame about that. I was raised in a household with lots of trauma and, and troubles my parents were doing the best they could and it was not great. But so disorganized is the one that people often tend to feel a little like, oh, my gosh, how do I fix that? I don't need to fix it. I do want to learn better strategies. But it Yes, I have the capacity to behave in both anxious ways and avoidant ways. I also have the capacity to behave in secure ways. But depending on the context of the specific relationship, different aspects of me are going to be awoken. So when I when I am interacting with someone who maybe is there, maybe they're very anxious themselves, that may actually come, I may feel a compulsion to actually push away to create distance, I may start leaning into avoidant tendencies, I may, I may start making more space and not responding or I there's a lot of ways that I might then sort of polarize myself in opposition to what they're exhibiting. Other times I might match right up. So if if somebody's exhibiting a lot of avoidance, I might do, I might use the strategy of like, oh, they, they're, they're really backed off, they're not terribly emotionally available. So Me too, I'm gonna match their energy. It's not for anyone to say which is the right way, like what's right for you to do we need to look at the whole picture of what it is What are you setting out to create in this relational life you have. And when we're talking about non monogamy, we're talking about multiple relationships or multiple potentials for relationship, because you may not have multiple relationships going on right now. But in the context of your relational life, which strategies are you using? Which, which ones are You're using unconsciously, they're just happening. You're not even you're not intentionally saying, oh, you know, they're kind of backed off. So I'll be kind of backed off. What are the what's just happening? Your response? You open up a dating app? What's happening in your body? Are you? Are you being hyper vigilant? Are you people pleasing? Are you leaning in a lot? Or are you actually relaxed and approaching this from a place of a relatively secure in yourself spot? Like, are you tending to your emotions tending to your Summit, your Soma, your your felt sense? I need to know, I need to understand that I have the capacity to act in any of these ways any of these labels might look like they fit me in any particular context. And then if I add in, like, what's my current stress situation? how full is my threat bucket? How much nervous system regulation do I have access to right now?

Ken Hamilton 20:54
Yeah, that contextual it will, it will impact it.

Joli Hamilton 20:59
Yeah. So I just finished that thought the, if I contextualize attachment, then I can remind myself to that. It's not something that I achieve. And I say like, Oh, good, I tested, boom, I got secure attachment. So so now I'm in the good box, I'm in the so if there's a quadrant right of the of the four attachment styles, if I get a score, if I get a quiz to tell me that I'm secure, then I'm the good one, because I see people weaponize that all the time. Now, it's my partner who's got an insecure style, and they must be the problem, they have the problems, I really don't see how this is a productive move. And I think most people get that when they see it on the outside. But I see what we do it on the inside, where there's this tendency to, oh, good, I got to that secure attachment, whether that was secure attachment, because you had a relatively stable childhood, or whether that was earned secure attachment that you achieved through healing relationships, connected relationships, that allows you to build a secure sense of self and a secure sense of safety and relationship. Whichever way, you don't just get there, check the box and be like, great, I got my secure card. I mean, the cool kids club, now I can stop thinking about that. And you're a great example of that. You're a fantastic example, I remember, back when we got together romantically, I asked you to take an attachment based quiz. And I was pretty sure where I would wind up and and yeah, I was consistently turning up disorganized attachment, back then. And you were turning up secure attachment, over and over and over again, you'd like and I mean, I was going to school. So I would, I would put this metric in front of you or not metric in front of you, whatever and, and you would get secure, secure, secure. But I happen to know that you did another one just last week would you get

Ken Hamilton 22:58
I got disorganized, and avoidant. And I

Joli Hamilton 23:05
got secure, like super secure, like I got all the way down to the very corner of the of the one from the attachment project, I got like, one one baby like super secure, especially in the context of this particular nesting partnership that I have. I am not going to rest on my laurels. That is because right now, at this point in my life, with the rest of my life situated the way it is, and you behaving the way you happen to be right now. And the rest of my dating world the way that it is right now I feel very comfortable. And it was easy to give answers that popped this secure result back out

Ken Hamilton 23:42
and and here we go. So I Okay, I have a little story analysis to tell this might take a minute or two. So you just describe me as okay, i i tested secure, like, what is that now?

Joli Hamilton 23:57
years ago? Yeah, like years ago talking like, right 1413 12, you know, right up through, I would say six or seven years ago.

Ken Hamilton 24:05
And we're talking and I got secure and we're talking about the stigma of the different of an insecure attachment. And so I got secure which like yay, right? Hooray. Okay, and now we come to now and I'm more disorganized.

Joli Hamilton 24:21
Oh, you're returning a result of more returning results.

Ken Hamilton 24:24
Okay. All right. Now, when we first got together, how much of an optimist was I? Oh, God, it was sickening. And here's, here's the question. And I mean, it's sweet, but oh, it was how effective was that? Well, how was good a strategy was that for the life that I was living? Well, you

Joli Hamilton 24:45
were trying to live a pretty complicated life where you had two partners living with you actively and who had stopped getting along those two partners were no longer getting along. So

Ken Hamilton 24:56
So assuming things were just gonna work out, did not work out. Okay. And, and we had explicit conversations about optimism and, and you, pessimist, big, big ol pessimist looking for hazards hazard detecting all the time, all the time. I like

Joli Hamilton 25:12
to think I'm a realist, but realistically, I'm a

Ken Hamilton 25:16
realist. Okay, so over the years, then you have developed skills and develop habits and strategies that now when you take these, these quizzes, the surveys you come out on the secure side with in the context of our relationship. And because you have and this is okay, now here's me just going completely off the cuff. You have learned over time, that you don't have to be so pessimistic. You don't have to be watching all the time for what goes wrong. And that has worked this relationship, this relationship, and as a result, you feel more secure.

Joli Hamilton 26:10
Yeah, I would say that's true.

Ken Hamilton 26:12
I learned that my optimism just wasn't working. It wasn't getting me what I wanted. So I started to be more cautious. Which is, it's not a complete synonym, but it's pretty close to anxious. Like, oh, is this going to work? I better think about this. I better really dig into this. I have been spending those 12 years working on those skills. And so from from secure now I get disorganized, anxious, fearful, avoidant. Yeah, I got my eyes open. I'm looking around. This is not I don't feel at all bad. I'm like, Oh, good. I needed that I needed to start looking for what wasn't working.

Joli Hamilton 27:01
Okay. So you know how the other thing that we talk about is individuation. Yeah, what it sounds like to me as you're describing someone who is now bringing unconscious material forward. So rather than an unconscious Blyth, full optimism, where you're just like, Yeah, I had a basically happy childhood, and you know, my relationships are stable, you have a lot of privilege. So you're pretty stable in your just general life, and life is likely to work out for you. Now you're aware. And you've started bringing that unconscious material into conscious awareness, which is disruptive. Yeah, individuation is not a path of comfort. Oh, no, it is a path of disrupting your immature ideas of perfection, and an unfinished pneus. But there's, there's a kind of wholeness, the wholeness where we have in utero, where we are just subsumed in in the archetypal layer, we don't have to do anything, we just exist. That is a different kind of wholeness from the kind you are striving for. And I want you to strive for now, where you have to notice where you are disappointing people where you are letting yourself down, where you're breaking agreements, where you that was going

Ken Hamilton 28:17
to be the last piece of my analysis is, all of those things were true. And also, I started to take into account more seriously how I was impacting the people around me, because I didn't so much. And as I did, I realized, I've never been the most socially smooth person. I've always felt awkward and like, I didn't totally understand people, which I think was mostly laziness. And so I started to pay attention. And, and I started to feel very uncomfortable, like, oh, how am I going to actually notice after 40 something years of not paying attention? Now I'm going to start paying attention. This is hard. So So I started to started to take people into account. It's it required a lot of attention, I couldn't just be like, that's gonna be fine. I had to pay attention. So yes, I in the context of non monogamy, all the attachment styles

Joli Hamilton 29:21
are effective. Or you could you could be operating with the strategies of any of those. Or you could have returned a label of any of those from a quiz and still successfully participate in non monogamy. And I feel very strongly about this. I also think that what you just described is an uplifting story. It is an optimistic story of what it is to wake up to. Oh, I didn't I didn't know what I didn't know. Sometimes we feel secure because we we just have no idea that there's danger out there. We have no idea that things can go wrong. Um, and we don't know enough about attachment style yet to be making some of the bold claims that I see people make, like if you heal your attachment style, your relational life will be wonderful. Like, I think that's overstatement. I think attachment work is really important. I think we should lean into it and do that work. I think building attachment based relationships is delicious and lovely. I personally really, really enjoy doing that. And I enjoyed doing it with multiple people. But we don't have enough research about this. This model of relating that was first derived out of the infant mother connection specifically, and then applied to infant parents, we've kind of made the leap to like, okay, more caregivers, and then made the leap to Okay, now we're going to transfer this particular model and say that it also occurs in our romantic relationships. Okay. It's also all based on the premise of monogamy. And specifically, it is unconsciously based on that premise. the originators of this theory, we're not thinking, gee, you know, I wonder how our monogamous worldview impacts our vision of how attachment works, or for that matter, our our very, our white, patriarchal, cisgender mono normative system as a whole, right? How does it impact it, because if you lived in another kind of culture, you're caretaking, your caregiving, that would all look very different. So attachment theory, like trying to get it to, to just fit neatly onto our adult relationships that we have right now was already a stretch for me, even if we're in monogamy. But now take that leave monogamy and say, Okay, now I want to apply attachment theory. And I want to be non monogamous, I'm going to practice non monogamy, we do not have the data to support the idea that this is a perfect fit. And we meet, we're going to need to do a lot more work. And I'm grateful for the work that is out there talking about? Well, if you're currently exhibiting experiencing anxious attachment tendencies, if you're operating from those patterns, okay, what might you do? So Polly secure is a great reference for that. If you are exhibiting tendencies of avoidance, what should I do? Like we need to know this, but but then we also have to think about what happens if I am trying to break down and dismantle for myself the idea that I need to have all of my relationships be attachment based relationships, or that I need to have one? And if I don't have one attachment based relationship? Or what if I want my attachment based relationship be to my to myself, and that is actually that's, that's in, in the hearts model in Jessica's book, like the idea of attachment to self, but that doesn't like, I don't know, how do I do that? How do I attach to myself, we don't have, you know, decades of research saying, Here's exactly how you would attach to yourself. But we do have philosophical and spiritual practices that can potentially support that we do have psychological research that says that we can support ourselves. But I am hesitant to say that we can just automatically apply the rules of the road of attachment theory, without also taking a really close look at the the reality that non monogamy is a completely different paradigm. And it may actually, it may up end some of our assumptions and presumptions about how attachment functions in our adult relationships. And what if we instead talk about connection, and talk about the different kinds of connection we want to have? And what if we start really doing some, I would love to see more research on what happens if my connection sources are diverse, and and flowing. What if I don't have a primary attachment figure? Yeah,

Ken Hamilton 34:13
if attachment theory ends up having some basis, you know, some some established basis in a non monogamous context, we may find multiple other attachment styles that that resolve out of this situation,

Joli Hamilton 34:31
right? I just don't think we know enough yet to be so fixed. And that's what I would warn. It's the only I think attachment style work can can be really helpful. But when people pick up their label and they over identify with it, we can fall into a fixed mindset. And imagine that now my partner needs to behave in certain ways that accommodates my attachment style, and they might not be available for that they might not be able to do that. It also it presents this idea that some outside authority is going to label you, versus you understanding yourself more deeply. Right? So I would say, take the quizzes, enjoy them, read all the attachment based work that you want to, but then look closely see if you can see yourself, can you engage in that, in that dialogue with the material that says, Oh, I see where my patterns I see where I keep acting out this set of patterns with this particular partnership, or I see how in a past relationship, I mean, I had a friendship once where I was acting out so much anxious attachment, it was so intense, and it was a friendship was a platonic friendship. My anxious tendencies were so intense, that I could barely function. And we have not negotiated to have an attachment based relationship. So if I looked there, and then simultaneously, I had other partnerships, where I was exhibiting very different patterns. It was really confusing to me, I didn't know what to ask for, because the literature seemed to point me at the idea that, okay, so if you are exhibiting this anxious tendency, fix that address that. But I was exhibiting different all these different tendencies in different contexts. So it only confused me further. And over the course of time, I've come to realize that I have to think about all of this contextually and I have to allow myself to be the authority about what labels are put on me. Yeah, and not give that away. And especially not give that away to partnerships, I would not want you labeling me I wouldn't want any of my other partners labeling me. So some of the things we can do about this are and this is an action step we can all take is we can move away from identifying as an avoidant dismissive or an organized an avoidant, preoccupied, like take that out. But we can also just bring this gentleness into our language where we shift away from talking about my my attachment style, or my partner's attachment style and labeling them and just shift into like, I'm seeing it feels like we're in a pattern of avoidance right here. It feels like I am practicing this avoidant dismissive pattern that I see laid out very neatly in these descriptions in these books. It feels like that's what I'm playing out right now. And just the gentleness of like, Oh, I feel like I this is how I'm enacting my relationships. That leaves room for me to actually experience change, and relatively quickly.

Ken Hamilton 37:47
It provides just just a window into yourself, it doesn't. Like we we tend to jump to meaning assigning meaning. But yeah, if I look at myself, and I, well, I did it with the, with my disorganized attachment.

Joli Hamilton 38:09
Like the results, yeah,

Ken Hamilton 38:10
like, Okay, so let me look at that. That's, that's all it's for, it's not to say I'm a good or bad person, or that this is what I do all the time. It just gives me Oh, it might be, it might be helpful to look at my behavior, looking for these patterns. And if I find them, I might like them, I might want to keep using them. Or I might decide, no, actually, that doesn't work for me. But knowing myself first, right.

Joli Hamilton 38:36
And so if we use the attachment theory labels as a way to gain more self awareness, I am very pro that, but if we solidify our position and say like, oh, this is me, and I'll you know, attach your attachment style is not fixed, you get to shift it over time you get to do the work. So I now return a result consistently of secure. That's through a lot of work that through an immense amount of psychological work. I've done multiple union analyses, I've done years of therapy, I've also done so much deep work on myself. It didn't come easily. So I actually get a little resistant, I get frustrated when i i get my results back from one of these quizzes and they say like oh, you have enjoyed a secure and stable childhood and I'm like fuck you. No, I did not that is not the only way to get this result. And so if anybody out there is frustrated and is listening to this episode, because you've been frustrated by the the way that this theory fits and doesn't fit. Yeah, join the club, like join the Club. And I think we can all learn to contextualize this theory, learn to look at it, like okay in the framework of this particular phase of my life, at this stage of my development, and in this particular relationship. How am I showing up? And that's where the quizzes I think can be useful. And so I'll even use a quiz from a Superman and normative book the book attached. There's a quiz based there. And it's entirely about like, how is your How do you perceive your partner's attachment style? And how do they how do you perceive yours in this particular relationship is incredibly mono normative? And I'll use that just as a as a self awareness exercise of like, okay, in this particular relationship, if I can get my imagination, it's like, yes, okay, I'm thinking about that relationship. Cool. That test can give me information. But let's please not like make these laminated. Like, let's not laminate this to us, right? Let's allow ourselves the benefit of being much more complex than that. So, okay, I can get off my attachment soapbox. I am not throwing out attachment theory at all. I like attachment theory, but I want us to take a really nuanced and careful approach to it. And for anyone out there who is doing clinical work and is thinking about clinical research. Oh, I will be so supportive of you taking on more attachment based research in the context of non monogamy. We'd be cheering you

Ken Hamilton 41:17
on 100%. Yep.

Joli Hamilton 41:19
Let's get that out there. Get that done. Thanks, Ken. Thanks.