When working with couples, I seek to understand the nature and significance of the hurt before moving toward resolution. How bad is it? How deep is the impact? First, we must understand the two levels of hurt: relational hurts and attachment injuries.
Secure couples can often navigate relational hurts on their own. Things like forgotten anniversaries, reactive insults, or blow-up fights can sneak into relationships. For secure couples (couples who feel they can depend and rely on each other in times of need), relational hurts are fairly easy to navigate. Partners can share their hurt feelings with each other, hear and empathize with the hurt of their loved one, and provide comfort and reassurance. Partners can move forward in the relationship with trust, security, and safety despite the hurtful experience. This is a natural and expected experience for healthy relationships.
I can often tell when a hurt falls into the category of a relational hurt. In our sessions, couples may share feelings of sadness, anger, hurt, and pain in response to an experience. However, when I ask them if they feel their partner loves and cares for them, they can quickly answer “yes.” For them, even though the hurt happened, it hasn’t significantly changed the way they view each other or the relationship.
Attachment injuries are trickier. They require much more care, consideration, and often more guidance, sometimes from a couples counselor. When couples are trying to respond to attachment injuries as if they are merely a relational hurt, they can stay stuck. Without recognizing the significance and impact of the injury, they can go down a long road of frustration and more hurt. An injured partner can feel even more hurt that the other person is not responding in ways that provide healing. The hurt deepens, becomes more complex, and can create great distress in the relationship.
Dr. Sue Johnson defines an attachment injury as “a feeling of betrayal or abandonment during a critical time of need.” When an attachment injury has occurred, a partner may view their relationship as changed or they may view their partner in a different way. An affair is a good example of an attachment injury. Infidelity often causes a partner to view a previously safe relationship as unsafe. While they used to view their partner as trustworthy, they now wonder, “Can I ever trust this person again?”
Attachment injuries are trickier. They require much more care, consideration, and often more guidance, sometimes from a couples counselor.
There are also more subtle attachment injuries. Consider the example of a wife, grieving the loss of her mother, crying in her bedroom. She sees her husband walk by on his phone, consumed in a work call. He sees her in tears but, after getting so caught up in his work, never returns to check on her. In that moment, she decides she is not important to him and she must go through this pain alone. In that moment, everything changes in how she views the relationship and how she views her husband. She was in need and he wasn’t there.
There are three key ways to determine if a hurt is an attachment injury. First, partners report they have apologized, but their hurt partner keeps bringing up the hurtful experience. Additionally, the hurt partner may report feeling as though they relive the hurtful experience when they think or talk about it. They can still feel the pain, almost as if it just happened. Finally, couples report a significant, defining shift in the relationship felt by one or both partners that can be traced back to a specific time or incident. If any of these things are happening in your relationship, there may be an attachment injury.
If you believe you are dealing with an attachment injury in your relationship, here are some potentially helpful things to think about:
Often, couples benefit from therapy to help them navigate the process of healing after an attachment injury. When a couple learns how to find comfort in each other for the pain and hurt resulting from an attachment injury, healing and true reconnection are possible.
References:
The preceding article was solely written by the author named above. Any views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org.