Did you know that how you tell your personal stories in your life reveals how you connect and attach in your significant relationships, especially in your marriage or love relationship? You organize the experiences in your life through a voice that narrates a story inside your brain. The people closest to you in your life as a child most likely had the greatest influence on how you tell your story of your experiences as an adult now. For most of us, our caregivers as a child are our parents.
It Only Takes One
Fortunately , it only takes one healthy caregiver to help a child grow up with a secure, healthy sense of self and relationships. If this isn’t a parent, the caregiver may be an aunt or uncle, a teacher or mentor, or some other significant adult in your life who saw your strengths and consistently let you know your value and worth, and the value and worth of relationships.
Does Your Past Matter?
Researchers wanted to know how much the histories of parents influenced how they act now toward their children. Mary Main, a key researcher in the field of attachment, and her colleagues created the Adult Attachment Interview, an assessment that asks a parent to tell the story of his or her own childhood. The fascinating results of the research concluded that a parent who understood his or her own experiences in life, especially early childhood experiences, overwhelmingly provided their own child with a sense of security. The parent’s understanding of their past mattered much more than the details of the early childhood experiences the parent had.
What this Means: How you tell the story of your experiences in your life matters much more than the actual experiences you encountered as a child.
The Affect on Your Relationship: If you’ve come to truly understand your early childhood experiences, and have resolved issues that were challenging or difficult, you’re much more likely to embrace closeness and intimacy as an adult in your love relationship. Research demonstrates that individuals who were raised with a healthy caregiver, who had that one person to help them feel a sense of worth, love, and stability, were significantly likely to experience joy and happiness in their adult relationships. You would grow up with a strong sense of self-worth, and believe that close relationships can last and be fulfilling and rewarding.
How does this help your relationship or marriage? A key part of the Adult Attachment Interview is that it measures how you understand yourself to another adult, not how you explain your history to your own child. The researchers focus on how you tell your story, not just the content of your story, which reveals how you view closeness in love relationships.
Do You Understand Your Own Narrator? How you tell your story, according to an overwhelming amount of research in long-term studies, can help you understand how you experienced your own caregivers as a child. In your childhood, you probably encountered various adults in different ways, though the most significant influences usually stem from parents.
Share: Like the message of this blog? Please share it with your friends and family, as well as your spouse or partner.
Comment: Did you have a healthy caregiver in your life as a child? What did he or she do to help you feel secure and valued? Share your experiences in the comment section below, and help others have a clear model of well being.
Sign-up for eTips! Receive our newsletter for the latest information on how to improve your marriage or relationship.
Privacy Policy:We never share your information with third parties. You may easily unsubscribe at any time.
