Sidney McGill - HEALTHY SEX 101 A YOUNG man, recently married, could barely make eye contact with the counsellor who sat patiently waiting to help him. He had come in because of a one-month old separation from his wife. The separation was linked to his impulsive rage toward his wife whenever they had disagreements.
His flip flopping between non-assertive and aggressive behaviours clearly showed the origins of his problems - early insecure and unpleasant attachment problems between himself and his parents. Early attachment problems profoundly affect future relationships, particularly the capacity to initiate and maintain loving relationships in adulthood.
ATTACHMENT THEORY
According to the attachment theory of love (Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Simpson, 1990), an adult becomes a secure lover, avoidant lover or an anxious-ambivalent lover in his or her romantic relationships based on the quality of his or her childhood parental relationship. Secure lovers are people who are comfortable with intimacy and have no problems with others feeling close to them. In contrast, avoidant lovers feel uneasy when close to another person. They have difficulty trusting or depending upon a partner. The third type, anxious-ambivalent lovers want to desperately get close to a partner, but often find that the partner does not reciprocate the feeling. This insecure relationship is often due to too much anxiety within the relationship stemming from the feeling that the partner does not really love them.
Hazan & Shaver (1987) research shows that about 53 per cent of adults are secure, 26 per cent are avoidant and 20 per cent are anxious-ambivalent. The research also shows that children whose fathers were absent or parents divorced or died are no more or less likely than other children with both parents in the home to become secure lovers. These findings should be good news for Jamaica where there is a preponderance of fatherless homes.
The prediction of adult attachment style is linked to the person's perception of the quality of the relationship with each parent. Each partner brings a personal history of love and attachment to a romantic relationship and a mismatching of attachment styles will cause jealousy in the insecure partner, especially if the partner is an anxious-ambivalent lover.
THE COMPOSITION OF JEALOUSY
Jealousy is a complex monster that develops from the melding of three other emotions - fear, anger and love. It is a boundary-setting mechanism that protects certain relationships as important and exclusive. Jealousy in committed relationships is cultural and universal to protect the relationship of physical intimacy and self-disclosure from trespassers. In fact, all committed relationships, where physical and emotional intimacy exist (including purely sexual relationships), will be subjected to jealousy.
Dr. Sydney McGill is a marriage and family therapist and executive director of the Family Counselling Centre of Jamaica, St. Ann; email: yourhealth@gleanerjm.com.
