Attachment in Adulthood by Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver

Reading Response Paper #2
- choose a sentence or idea that you agree with and explain why
- choose a sentence or idea that you disagree with or that confuses you and explain why.

I agree with a lot of what this excerpt deals with. Specifically though, what I think sums things up is a part of the “Individual Differences In Attachment-System Functioning”.
This idea can also be found in the reading under the head “The Cognitive Substrate Of The Attachment System”.
Within the opening paragraph it talks about the flexibility of the behaviors over time through experience. The more varied contexts that you engage in the more evolvement each behavioral pattern for you goes through. You tailor your interaction with each person you have a relationship with, knowing the boundaries and general reactions that will result from your behavioral-system. I do believe in an ever-evolving nature of interaction and that we are adaptable creatures who retain habits, we will learn from the reactions we receive and they will eventually become dominant through repetitive affirmation. When we are children, I do agree that there are patterns established, there are to be dominant ones that over time can be written over from monitoring and appraising behavioral systems in ever changing contexts. I believe that we can recognize the results even, but sometimes can not put them into practice right away. Something inside of us is programmed to a specific system, and when that system fails to produce the same result as it used to within one relationship, though you can cognitively rationalize why the changed outcome is occurring, your dominant behavioral system is invoked with same failure. It seems to take time for this evolution, or updated program to happen. So maybe this system becomes instinctual in a way. What causes this sudden chain-reaction of behaviors? Even after you have monitored and appraised the effectiveness of them with them clearly not being the most positive or productive one?
I will mention something of obsession here, looking and longing for this particular outcome can become an obsession, a loss of security that you can’t quite accept, but can understand on a basic level.
I feel like this excerpt didn’t touch heavily upon the coping mechanisms that one can acquire and practice, or the lack there of, in the absense of the “goal”.

Something that I found not to be true, or didn’t understand the take on, is that in order to fully develop an attachment bond you need to be in a relationship for 1-2 years. This shorter amount of time can then cause less grief if there separation occurs. This is speculated by Hazan and Zeifman (1999) As if to say that the two people have not simply had the time to interact with each other enough to know how they react and therefore go through this analyzing and appraising process. This is somewhat of a linear way of looking at this sense of attachment that you feel with someone. I do believe that perhaps it’s easier to move on when you have more to look forward, more to experience, more time to evolve without that one person. But I feel that I can say that I have had stronger attachment bond from knowing someone only a couple months, than I have from another that I have been involved with for years. Perhaps this is because I felt a false sense of security or I kept hoping for one outcome, and it took me a long time to realize that I would never get it. Where I have had a more responsive relationship in a shorter amount of time that I have mourned more deeply.
Here I would also like to bring up another study that my friend told me about. One which talked about the fact that by 3 or 4 years of age a child no longer feels anxious about being physically attached to the “principal attachment figure”. Hazan and Zeifman speculate that adolescent and adult relationships that develop into what they call “real attachment relationships” go through the same stages described by Bowlby and Ainsworth. Using this notion, my friend went on to reason as to why people’s relationships go stale or someone in the relationship feels restless. It is this new found detachment, or no longer the need of this kind of detachment that leads them to finding something new.