Developmental Trajectories of Adult Romantic Attachment: Assessing the Influence of Observed Interactions With Family of Origin

The present study evaluates longitudinal trajectories of adult romantic attachment during adulthood using latent growth curve modeling. We also tested how observed family interactions were related to trajectories of attachment-related anxiety and avoidance from ages 25 to 31 years (on average). Stability coefficients for attachment variables across 6 years were around .50. Growth modeling results suggested that people tend to become less anxious as they mature into adulthood and that there were individual differences in changes during this period. Although family interaction quality in the adolescent years predicted levels of romantic attachment anxiety and avoidance in young adulthood, this association did not extend to changes in attachment between the ages of 25–31 years. Overall, it seems that attachment variables demonstrate some degree of consistency over time even as the average trend is for declines in anxiety. Moreover, adolescent interactions with parents were not strong predictors of changes in attachment during adulthood. This is consistent with the view that family relationships during adolescence are associated more strongly with the stable components of attachment rather than dynamic aspects in adulthood.

Disgraced of the West, Deserted of the East: Men in the Films Shame and Issız Adam (Alone)

Apart from being shot in almost the same decades, Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011) and Issız Adam (Çağan Irmak, 2008) have other analogies that require to study on. Even though both men live in different cultures and have different relationship models, they struggle in life concurrently. While Steve McQueen’s Shame focuses on uncompromising sex addiction that overthrows a man’s life, Çağan Irmak’s Issız Adam takes it on a romantic level and presents a lonely man who cannot attach women. Though it seems an ordinary attachment problem on the surface, both men have deep social, sexual, familial problems that force them to be left alone. In consideration of adult romantic attachment theory of Hazan and Shaver (1987), both male characters will be examined under the topics of adult loneliness and love, romantic incest and sex addiction to analyze the reasons and the results of the bond that both male characters cannot have built.

Adult Romantic Attachment, Electronic Messaging, and Relationship Quality

The present study examined associations among adult romantic attachment, relationship quality, and electronic messaging frequency/preferences in 302 romantically-partnered undergraduates. Satisfaction with partner’s messaging frequency positively related to one’s own relationship quality. Anxious people desired more frequent messages than they received, whereas avoidant people desired less frequent messages than they received. Anxious people sent more messages to their partners than they received, whereas avoidant people received more messages than they sent. Additionally, anxious people took less time to respond to their partner than their partners took to respond to them, whereas avoidant people took more time to respond to their partner than their partners did to respond to them. We discuss implications for attachment theory, romantic relationship satisfaction, and electronic communication.

Love in the First Degree: Individual Differences in First-Person Pronoun Use and Adult Romantic Attachment Styles

The current project brings together over 1,400 observations drawn from seven studies to examine relations between adult romantic attachment styles and pronoun use. In each study, participants provided autobiographical narratives from the romantic domain and completed measures assessing their attachment styles. Pronoun use in the resulting narrative material was quantified using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Across studies, anxious and avoidant attachment styles were found to relate positively with I-talk and negatively with we-talk, respectively. Furthermore, after accounting for a range of demographic (e.g., age) and psychological (e.g., neuroticism) covariates, the negative relation between avoidant attachment and we-talk remained significant. Thus, the pronouns individuals use when describing their romantic experiences provide indication of their attachment styles. As such, this project carries implications for the detection and diagnosis of romantic domain functioning.