Listen to the entire article:

 

In my work with patients who struggle in their romantic relationships, a common theme that emerges involves a relationship tendency I like to characterize as “attachment love” — which is distinct from the more preferable position of what I call “erotic love.” I will be differentiating these two styles of love in this podcast.

 

By attachment love, here is what I mean. Attachment is a well-researched psychological paradigm that involves the bonding dynamics between the infant and primary caregiver. When an infant is born, the infant (based on thousands of years of human evolution) is conditioned to adapt to the primary caregiver, usually the mother. Entirely dependent on the caregiver, the infant’s life literally hinges on the capacity to accommodate to the mother’s preferences, rhythms, moods, etc. in order to get what the infant needs. This involves the infant’s paying very close attention to what the mother prefers of the infant — for example, does the mother mind the infant’s crying; what level of activity on the part of the infant does the mother prefer, and so on. Once the infant locks onto what the mother wants, the infant will censure the parts of him- or herself the mother does not tolerate, will unconsciously hide or conceal aspects of his or her self in order to appeal to the caregiver. This secures the infant’s survival by harnessing the mother’s endorsement.

 

As the infant grows, the developing child continues to be socialized this way in other contexts, including at school, with teachers and peers, etc . These are all sources on which the child relies and depends, and to which the child accommodates in order to get his or her needs met.

 

So in summary, attachment is a type of interpersonal unconscious automatic pilot we humans are conditioned to enact in the world. In order to survive and get what we need from others who are important to us, we are programmed to learn what is wanted of us — what about ourselves is preferred and desired — and to enact these preferred characteristics in our relationships. The other elements of our identity, what constitutes the full range of our authentic feelings and proclivities, are edited and concealed, to a greater or lesser degree.

 

Now that’s the story of attachment, and in reality the attachment instinct should be limited to relationships of early life, mainly to the parent-child relationship in the first year or two of life. Past that time, what is required of the child to mature emotionally and psychologically, is for the child to “age out of attachment love” and progress into a higher, more evolved form of love eventually resulting in what I call “erotic love.”

 

In erotic love, one’s unconscious orientation toward a significant other is not motivated by appeasement, by merely doing what the other prefers and expects. Instead, it is motivated by the expression of one’s authentic self in which one’s personal value system, emotions, beliefs, and preferences are not censored but rather demonstrated to, and recognized by, one’s partner. And the quality of this more mature relationship type is linked to the degree to which both partners are truly more themselves (not less of themselves) when in relation to each other.

 

That is, being in the relationship helps each partner be more fully authentic, more oneself, and in fact helps each partner really discover and locate who one is.   This is a very different set-up than the dynamics of attachment relationships in which one’s identity is largely concealed and hidden.

 

A simple way to think about all I’ve said so far is that attachment love is characterized primarily by compliance, whereas erotic love is characterized by freedom.

 

For many people who’ve been unable to secure or maintain the romantic relationship they’ve really wanted, often a main problem or issue involved in their dilemmas is an unconscious interpersonal style oriented more toward “attachment love” than to “erotic love.”

 

While the components of attachment are never completely eradicated in adult living because some form of compromise and accommodation is necessary in all relationships, whether it be with a lover, institution, friend, or family member, what must occur is a turning down of the attachment instinct and the corresponding gradual emergence of an erotic instinct — erotic in my nomenclature not having to do with anything sexual per se but referring instead to the complete expression of self and identity in a relationship that is independent of the motive to secure the other’s approval or love.

 

When an erotic level of interpersonal experience is not achieved, an individual may continue with his or her attachment programming. So when this individual meets and is attracted to a new potential romantic partner, the attachment instinct is triggered automatically and unconsciously. This results in a series of small and ever increasingly larger accommodations to this new person that may actually work in helping create a relationship. However, the new relationship that develops is unfortunately not a real one. It is actually more akin to a parent-child relationship in which the attachment-oriented individual will gradually and inevitably lose him- or herself to the relationship as well as to his or her partner. Co-dependency may be thought of in this regard, that is, as the losing of oneself in order to adapt to, appease and secure the ongoing love of one’s romantic partner — in codependency, this amounts into a person essentially becoming the other (and no longer him or herself). If, instead, a person can establish and maintain an erotic position in a new relationship, the relationship has the potential to expand into an intimate bond that celebrates the individuality of each partner as well as the mutuality that bonds them together.