Review of various Internet articles on attachment theory in general and on specific related sociological and psychological topics, as well as how I relate the categories to my personal experience. May 2023.

Christopher Clayton

05/06/2023

In this overview, I initially describe how various articles on the Internet explain attachment theory and specific sub-sets of it. At a high level, I also describe my own personal experience dealing with my own attachment anxiety in various interpersonal scenarios. In later sections, I relate these concepts and experiences to academic sociological principles and relational patterns in modern society to offer ethical conclusions in how attachment emotions of various sorts could be responsibly respected and approached.

As with any system of categorization, context matters and nuance applies. It is a tool toward insight in the same way as any other model of understanding.

There are also always multiple sides to every interpersonal situation. In an emotional incompatibility matter, it's ultimately no-one's fault. However, a connection of any kind will not continue without compromise or some other mutual reconciliation to smooth out the differences.

Website Explanations and Review of Attachment Theory

An extensive and plain-language overview of each attachment style (major category) is summarized by Mark Manson [1, MarkManson.net]. He goes over the four classic categories, as well as the theory that initial attachment 'templates' stem from childhood familial relationships.

Secure types can handle all sorts of connections and still feel emotionally stable but can healthily cope if a connection ends. They can actively walk away from someone who does not want further contact or closeness (avoidants) instead of continuing to chase them.

Avoidants are not willing to discuss feelings and/or want to prevent becoming vulnerable in the first place.

Anxious types fear their emotional concerns will not be reciprocated and/or worry that the connection is always at risk.

Anxious-avoidants bubble over into emotional outbursts (however that is defined in context) at attempts from another person to get closer, once they experience a certain level of intolerable stress. However, they can experience a simultaneous feeling of wanting more closeness.

He points out that different styles can manifest under different circumstances, and that people can work on themselves to have more secure responses. Further in, he notes that an "opposites attract" effect can occur if someone pushes an avoidant enough to make them feel secure, but this can end up in a perpetual "chaser-chasee" dynamic.

In terms of the emotional feelings that come with a sense of attachment, an article at Regain.us' advice column emphasizes the subjectivity of it [2, Regain.us]. The other person may not feel the same way regardless of how one feels a connection is going, and regardless of the sense of shared experiences, conversations and body language that has built up. It goes over signs as to when a sense of attachment may be turning unhealthy such as a need for constant contact, and provides ideas for how to re-center.

Going into the after-effects of an attachment experience, Glamour.com describes the sadness at an unreciprocated connection; 'disenfranchised grief' [3, Glamour.com]. Even though a place of mutual agreement could not be achieved and the connection ceased functioning, even early on, the article shows that there can be a need to grieve afterward. It requires all the healing necessary in the same way as other situations. An example the site tocuhes on would be a 'situationship' where one person felt more passionate, but faced rejection after bringing up new desires.

Highlighting the individual side of connections further, PsyPost summarizes a study where a correlation was found between sweepingly characterizing someone else with a negative attribute while experiencing one of the three insecure attachment styles [4, PsyPost]. This emphasizes always considering how the other person may be feeling in any given connection, and to temper expectations toward a compromise-oriented route while being aware of one's own feelings & that they are not necessarily shared.

Specifically on the avoidant side, 'Exploring your mind' blog looks at the intersection between avoidance and individual narcissism [5, Exploring your mind]. After describing classical traits of both, it concludes that the difference lies in empathy and intention. An avoidant is not necessarily devoid of empathy, but doesn't want to be vulnerable or express emotions, or doesn't know how to express themselves. The individual narcissist instead opportunistically withholds affection, assigns blame and retreats.

On the anxious side, PsyPost describes a study finding a correlation between attachment anxiety and collective narcissism (high self-importance based on one's sense of identity in a certain group, and worry about the group's level of recognition in society) [6, PsyPost]. Samples of people who identified with certain in-groups were studied for their opinions on various topics, such as the efficacy of certain government policies, and willingness to take non-normative action to make change where a situation was identified as not benefitting their group (e.g. willingness to manipulate others to build up agreement on topics identified as group-critical; to destroy property to make a point that advances the group).

The concept can be applied to individual relationships in that frustrations should be reflected upon, then put forward in a way that does not accuse the other person of wrongdoing. Even though the subjectivity should be properly acknowledged, if it is affecting someone in the connection, it should be legitimately discussed for possible compromise or to otherwise make changes to the dynamics.

High-Level Relation to My Personal Experience

On my side, when I come to view a connection as close and that I feel care for the other person, I tend to feel anxiety after eight months to a year of contact, with at least a few interactions per week in such a period. This is in the context of my being the relatively passive party, not initiating many (if any) of the conversations in those particular connections. I built up more of a willingness to respond and to share more details about myself as they progressed. These situations took place in the Seattle area.

Such a dynamic and subsequent feeling of care for the other person prompts me to bring up my concerns, which come down to wanting more regular social activities and to bring up how I feel. When I first started to experience this, I did not know how to put precise words to my experience, and could only say that I needed help with pain or upset I was feeling in the connection.

After gaining more awareness, I have all the more strove toward leaving it open for further suggestions in a process of finding compromise. I want more of a formalized structure at that point and trust that there's enough of a build-up to allow for that. Even so, in most cases I've been through, I normally discover that the other person would rather avoid having serious conversation on those topics and not make any changes to how the connection worked.

That was the choice of the other person in each circumstance, and they did what they had to do. As shown in these Internet articles, it comes down to attachment incompatibility under the specific circumstances. My attachment anxiety flared in terms of wanting more reassurance in how the social pattern was working in each case. It turned out the other person experienced discomfort toward the related topics I brought up as a result. Neither of these feelings had manifested until the connections reached a certain level of development.

Both myself and each person I was getting to know acted in ways to preserve or increase a sense of interpersonal well-being. It was ultimately no-one's fault that our different emotional patterns prevented reaching a consensus. It was then my problem to heal and grieve over each connection due to my own emotional sensitivity, and to cut communication as promptly as possible, however difficult it may have been.

The lesson of stopping all contact (both in-person and digital) with someone who is ultimately incompatible in areas where a mutual sense of importance cannot be reached for whatever reason, and where compromise & acceptable social suggestions cannot be found in those areas, has always been a harsh one for me. Attempting to continue as usual, or to bring up the concerns again after such a fundamental disagreement, will result in one or the other person being uncomfortable and/or not having their needs met, whatever the type of connection. I've always had to become more efficient at realizing how I'm feeling, bringing up my concerns more effectively & concisely regardless of how they are received, and then cleanly walking away as needed.

Directness and passive aggression - 7/27/2024

As someone who both prefers to be approached and is slow to say what is bothering him in personal connections, that doesn't mean I suddenly explode later or give snarky comments in place of how I feel. I may say what's bothering me directly far later because the emotional risk doesn't fully actualize until later, but I frame it in a matter of fact way where I describe as accurately as possible how I'm feeling and why, and judge the other person by their response given that they may not have intentionally been emotionally using me or bothering me.

In cases where I developed attachment anxiety after someone else initiated hundreds of interactions with me where I encouraged it at least through my own responses, as stated before, that's been my approach to create a chance at a mutual resolution that works for myself and the other person. If I simply took no emotional risk and told people to back off too soon in an absolute manner, that would have provided no basis for any sort of connection to even form at all, whether it be a friendship or any other potential.

When I'm impacted that way in such a situation, I attempt cleanly breaking contact to let the connection fade if the response to my concern (amount of attachment anxiety I'm feeling in the connection) is for the other person to not allow any changes, even after I make specific social suggestions and keep it open to alternate suggestions. Unfortunately at that point, for me it's a choice between keeping the status quo that stopped working for me entirely, or a potentially lengthy period of disenfranchised grief from the connection completely ending, when I brought up concerns in the first place to strengthen the bond in each circumstance. Particularly in early situations I went through, walking away definitively, at least from any further digital contact, was difficult. However, it is ultimately the necessary approach in a connection with an imbalanced power dynamic, where one or both sides cannot see the other's feelings or concerns as legitimate toward at least making a compromise or a mutually positive outcome.

This is especially the case if the other person has already been given a break from interactions out of respect for their avoidant feelings to consider making a change. If they still cannot come to a compromise or make other constructive suggestions even then such that they are permanently avoidant on key topics that the other person finds important, it isn't a healthy connection anymore due to complete emotional incompatibility.

When I didn't know in early situations I went through that what I was experiencing was attachment anxiety, I would vaguely say how I wasn't feeling good and asking for suggestions, and to a high frequency due to being upset, but then learned to simply state my anxiety in other cases and then largely left such connections alone to fade away if that development in itself was taken as too uncomfortable or not worth dealing with on their part. No-one should have to go through 'toughening up' and becoming emotionally calloused due to having feelings and concerns ignored, but there's no other choice except to figure out leaving a personal connection alone to fade away if there's no pathway to finding any ultimate common ground, especially if it started with a heavily unequal ratio of how often each side initiated contact, e.g. who largely started conversations or made social suggestions.

Jobs and professional interpersonal connections can have the same emotional impact, but being outwardly polite and not making criticism too quickly can be a factor in retaining the job by not causing too much of a stir. I don't see that as particularly 'passive aggressive' as long as one doesn't explode in anger suddenly at other people due to built-up irritation.

For my part, in workplace situations that bothered me such as being made to do more and more types of comparative advantages and utilize other skills/competencies without a pay raise within the context of labor as a market-determined expense, I undertook the tasks within that context to continue learning. This was especially true undergoing volunteer work and an unpaid internship.

In my paid work, if a process continued to aggravate me, I'd make my feelings eventually known either in a private email to my immediate manager or immediate group of people involved in that process, and why it was a bother. I.e. making a case as to why doing this or that admin process in aid of a particular supplier, or to do this or that process, didn't make sense to inform how someone else taking on my role later might feel and that they may not do an efficient job at those tasks for those reasons. This was particularly in the context of more and more departments piling admin tasks onto the sourcing department for which I worked when I assisted suppliers doing invoice proofreading, order cutting and other related tasks, and then as an end-to-end supply planner for a specific group of products but with other departments acting as 'maverick buyers' to a large degree. To me, this squeezed the demand and capacity variables at both ends for making supply plans effectively before those supplier and retailer customer negotiation conditions were handed off unilaterally to the sourcing department.

I couldn't ultimately do much about that specific corporate structure for purchasing, but in other cases pointed out unequal relations with shipping companies versus their actual results in efficient shipping, i.e. performing admin work for them to ensure purchase orders uploaded into their systems versus actual shipping efficiency they gave us. Even if I didn't effect a change in moving to a different logistics software service, it at least served as a capstone right before switching, and my manager as well as other department managers involved with the logistics software provider who instituted the admin processes for the non-managerial staff of the sourcing department to execute were aware of the impacts.

Further thoughts on avoidance in relation to my experiences and certain classes of social media videos - 11/24/2024

I didn't realize it until related videos started blowing up my YouTube feed, but there are a lot of videos on YouTube regarding avoidance. That is, the anxiety of feeling too smothered by intimacy or fearful of any hint of intimacy in a particular connection at all resulting in withdrawal. Thus, leading to a 'push-pull' dynamic if the other person is anxious about keeping more consistent activity and wondering why there was a pull-back (what some may call outward anxiety versus inward anxiety), which may make an avoidant person withdraw even further. The videos I see particularly focus on intimate connections. Of course, it all has to be taken in the context of the fact that anxious/avoidant or 'outwardly anxious' and 'inwardly anxious' is a system of describing relative patterns and strategies.

As described, I can certainly relate to this as someone who can get outwardly anxious and have seen the effects of people pulling away from me, but I restrict my type of anxiety, which only ever occurs after getting to know someone for months, if ever, to stating what I need and what's not working for me. Then I always pull back or go 'no contact' in the parlance of YouTube videos describing all of this to 'give space'. As I also described, I've always decisively stopped in-person contact but struggled with trying to reconcile and so on in some original situations where I was first getting used to being in such a situation. It may be described that what I go through isn't always so much outward, active anxiety to get reassurance in the connection but rather realizing what I need and trying to set a boundary, or find a compromise, around what I really need after a connection gets to a certain place (a type of secure attachment, given that not everyone will be free of interpersonal anxiety so that standard doesn't make sense to describe 'secure attachment'). Still, I admit when I've gone overboard and have gotten more and more decisive in stopping all contact in different types of connections that weren't working at all, even after a 'break', due to emotional incompatibility.

Some YouTube videos go as far as suggesting that someone who is avoidant (in some terminologies, again, someone who is 'inwardly anxious' about receiving intimacy given that all the so-called 'attachment disorders' involve anxiety anyway) can be reassured by practicing very particular check-in schedules and patterns of re-assurance to make them more secure, if not to achieve a secure attachment pattern for them. In my situations, I could have done more of that out of being more empathetic. However, YouTubers putting out such strategies aren't necessarily psychologists and I can't see how any particular patterns necessarily will smooth over such differences. It's all up to the particular connection and the level of mutual desire to overcome differing needs on both peoples' parts, regardless of the nature of the connection. I'd still say someone who is relatively more extraverted to take the initiative on such a topic should put their ideas out there, and then if there's no reception to it then that's it. It's up to the other person at that point.

In some of my interpersonal situations, I also didn't know exactly what started to make me dissatisfied and thus what my general needs actually were. Thus I expected in various instances the other respective person to help assuage me or help figure out the problem together. I still allowed space (no contact) when it was clear we couldn't find a compromise, but articulating needs clearly is a part of all this, alongside willingness to walk away if a compromise cannot be reached. Someone who relative to the other person in a given connection wants to avoid certain topics cannot justify complete avoidance of them as a healthy boundary as that de-legitimizes the other person's feelings, and a connection won't work healthily under such power dynamics. So I've never settled for such situations myself, although again, this came at the consequence of disenfranchised grief occurring faster and more intensely than it could have otherwise, and I still wasn't by any means perfect at fully disengaging completely from social media or text messaging in some situations as a result. Besides the fact that I hadn't reflected on my own needs before certain connections developed into attachment situations.

Assertiveness in relations, including in economically consequential work contexts - 3/9/2025

My friend often brings up in jokes that people in the Pacific Northwest, including in commentary directed right at me when I'm relating my own experience with internships, work and school, that they are so polite as to be push-overs. But that then they only fume later anyway in private without doing much about it.

To me, values of politeness and finding equal social contracts even in the face of those who don't seemingly care and wish to exploit a situation is a virtuous standpoint. Of course, if you do have an intolerable issue with a social contract you are in, fuming privately over it as the sole response, or becoming entirely non-responsive or sarcastic to the other person in a way which makes them believe you are being that way 'without reason' due to the sudden onset of such an attitude without explaining your position, doesn't work toward potentially solving the power imbalance.

However, the other problem is that because we do in fact mostly live in societies where companies have normalized 'labor as a commodity' where various comparative advantages that are presumably needed by a company nevertheless end up being paid highly different base compensation levels compared to actual company performance, this may mean someone has a legitimate reason to put up with verbal abuse on the job or other indignities. The vast majority of companies operate on this premise and so this may be taken to be fair 'free market' logic as far as they are concerned, despite companies working to price-hint at each other and to gain large company status through further layers of unequal contracts such as threatening smaller businesses with economic ruin if they don't accept a buy-out at a certain valuation, exacerbating the fact that few alternate employment systems currently exist in active practice. I.e., workers then have to put up with various purportedly meritocratic schemes or with employers changing the whole social contract later to say that one has plenty of experience meriting a high salary but that the skills have 'rusted' and aren't relevant anymore, despite peoples' capacity to learn. This results in putting people in a position of needing to accept employment contracts they may not have reasonably accepted otherwise because they may alternatively not earn enough even to minimally afford food and/or rent.

Even when I was only being paid close to the minimum USA 'overtime exempt' salary level as it still stood in the after-effects of the Recession (~23k USD) and just finishing college, I treated these types of encounters in employment as lessons in pain (unfortunately), but eventually pushed back in select circumstances when it became too intolerable for me. I.e., the way sales or product people treated me in my lower-level supply chain roles as I summarized in my post 'Personal experience in the cross collaborative nature of purchasing job functions'. These other co-workers, including those in Europe and Canada, likely didn't realize how little I was earning in my comparative advantage assignment, where I started off as a temp worker and where the third-party recruiter even cited my lack of finding a job after college to that point as a means of cajoling me to accept the job, even though I was also doing plenty of additional work beyond initial low-level shipping coordination and supplier update roles. I.e. I set up a lot of task automation using MS Excel macros (amalgamating multiple supplier reports and updating the ERP system for new dates; summarizing air freight costs) and that was decidedly not part of the job description. Hence how employers further cheat on their very concept of paying for different skills on a supply and demand basis by covering all sorts of non-compensated work under 'other tasks as needed', which can exacerbate these types of tensions. In such situations, people may be reluctant to speak up doubly so because of feeling an attachment to their job and not wanting to lose it because of familiarity of it in spite of having issues with it.

This is particularly where exploitation in social contracts and economic contracts intersect. However, in each instance I had an issue I did eventually assert myself, such as stating exactly where I didn't believe it was fair to coordinate shipment information with suppliers over and over again when the international teams could help coordinate their shares, where I stated how I felt our primary shipping company for the US to that point had been asking the low-level supply chain personnel to do a lot of admin work for them in uploading purchase order data when they couldn't even give us sensible shipping routes in some urgent situations or couldn't accommodate us in other ways such as making sure certain products off a container were prioritized for truck shipments, and where I didn't see why product directors should have total control over price negotiations with factories to the detriment of potential supply readiness dates when I was the supply planner for those products at that point (directly impacting what I could do in creating a supply plan in collaboration with factories). This didn't always result in immediate changes or even any changes, but I nevertheless found willingness to eventually bring up those topics.

Even in my unpaid internship at a small law firm, in response to being yelled at frequently such as on the first day when I was confused waiting for orders but apparently was expected to go ask for more work voluntarily, I deliberately cut down the hours I was willing to do. I particularly questioned the concept of needing to loiter around the neighborhood for the office to open up just for the privilege of doing work for free when I was criticized later for leaving one day after I had been waiting outside for at least twenty minutes while already anxious due to the relational pattern that had already developed by then. The job tasks also ended up primarily overlapping in a similar way with what I had done for the AARP in a completely different anti-fraud context (in this law firm context, doing warm-calls to follow up with people expressing interest in renting a house as part of helping its rental side-business, and logging the call results). I in no way felt I was receiving learning '60% of the time', let alone in litigation concepts or legal research, which is Federally required of a US unpaid internship so I had no qualms about counter-asserting myself. However, I could also afford to do so because of living with my parents which is why I was able to afford doing an unpaid internship at all.

Further, even when I was in the video game modification community as a volunteer, there were some instances I didn't appreciate and made it known, particularly involving the community for one game at one website. I particularly didn't like someone advertising their mod in one of my forum threads, and for that I asked the creator of that similarly-themed mod to give me credit in their work. I was prone as a matter of my own values to credit others in the community in my readme files if I took any inspiration from their work. However, I took it too far in writing multiple messages asking for the same result over and over without effect in that user's thread, and was also counter-attacked for that, including by other community members accusing me of trying to start a non-judicial copyright dispute of sorts. There were also opinions about the validity of such a dispute in a modding context where the copyright status of mods and the ability to mod games was in serious question (before mods were widely embraced by original game creators, let alone well before posting video game footage in itself was not deemed as an attack on copyrights) when that wasn't even the point I was trying to make. That had to do with my own lack of clarity where I should have more concisely and precisely explained my having taken issue with the unsolicited advertising and not with the overlap in subject matter of the mods, i.e. that user trying to gain a one-sided benefit in enhanced exposure for their mod off of my original efforts for that overall game community. I ultimately chose to walk away completely from that entire video game community only some weeks afterward despite still thinking for a few months about trying to work on one of my larger projects, but it ended up that I made no further forum posts or modifications for any websites involved in that game's community again.

The finishing of that debacle (while I was in high school) is exactly when I decided to be less aggressive in general and thus where this one current friend may be reading 'PNW vibes' off me so strongly, including dating back to the very day he thought he heard me mumbling in anger to myself in my cubicle when we had just met as co-workers, but I apparently shut myself up quickly when he turned to look at me in those early instances. It did impact my sluggishly handling various situations afterward where I felt exploited but also wanted to be interpersonally polite about it all because I vowed not to be so hair-trigger assertive (what I'd call 'aggressive') and verbose as I was capable of in bulletin board message format as a video game modder dealing with related fan communities. I had to find my own balance later, especially because in the context of in-person connections, I didn't know then that I was capable of highly sensitive and strong attachment anxiety (anxiety from uncertainty of the status of this or that connection and uncertainty about when it was possible to socially see the other given person).

Ultimately, the same dilemma presents in personal relationship attachments where the consequence lies in completely losing a connection if you speak up about your own needs and about your own standpoint on the connection at a given point in its development. Some YouTubers talk about men in particular as being particularly 'stupid' if they do try to have an honest conversation in the context of certain types of connections due to their 'almost certainly' sacrificing the benefits they are trying to attain from such connections because of the other person 'almost certainly' being able to refuse compromise, where such YouTubers may claim various 'biotruths' and specific social conditions are supposedly causing this pattern. This particular gender dynamic receives seemingly endless treatment in 'how to talk to women' videos regarding what men should supposedly definitively never talk about versus what they 'should' talk about for chemistry-building or other reasons.

Regardless, as I said from my own personal experiences where I was very much pulled into connections that I didn't ask for but allowed them to occur because of my own (over)-politeness and openness, both in regards to men and women, i.e. others initiating tens and tens of interactions with me and their activating what I didn't know at first was a severely sensitive potential for feeling attachment, I don't see how honesty and risking some level of grief and further pain from a connection falling apart is not the most growth-oriented and freeing way to handle feeling exploited. Otherwise, you will be stuck where the other person gets all sorts of presumable emotional benefits from you and on their terms of contact frequency alone. This doesn't mean raging out with ad hominem attacks or accusations, which is never what I've personally done in any situation despite my self-describing my handling of some such situations as overly aggressive in terms of verbosity and not being as compromise-oriented, but bringing up in a matter of fact way how you are being affected by the connection and what you need is key. My original missteps and issues in finding resolution or a clean break had to do with repeating my points over and over and expressing my feelings repeatedly, but if someone else nevertheless doesn't care to earnestly engage in compromise or other conversation toward a mutually beneficial and sustainable pattern, however unbelievable it may be to experience that compared to how they acted up to that point, you have to walk away and cut communications after clearly expressing needs the first time.

Again, in my personal circumstances, it had to do with wanting to see the other person more often in each situation (even if only once a week) due to the sense of attachment that I came to feel after multiple months of consistent interactions (multiple each week). In most situations the other person was not amenable and I had to learn to sever all communications despite that, risking new types of pain and uncertainties within me. However, I had reached a level of taking on enough lessons in attachment pain in each of those contexts and thus was willing to let each respective connection break apart if a reasonable discussion to make changes to the connection couldn't be accomplished, situations where again I was an initiator of very few of the verbal interactions and none of the physical interactions. That to me amounted to emotional exploitation rather than an equal and honest connection, and I couldn't abide by it in comparison to the values that I have consistently kept hold of. It was more freeing in terms of allowing for an escape from what I felt was one-sided emotional usage compared to the attachment pain of allowing such patterns to continue, and thus a chance to heal from such status quos that I felt were all unfair; and where I didn't see how any of my requests or concerns were unreasonable or unable to be compromised on compared to the seeming level of mutually enthusiastic interactions that had built up into a feedback loop.

Limitations of emotional self-control as a concept versus communicating feelings - 4/26/2025

Recently, I have seen multiple social media posts in quick succession over the last week extolling the idea of 'not allowing oneself to have emotional reactions to what others do to you or say to you; step back and observe with logic and then realize any reaction is entirely in your control', and other variants of such advice in the same vein.

This is all fine logic regarding incidental encounters among strangers or for those who don't encounter one another that often in terms of emotional impulse control. However, if it's a situation rooted in attachment, i.e. prolonged interactions and exposure between two or more people, it's likely that one or more of the people will experience inherent emotional development in regard to such connections, whether they be anxious, avoidant, or relatively stable; and whether deep or shallow given the capability of most people to form a sense of having emotional bonds. This is also regardless of the 'why', as in how much of the emotion related to such connections is rooted in genetic or social influence and in someone's ideals or preferences, and regardless of which exact life events may have helped to establish a propensity or probability for a certain type of emotional state to occur in regards to certain connections relative to certain levels of familiarity development within certain connections.

Eventually bringing up one's emotions in deepening connections is the only way for such connections to then grow. As I've outlined previously, I tend toward 'Pacific Northwest' or 'Scandinavian' style politeness in terms of an unwillingness to bring up discussing feelings that may cause discomfort and thus may risk an avoidant response in a given connection, but letting a social pattern continue doesn't work when it comes to built-up emotional states that cannot simply be willed away because of their basis in concrete relational developments.

It's not necessarily a given person's fault for helping to create such feelings in someone, but if that someone has finally revealed how they are affected by different repeat actions and built-up familiarity, or otherwise how their emotions have developed from a totality of interactions and mutual learning but where there is no mutual willingness to negotiate or otherwise discuss what no longer works, there is no healthy basis for a continuation of such connections. If such situations were always entirely written off by society as 'the impacted person could have ignored their feelings or mustered self-control to conquer the feelings' as if all such situations are always entirely composed of ephemeral or incidental events, in the most harmful cases there wouldn't be any consideration for legal concepts such as the intentional infliction of emotional distress through repeat communications that are both unwanted and threatening, and neither for the potential pursuit of economic damages in the form of compensation over the expense of seeing a psychologist or other mental health professional because of harmful social interactions.

To me, bringing up feelings or needs represents a 'bid for connection' in the most general sense in any relational context from a psychological standpoint. Still, I primarily analyze the scenario of a relatively passive person bringing up such concerns after in essence already having agreed to repeatedly give responsive attention to someone displaying relatively higher initiative because my experience heavily involves such scenarios. The Gottman Institute in particular goes into the psychological concept of bids in their articles, building on its primary founder's originating ideas on the topic, but it mainly seems to analyze the concept from firmly-established intimate relationship settings and that further appears to be where most of its paid services lie, besides advice for single people [Gottman Institute article examples]. At least in these examples, it also proffers specific solutions for how to 'turn into' different specific requests or specific needs in that specific context. Especially after considering nuanced matters from a sociological perspective, I can only find that willingness to negotiate within a standard of reasonableness compared to relative power dynamics and prior relational development in a given connection, whether 'intimate' or not and regardless if both people agree on its current status, is the only basis for generating any sort of conclusions about the health of a connection because of the uniqueness of any given one and surrounding complexities.

Perceptions of gender in relation to attachment patterns and interpersonal relations - 6/17/2025

As I alluded to before, at least within a Western societal context, it has become more and more common for videos on YouTube in particular to explore attachment as a concept, and invariably some such videos touch on connections of deep feelings or romantic feelings on at least one person's part in such connections; in particular in regard to heterosexual dynamics. Yet essentially none of them that I encounter really explore the sociological aspects of such connections in relation to the current state of affairs.

Analysis regarding how we arrived at the vast majority of societies having patriarchal power structures as opposed to original tribal matriarchal structures has been explored in-depth in the academic literature. E.g., see one of the origins overviewing accumulated studies in this area in Lewis H. Morgan's Ancient Society (1877). This category of literature does not require reading works that may be considered to involve politicized conclusions or politicized spins on the topic such as Engels' later Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) that asserted very specific social recommendations out of such information, or later more explicitly feminist works.

In any event, modern popular culture videos purporting to explain why women in particular might not be interested in deeper connections or exploring them (again, in particular heterosexual connections), to me, miss the mark. Again, such videos may take a 'biotruth' approach or a similar 'inherent nature' approach to gender and/or biological sex, dangerously approaching 'red pill' territory or expressing sympathy to such concepts, even if it is not named outright. I.e., that men somehow need to take power and assertiveness 'back' in a modern relational context to have 'rights' again, at least as far as heterosexual romantic relationships, and that this is 'natural' such that inherent rights have somehow been eroded.

Further, some such assertions might express that in essence it is the anxiously avoidant person's 'fault' for 'ruining' a connection, where again this ends up primarily being asserted in regard to women given that it is women who are perceived as having a lesser presence in dating contexts going by statistics, such as their supposed fewer numbers on most dating software applications, and/or that women respond in different ways on average in such contexts. E.g., in June 2021 (updated in 2024), DatingAdvice.com reported more equal male-to-female ratios on certain applications (namely Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid) than other analyses elsewhere (both in articles and on social media posts such as Reddit) have speculated upon within the reality that determining exact ratios is not feasible due to corporations having no motive to release such data, and noted how differences in motivation and strategy can influence how people use such applications which can exaggerate the perception of a gender ratio skew [DatingAdvice.com]. One contrasting social media example claiming a hyper-majority of men in major dating apps, at least in Western countries, based on purported statistical sources is https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFeminists/comments/10iwhno/men_are_an_average_of_70_of_dating_app_users_in/. Either way, this could then be used as a basis for some commenters to assert that this somehow represents an inherent gender behavioral difference to proffer advice regarding 'what men need to do.'

The problem with this type of analysis is that we arrived at the current state of dating and the current state of other types of deep connection patterns precisely because of patriarchy (a sociological phenomenon, not an inherently biologically-derived feature of society). Those who identify as women or who are treated as such have factually been abused physically and/or emotionally to a high degree, or have good cause to feel that they have been, in all sorts of relational contexts, from domestic life to work; and were not able to participate in society in the same ways until relatively recently. It can be argued that men under-report similar abuses by women compared to existing formal statistics, but the power structure even now is still inherently patriarchal in the vast majority of social contexts.

Trying to assert 'men's inherent place in society' as a reaction against women rightfully withdrawing from certain types of connections in response to real abuses of power, or having a perception of women as now somehow being 'more selective' regarding which connections they choose to enter into or to deepen as if this is a threat, can only create more of the same cycle. I even see people on YouTube who identify as psychologists in essence taking this approach of inherent gendered natures to proffer solutions about how men supposedly need to do this or that to get the type of attention they might want as part of this analytical basis, again without apparent regard to sociological factors.

Current relational patterns and dynamics clearly have had an effect on everyone's ability to form intimate connections in particular, whether or not a particular someone is truly abusive and actively contributing to women's withdrawal from certain types of connections, but telling more men to act in specific ways or to have specific appearances as if this somehow formulaically conjures up very specific interpersonal results to me does not address the continuing core issues. It's seemingly an attempt at addressing patriarchy-derived social consequences by telling men to act more patriarchal on a conscious individual scale. This again further ignores the vast corpus of sociological explanations for gendered behavior borne from family and social studies in favor of asserting gender roles as having an inherent biological or psychological basis of some sort. However, proffered solutions borne from such an absolute hypothesis do not comport with everyone's inherent ability to make choices using the emotions and tools they have at their disposal, as well as everyone's continuing emotional development and general ability to learn.

I'm primarily considering attachment scenarios in established connections within whatever context they may have taken place, and not the idea that specific types of connections have supposed less-efficient bases to be formed in the first place in modern society. However, I wanted to touch on the topic because it is important in a modern social context, including the irony of any such actual issues having an origin in or being amplified by backlash to social progress and continued absolute views on gender roles by some. I then necessarily agree that issues of continued gendered violence and harassment should take precedence as representing much greater harm over any group's perceived inaccessibility to forming certain types of connections, which Reddit users in the above thread covered.

That being said, going back to the primary subject matter of connections of various sorts that have formed over months and months, as I've essentially indicated in other sections, I don't find it ethical in the least for someone to completely cut off and destroy a connection that that someone asserted and initiated in the first place only because the other relatively unassertive target finally starts attempting to make built-up feelings known while simultaneously also attempting to express openness to a variety of outcomes. Again, I tend to be the latter such person (relatively outwardly anxious by a certain point and cautious about expressing my feelings before it gets to that developmental point to be sure of where I stand without attempting to assert power myself, which I tend to see as too aggressive). However, even in that circumstance where one person in a connection takes their own need for avoidance as supremely important once they feel their power of complete initiative has been challenged, the complexities of the origin for such conditionally avoidant feelings and for attitudes about what to do with the feelings have to be recognized.

Particularly in a gendered analytical framework regarding any sort of connection between a woman and a man, it could be said that a man on average will be physically 'stronger' in some way (at least in upper-body strength due to sociologically gendered workout proclivities or biological muscle density differences), and may be more willing on average to use violence or threats for various sociological reasons related to encouragement under patriarchal social structures. Thus, that even in a deep attachment scenario stretching for months that it could be asserted it is dangerous for women in particular to ever do anything less than to take alleviating their own discomfort first because of an absolute ever-present threat of implied violence in all such circumstances. However, I again don't see this as a necessarily inherently fair conclusion or that this is a particularly strongly-justified stand-alone excuse to disengage from and destroy all such connections as soon as they stop being completely and fully convenient for one of the people in such a connection. Further, not every man is sized larger than most women in significant ways in a given society (me, for example).

In a connection with continual interactions and development stretching out for months with seeming mutually-enthusiastic development occurring and where one person has been the more-passive party with developing attachment feelings that the person wants to discuss, if that more-passive person is a man, this perception of men as having the higher likelihood of resorting to violence or threats in the context of a patriarchal society still has to be considered as a factor as to how that man may respond to receiving rejection around any sort of discussion or negotiation from bringing up his feelings within that given connection. However, if there are no actual explicit threats or ad hominem attacks besides the man stating how he feels in the connection and why while making open-ended suggestions for change, yet the formerly more-initiative person doesn't want to take into account these new developments at all and then doesn't want to negotiate entirely on the absolute excuse of having fear over patriarchal violence anyway even in spite of a lack of evidence that this could possibly occur in that specific scenario, what was the point of forming such a connection at all except for one-sidedly using someone? It's again the right of the formerly-initiative person to destroy the whole connection for any reason, but I can't find that destroying it on very general structural sociological or biological excuses makes sense for overall health and stability in social connections. The person taking an overwhelming amount of relations-building initiative in situations involving an unequal display of initiative-taking could also back off from continually asserting power in that way before such pushing results in the potential for lopsided attachment outcomes in the first place.

By all means, 'men's sense of ego' in particular should not somehow be taken as more important in any given connection, but based on the principles of attachment theory while wholistically taking into account the state of society due to patriarchy, what I describe as a balanced conclusion is that the person who took relatively more initiative to establish some sort of an interpersonal connection and is now faced with considering the needs of their target should perhaps reasonably consider those needs instead of absolutely rejecting them, and leaving a potential mess of intense attachment pain and grief behind as soon as the connection isn't absolutely one-sidedly convenient anymore. Any connection will require give-and-take and mutual recognition to function healthily and without a sense of grievance taking place; this is why the value in discussion and updating one another features so highly in my conclusions.

I'm still not referring to someone's sense of entitled rage at feeling rejected in a perfect stranger scenario on the street or some other public place with little or no prior connective build-up; I would absolutely without question describe that as unjustified and baseless entitlement. Otherwise, what I'm getting at is that in all sorts of other scenarios, because it's likely that one or the other person (or both) in an ongoing connection will experience attachment feelings, I have to conclude that some level of desire and assertiveness to negotiate is not unreasonable and is necessary for connections to grow. Thus, that I find at minimum that if the other person absolutely rejects to negotiate when there are no explicit threats of violence or intimidation, this causes needless pain and reframes the entire prior development of such a connection as one entailing emotional usage. I then describe this as baseline unethical due to the resulting impact on society, even after taking into account gendered concerns and patriarchal societal power imbalances.

It may also be said that it's important to take into account that women may experience pain earlier and thus have a possibility of adapting to it earlier or getting used to it earlier due to inherent sexual characteristics and particular biological developments compared to men on average. E.g., see pain studies that take these factors into account [NIH reposting of a National Journal of Anaesthesia article covering such matters]. Again, though, in relatively heterosexual connections or connections involving women and men in general, why should this preclude an attempt at mutual understanding and negotiation relative to both peoples' experience with such pain and how this influences feelings of attachment at a given stage of a given connection? Especially regarding such differences which can lead to mismatched levels of empathy (whether emotional or intellectual), I don't see how a mutual and frank discussion as a matter of caution should not be able to yield the most growth, even if some of the 'magic' of a particular connection is lost because of having an explicit discussion, or that this then makes the connection either more boring or more inherently uncomfortable at first.

On the other side of gender/sex-based nuance, I've seen the sentiment on Reddit and in other social media contexts that a man expressing feelings at all is justification for ending a heterosexual connection on the expectation that a man should be strong at all times. E.g., see discussion in https://www.reddit.com/r/dating/comments/11a3ohb/do_women_get_turned_off_by_men_who_talk_about/. Obviously, I can't agree with that notion from the sociological perspective of sharing feelings and working through them in the process of creating an honest bond that isn't based on undue differences in power, whether based in gendered assumptions or otherwise; and working through differences in attachment and stress response without either person feeling the need to hide aspects of themselves. However, I again put this in the context of a connection that has been building for months, in the least.

Throughout this entire disposition on attachment, I've been concerned about mutual emotional health and advancement within particular connections without one party ending up being left in absolute grief or other forms of distress and the attendant impacts this has on society, but without considering extreme unreasonable situations such as one person absolutely wanting a particular outcome; particularly where this amplifies existing gendered inequities. I'm still referring to the inability at all of one party to compromise or to otherwise express willingness to work toward a mutually beneficial outcome, regardless of the reasons for such a refusal, within a connective interplay that has been renewed at least a few times per week over the course of months and particularly where one person takes a majority or overwhelming initiative to create a connective pattern to begin with.

Relation of the concept of harassment to attachment scenarios and social contracts - 6/25/2025

In previous sections, I've essentially made a case for meaningful negotiation and honest information-sharing in attachment situations, and I asserted that in the least it's unethical to outright abandon any such negotiations that were initiated in good faith (especially if the abandoner initiated the vast majority of interactions in the first place). Simultaneously, I acknowledged in general my own missteps as an attachment target in the process of figuring out how to effectively counter-assert myself. In essence, I find in such scenarios that a social contract exists with potential consequences as such in the form of attachment anxiety and disenfranchised grief on one or both persons' parts if some level of compromise or mutual agreement cannot be formed after a certain stage of development causing at least one of the people to have concerns and/or additional needs in relation to the connection.

This then leads to where legal concepts may inform the topic. Harassment in various US States is essentially defined as willfully repeated unwanted, threatening, emotionally disturbing and/or fear-raising actions (at least from a reasonable person's standpoint) that have no legitimate purpose, whether or not the person committing the actions or communications knew it caused emotional harm and whether or not advance notice from the target was given stating that the behavior was unwanted, with exceptions for law enforcement and private investigation (e.g. Revised Code of Washington Chapter 9A.46, California PEN § 653.2, New York PEN § 240.30). That means showing economic damages for a civil claim (let alone law enforcement needing to show the same for criminal pursuit) isn't apparently necessary.

This brings up the question of how, in theory, attachment scenarios such as the ones I've described might be handled and defined which otherwise exist solely on the level of emotional and ethical social contracts, where economic damages from emotional harm within such connections would have to be shown in the form of costs incurred from going to therapy or equivalent services as a result of the interpersonal connection. I.e., that someone originally emotionally disturbed by the patterns of a connection admits how they are feeling to the person undertaking the most initiative, and then the former initiator subsequently becomes anxious-avoidant and doesn't want to deal with the connection anymore at all after learning of the impact of their actions. Then the former initiator may claim any continued discussion of it is then harmful in itself despite their being the entire originator of the connection. Thus, that simply attempting repeatedly to negotiate by the former target may in itself be taken to be harassment against the former initiator, regardless if any ad hominem attacks or verifiable threats of physical harm actually take place.

This to me in some way relates to the idea of the 'victim-offender overlap' in criminology, even though that concept primarily gets into generationally-received trauma and former victims of emotional or physical abuses in general becoming offenders against completely distinct other persons [Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority]. The type of scenario I describe is self-contained between given people as relative willingness to take initiative and discuss needs changes within an established connection, and doesn't necessarily involve someone's intent to absolutely abuse another emotionally. However, nevertheless due to attachment pattern differences and different levels of emotional investment in the connection at different points relative to each person's thresholds for how far the connection should go or could go, the original 'offender' may then start to feel cornered as a victim when their target starts wanting to negotiate after revealing how they feel in the connection.

The only solution as I've found, again, is for the person who has now taken the initiative (the former target) to drop the entire connection and work out their own outward attachment anxiety and disenfranchised grief by themself or with a therapist. Again, I don't find this to be an ethical outcome where someone who initiates a connection repeatedly in the first place should know the chance that their target may take it emotionally seriously in the context of such interactions consisting of a social contract and how their target may feel they are being emotionally used if negotiation is rejected after months of relational build-up, but that's the way it is from an overwhelmingly legal framework and self-responsibility standpoint, at least in Western countries.

Someone who is relatively willing to emotionally use someone else from a social contract standpoint and doesn't want to negotiate after they have been made aware that the connection pattern has been causing emotional harm has to be assumed as never wanting to truly engage. They also have no apparent duty of care to engage from a societally-recognized standpoint, unless again there are provable economic damages such as resulting therapy costs for the original initiator's target. Bothering them too much about asserting this emotional harm where the former initiator then may be considered to have converted into the role of an uncooperative target for negotiation has the added effect of needing to consider whether that constitutes harassment in spite of the former initiator's previous actions, and regardless if the negotiation attempts are actually threatening or truly causing discomfort for nefarious reasons. All of this nevertheless has a clear impact on society because of the possibility of post-traumatic stress, disenfranchised grief and continued attachment anxiety on the original target's part, but there is again very little that can be done except to get far away from such connections in all communicative ways entirely once an original attachment target discovers the pattern is one-sidedly emotionally harmful, or that it otherwise is not designed to meet one's emotional needs equally or equivalently in compromise.

In modern society, some complain of people 'trauma dumping' in contexts such a first date (discussing emotional issues or other problems very quickly and one-sidedly), and thus that such people in particular absolutely need to work on themselves and/or see a therapist, where anything less is perceived of as entailing an unfair burden in asking someone else to do emotional labor for one's sole benefit. E.g., see a heterosexual-centered analysis of this with specific conclusions [Lifehacker.com]. However, I'm not talking about such scenarios where very little or no prior familiarity exists. I still solely refer to the context of a clear build-up of apparently mutually-enthusiastic connections in information shared about one another, closer and closer willingness for physical proximity and/or positive body language patterns over a period of months in the least; but also where differences in power dynamics due to one person in such a connection having more willingness to initiate more, generally having more stable attachment feelings and/or feeling less emotional investment in the connection finally reach an inflection point as part of a given connection's development.

Even then, some could say even after that level of development, the original target asking for 'emotional labor' to be done in itself justifies the original initiator not needing to care or not having an obligation to care in any sense. However, I again would still argue that this is an unethical interpretation due to the clear propensity for emotional harm after an attachment connection of some form clearly has been established, or where the original repeat initiator of interactions should have known the possibility of attachment feelings building up in the target by the very nature of social and emotional connections being built on the basis of repeat contact and resultingly growing familiarity.

Such a scenario would never justify reacting with verbal attacks and threats over the relatively more powerful person's refusal to negotiate. However, I can't interpret an ask for compromise in the least in regard to someone wanting a change of social patterns (e.g. asking to do more social activities together) to create more equal and/or proportioned emotional stability as asking for a one-sided amount of emotional labor to be done, and I can't find that such requests would somehow have no prior basis or justification in such contexts. This ultimately depends on exactly what is initially being asked for and how intense of a change it's perceived to be, which is part of the negotiation process and both people have to be willing for negotiation to take place in the first place.

Some still may call it creepy even if one person in a consistently months or years-long connection brings up feelings and requests for changes to take place, particularly in opposite gender/sex situations. Context is needed such as what the requests are and what level of openness to compromise exists. However, I still find it unethical if the person learning of a new development, if it is presented in an open-minded manner with amenability to compromise, makes an assumption about the other wanting some extreme singular outcome alone as an excuse to stop the connection entirely, or one-sidedly posits that there must be only one possible unpalatable agenda anyway and subsequently refuses to negotiate simply out of emotional convenience as their own avoidant anxiety kicks in. This is exactly what causes a relatively more passive person who decided to assert themselves coming away with a sense of feeling like the whole connection was built on convenient emotional usage on the relatively more initiative-taking person's part if making any sort of requests or assertion of feelings in themselves causes the whole connection to crumble.

Of course, no one is 'owed' anything in any emotional contexts which is presumably in part why harassment as a legal concept can have broad stipulations regarding how far is too far in actively attempting to repair a connection or to assert needs, and similarly for close relationships in domestic settings. However, nevertheless, from my perspective I'm always going to be concerned about emotional harm caused due to a lack of negotiation in the context of a months- or years-long relation-building context serving as a potentially painful, traumatic, depressing and/or grief-filled distraction if someone is entirely rejected despite bringing up needs or concerns in an open-ended way; and about attendant impacts on society, whether or not society wishes to broadly acknowledge those effects in a legal context or otherwise. Further, I'll always be concerned as to how this could possibly be a fair outcome relative to a more powerful and assertive original initiator rejecting to negotiate when faced with any counter-assertions. The original initiator's possible need for avoidance to process the situation should be respected, but it shouldn't preclude eventually coming back to discuss the situation. Otherwise, what was the point of building up that particular connection and insisting on building it in the first place as the relatively more assertive and initiative-taking person if it all might crumble at any hint of a desire for some changes in the connection on the other person's part?

It could further be said that if someone waited 'too long' to state needs or a desire for change, that it's then off-putting and unfair in itself to ask for change or to assert how one feels, no matter how gently or open-endedly it is brought up. However, I again can't see an outright rejection of dealing with concerns on the original initiative-taking person's part as fair (within reason, i.e. that the concerns were indeed brought up in a matter of fact way and without blame being assigned), nor that this constitutes that mutual care and mutual recognition of legitimacy for emotions existed in actual practice, because everyone develops differently in various connections and may be slower to realize how they feel or how they want to approach a given connection after gradually feeling more attached.

As the band Genesis would say, 'love you more than I wanted to,' 'I found out I'm wrong when I thought I was right,' 'making me feel like I want too much,' and feeling like one cannot leave a connection from an emotional standpoint even if it hasn't reached a completely mutual pattern in an emotional sense summarizes the possibility for misunderstanding in an attachment connection as any particular one continues to develop. However, as I have said in this entire review of attachment scenarios with special regard to those with a propensity for outward anxiety as originally more-passive parties to such connections, does this justify an originally relatively more initiative-taking and less-sensitive person ignoring the other more-passive person's needs outright? That is, within reason regarding the attachment target at least attempting to counter-assert needs in an open-ended manner. Again, to me it is a resounding 'no' from an ethical perspective, even though it is still the right of the originally more-initiative person to not care and essentially that they still have a right not to be harassed about their decision (by whatever definition of harassment one takes; whether expansive or more narrow as to whether repeatedly pushing for negotiation upon an originally more-initiative person who doesn't want to negotiate in itself constitutes threatening behavior). Regardless, it nevertheless has real impacts for originally passive attachment targets.

Expanded thoughts on my ethical conclusions based on the analysis of attachment theory, social conditions in Western societies and attachment anxiety experiences - 6/29/2025

In formulating what I'm attempting to portray as a minimally balanced ethical conclusion as to how differences in attachment feelings could be resolved, I'm of course drawing from my experiences regarding my most personally emotionally-disastrous outcomes that I generally described in previous sections (the most intensely painful and isolation-inducing scenarios) regarding connections that I felt attached to, which in some situations left me barely wanting to get out of bed for a few years due to the intense mental pain or which de-motivated me for at least a year. Those scenarios never would have occurred had the people in those circumstances not continued to interact with me regularly for months or if a minimum amount of assuring negotiation or compromise occurred by my definition of such activity, and where they could have stopped engaging at any point themselves before closer personal information sharing and body language patterns developed. I made general note of what I attempted to communicate and counter-assert once I felt comfortable to do so or where I felt I had no other choice after months of respective interactions, i.e. that by each respective point in those connections that I was seeking some more social regularity and consistency, and otherwise attempted to leave how it should have been specifically solved wide open but where I did expect some sort of a productive intercourse that kept each respective connection moving.

However, because I fully anonymized these experiences and because I don't communicate with those people any longer, those peoples' perceptions and experiences besides what I was able to come away with are not represented here. I'm incapable of doing so anyway because of the limited direct feedback that I received in the first place and out of respect for each person having a level of fundamental unknowability as conscious beings, especially because of peoples' constant development. Regardless, I'm not attempting to make a straw-man argument based on an unrealistic conception or on an intentional exaggeration of these situations, but rather attempting to describe what occurred in those scenarios in as fair a manner as I can while doing so in a broad way of describing commonalities that I perceived so as not to get into any explicit individual details (a build-up of familiarity, including more personal discussion and body-language over months of regular interactions and doing more social activities, followed by what I can only describe as an absolute break-down after attempting to have a frank discussion around emotions and where each respective connection was truly going, where I also attempted to understand each scenario from each respective counterpart's perspective in their potentially having experienced the opposite dilemma of dealing with anxious avoidant feelings in response to my outwardly conveyed anxiety once I chose to share my concerns).

As far as I figured out from direct communications, those various people who I feel very much held emotional power over me for months and then refused to negotiate with me described feeling uncomfortable as their reason not to engage further with little additional reasoning provided. That was after I had respectively felt outward attachment anxiety for at least a few months before attempting to bring up my concerns in each situation, and where I felt I communicated the issues in a way which didn't assign blame, but where I nevertheless did over-communicate and over-assert in repeating my concerns out of extreme emotional pain in some of the earliest circumstances.

This is why the primary question I contemplate from reviewing attachment theory and the state of Western society in terms of the cultural attitudes behind modern interpersonal connections is if one's discomfort over learning how someone else feels more strongly in a connection ethically justifies running away from the entire connection and never returning to negotiate even after knowing in all probability, or knowing specifically from what has been learned about the other person, that that person as a formerly relatively passive target for social interaction (e.g., me) will be completely devastated emotionally in grief, depression or other painful results that are not completely emotionally controllable due to the connective build-up that had occurred up to that point, and if that justifies expecting one's former target to overcome it all individually or with a therapist such that no other responsibility possibly lies elsewhere. Further, if that justifies someone having initiated warmer and warmer interactions in the first place over months and months toward a relatively passive target if there never was an intent to take into account the possibility of how the connection might emotionally develop on the passive target's part. I'm decidedly not describing a friendship that fades over diminishing interaction for months, or some sort of entitled sense of emotional urgency over just then meeting someone or encountering someone before any possible attachment feelings could reasonably form.

Again, I always have to admit it is the right of one person to leave any sort of connection for any reason, but what I've always attempted to question is whether this is generally ethical to do on the part of the one who exhibited relatively higher power in a connection (taking more initiative, and seemingly being less emotionally attached to or finding less inherent value in a given such connection in general), even after considering patriarchal social power dynamics and other social factors. To me, it begs the question of what was the point of pushing for such a connection at all if by design it was never intended to have the capability of finding mutual legitimacy in each others' emotional development. Even in consistent and sustained connections that have not reached any apparent outward controversies, it's generally known on a sociological level that one person can exhibit relatively higher dominance or initiative-taking; it's not as if relative social dominance is inherently indicative of a dysfunctional connection.

It's fair if some of the people who so interacted with me truly didn't know how they would react if I ever had emotional concerns, but I know that in each scenario I backed off to account for anxious avoidance before I knew how to describe that phenomenon when I experienced initial unproductive reactions when I did bring up concerns. Regardless, it didn't matter because each such respective response ended up fundamentally signifying that no further negotiation was ever going to be possible, and I again frankly don't care about what sort of highly specific yet formulaic 'solutions' that YouTube videos purport as effective in such scenarios. Counter-pushing upon someone experiencing anxious avoidance on some sort of defined schedule or saying very specific, supposedly universally-relevant conversation points shouldn't be necessary in a connection of true mutual care, as far as I define it, as well relative to such a connection's uniqueness.

In those scenarios, the only way to describe it is that each respective counterparty had a set way of dealing with me and once that was no longer entirely and completely predictable and/or to their liking, i.e. when I brought up my wanting ANY change at all, it didn't apparently matter what I thought in favor of their own discomfort. Even though I can't convey those peoples' complete stances other than that they became uncomfortable and unwilling to let each respective connection continue except if conditions remained completely at status quo, I still nevertheless have to find that this isn't the way I'd ethically treat someone if I were in the same position of power merely over my feeling uncomfortable at receiving feedback over the exhibiting of such social power. If it's a connection that matters, getting back to it eventually even after taking a break for avoidance anxiety due to an initial unexpected shock would matter to me.

This is why at that point, if someone indeed won't come back to a connection to negotiate, to me it re-defines all of the previous connective build-up as exploitive if the connection otherwise can't handle a frank mutual discussion about changing needs as part of full mutual respect. Up until that point, I completely agree that because of peoples' differing development rates and emotional stances in connections, it isn't anyone's fault how someone feels in a given connection, but to me the response over how to accommodate changing needs does matter. That's because it can't be expected that any given connection will stay the same. However, that still isn't an ethically justifiable reason in my mind to drop the entire connection over an honest communication of needs and an assertion that some level of change is necessary; again depending on how the issue is brought up, if multiple solutions are suggested, and if respect for competing outward anxious and avoidant anxious feelings is exhibited toward finding compromise. I'm of course singularly asserting that I tried to honestly convey my needs in a well-rounded manner in my personal scenarios, but it obviously wasn't done perfectly because of my own extreme distress in some circumstances. However, given that half or so of all people have less than 'stable attachment' patterns in various scenarios, I'd argue there is often going to be no perfect way to communicate and attempt to negotiate such feelings with someone else.

To posit an extreme hypothetical and assuming the intent of an initiative-taking person is perfectly known, based on probability and the nature of attachment, such a person's repeat conversational target that they don't otherwise care about except for social enjoyment or the derivation of other emotions, and never will deeply care about, may develop more-intense feelings in return anyway. Anyone who is truly of a mind to use people for emotional fulfillment in a casual manner ought to nevertheless be prepared for ethically dealing with those scenarios, even if they can only empathize in an intellectual sense, because of this resulting probability of attachment feelings occurring and attendant risk for emotional harm. Someone like me who may well be described as having often been such a casual target still has personal sensitivities and proclivities anyway, as well as a capacity for feeling attached with very attendant emotional consequences.

This entire endeavor and attempt at taking a multiple-sided approach even as someone biased by prolonged experiences with extreme attachment pain and grief took years to develop. For that reason, I originally aimed for this article to be based primarily on a review of attachment theory and not so much in reference to my personal experience, where I also didn't even want to touch potentially politicized aspects of psychology and social relations (gender and patriarchal frameworks). However, I finally added related sections on those topics as well as on my complete (although generalized) thoughts regarding my personal experiences stemming from years of highly personal and deeply situational notes because I found that I had reached a maximum possible least-biased way of approaching the topics in shareable form as nuanced by sociological, psychological and scientific subject matter while still conveying an overarching message in my own voice. I first took an interest in interpersonal sociological topics even well before I personally experienced attachment injuries, i.e. when I first studied feminist works (particularly from a Marxist stand-point).

Potential impact of considering social (particularly gendered) concerns in a given connection before (or without ever) mutually reconciling levels of interest and baseline attachment feelings - 8/20/2025

I've primarily found emotional attachment and even some matters ideally settled before anyone in a connection feels very attached (such as establishing a mutually agreed pattern and frequency of undertaking social activities) to take precedent over all else as a baseline concern that necessarily requires attention before all others to provide a healthy basis for a connection of any sort that has a potential for growth. Attraction on one person's part or another in any kind of connection may create an initial motivation, and perhaps that ideally also should be discussed relatively quickly to head off confusion about the direction of such a connection and the potential for later deeply lopsided attachment feelings, resulting in a potential power imbalance due to imbalanced levels of emotional investment.

Nevertheless, I have taken most concern with connections of any type, regardless of how they started, as requiring some amount of mutual empathy and willingness to negotiate about what I so describe as inherently baseline matters, or else there is no basis even to healthily consider potentially more complicated matters impacting a given connection as influenced by exact social conditions, economic conditions and related attitudes. The analysis primarily took the form of one hypothetical person taking overall initiative to create interactions versus a more-passive person where the more-passive person ends up feeling most attached because those are the scenarios I've primarily gone through in specific, where I tend to be the more-passive and emotionally sensitive one in my experience

There is a place in connections that are mutually acknowledged as entailing intimacy progression-related goals to bring up gendered concerns and social power concerns relatively early, i.e. particularly in heterosexual dating contexts. However, the stance that I've essentially taken is that there's no real reason to undertake those topics on an absolute immediate basis, such as within a first meeting context, unless there is any actual initial mutual interest of that sort in the first place. Even then, exact feelings and depth of attachment may vary over the course of the connection's development. If there's not even any agreement on seeing one another further, then any further matters are moot. I'm still not referring to extreme scenarios such as one person seeking a casual intimacy situation without having allowed any chance for attachment to occur or even any level of familiarity to occur first where the context for it is inappropriate and/or not mutually desired, and yet where pursuit for such a singular goal continues to be imposed anyway (outright abuse, threats and/or pushing singularly for sexual outcomes whether or not inherently threatening).

After that, sure, it is fair to understand deeper compatibility on a mutual willingness to see one another's viewpoint on gendered topics and related remaining power imbalances in society once these baseline issues of mutual attraction and which direction the connection is even going is settled, and if the connection is overall based on a mutual willingness to be aware of attachment style differences (especially if any changes occur due to differences in each person's development as the connection progresses). It has never made sense to me to even get into those issues unless baseline attachment and social contract matters (again, such as how often to even undertake social activities together) are in minimal agreement as a preceding matter when it's very well possible to have massive disagreements on those exact topics in spite of establishing an apparently emotionally enthusiastic feedback loop based on the nature of interactions, body language, shared interests, and other factors over the course of months or even years.

The view that post-matriarchal, post-tribal societies largely adopted as property systems, hierarchical systems and economic exchange systems (bartering and currency) continued to develop was for men to largely work outside the home and for women to largely tend to domestic labor. In a modern Western social context following the dismantling of many explicitly patriarchal systems that had been built on this basis, this is where I previously analyzed the contradictions in 'men's rights'-style complaints about modern heterosexual connections in particular. Even though patriarchal privileges still exist even in modern society, those professing that men are somehow 'losing rights' make suggestions for men to act even more stereotypically masculine as a reaction even though a professed lack of attaining desired social outcomes lies in the continued effects of certain men acting explicitly patriarchal to begin with (e.g., abuse of women by men still taking place far more often than in the opposite direction).

However, I've also seen pop culture articles taking an extreme opposite conclusion on the same framework basis where the analysis follows that because women inherently have to take more dangerous risks and pain regarding pregnancy and sexual activity in general while a cultural bias nevertheless still exists for them to undertake domestic labor most often, that means somehow 'all men' or 'most men' inherently are not worthwhile for women to have a connection with at all, let alone intimate connections, because of men falling in labor participation rate and earning less. This is the apparent conclusion in such analysis even as it becomes more difficult for anyone to find a job and where all sexes/genders commonly participate in Western society's labor force now anyway. Similarly to how classic legal and political systems justified treating women inherently as the 'fairer sex' that needed to be provided for and relatively confined for supposed inherent reasons of femininity, some pop culture writers seem to use the same concept as a biological basis for an extreme opposite balance of interests argument in modern society for men to have to continue to either find ways of making more money to support a woman in any sort of intimate connection to attain such a connection at all and to maintain one, or to actively and voluntarily complete a significant amount more worth of domestic labor compared to what men on average are doing currently; where women working outside the home and making their own money only amplifies the argument in that viewpoint. In essence, a justification to keep up many of the same gender roles but for a different outcome (why heterosexual women should actively ignore or not care about intimate connections with men generally until they're whipped back into some sort of high-economic output state).

The problem with both the classic patriarchal viewpoint and extreme reactions to the vestiges of patriarchy in modern society (changes originally wrought by mixed economies following mass industrialization but where gendered cultural attitudes persist) is the emphasis on factors that cannot be controlled or which can't completely be controlled; namely, the bodies people find themselves utilizing. Child-birthing capability is the main issue that seems to come up in this analysis, besides differences in maximum strength capability by sex/gender. Even then, strength (particularly upper body strength) is not the sole measurement of physical power (e.g. there's also dexterity, speed, flexibility which can also all be improved by anyone with training) and the hormonal differences of a sex/gender can vary considerably in spite of testosterone in particular being treated as an absolute indicator of performance in modern physical output analysis (e.g., [BioInteractive.org] regarding athletic performance measurements by female versus male sexes relative to measured testosterone levels).

The ability to find any sort of job, regardless of gender, has also become less and less predictable because of the logical conclusion of corporations treating labor as a commodity. That is, that skills become labeled as not needed or worthless even faster than ever in spite of the inherent ability of people to learn and despite every job that a company is hiring for supposedly being needed (comparative advantages being filled) toward economic output. Thus, that jobs that actually pay a living wage or more become inherently scarcer on this excuse. Yet the classic patriarchal view that wishes to keep women confined while only men undergo money-generating activity outside the home, and an extreme opposite conclusion in modern society for women to entirely ignore men who cannot provide money, both rely on the conclusion of men finding jobs as the basis for any sort of intimate heterosexual connections.

Part of what can be controlled by people in a connection entailing a family-like unit is indeed how much unpaid (domestic) labor should be split up. It is fair to include biological concerns to some extent in the balance of interests as to how much of a split may be fair in any given situation, especially if and when women become ill or incapacitated due to pregnancy in particular, but the point is that any sort of stable social consensus can't rest to an extreme degree on justifications in biological differences. Anyone trying to find a 'deal-breaking' difference in someone else's viewpoint on such topics or in financial standing within a first meeting situation to justify never speaking to them again only prevents the potential for significant connections even being given a chance to form at all. Any sort of analysis tying men's worth to making money and/or doing an extreme amount of domestic labor in return for women undergoing pregnancy also ignores concepts such as family planning to spread out all of these types of responsibilities that a family or family-like unit might want to take on.

Similarly to what I've analyzed through my ideas for co-operative company formation toward changing average corporate structuring strategies, I find change (or continued change) on average across intimate connection patterns starts with people who are in fact interested in starting family or family-like units together (or intimate connections generally) to create alternate models, hopefully after settling baseline questions of attachment feelings and mutual interest within a given connection to begin with. Modern corporations, for example, don't necessarily care that it is women doing the most work in domestic (unpaid) contexts but will happily come up with a supposedly market-based excuse for paying women less who return to the workforce after taking time off because of supposed 'skill-rust' relative to whatever skills corporations claim to be looking for at any given time, with little or no care for cross-transferability and how this is currently still disproportionately impacting women.

Failing to give any particular connection a chance over general concerns about the attitudes of society regarding gender to me only breeds the kind of infighting and destructive competition that corporations are fine inculcating amongst workers on supposed free market competition when such scenarios wouldn't occur without corporations in their current forms as the primary employers treating labor in itself as a commodity. There's comparatively little remaining that is legally binding in modern Western societies regarding gender-based property rights systems or similar explicit restrictions on women in particular (in spite of recent setbacks to reproductive rights from extreme reactionism) for people to work toward changing cultural attitudes by forming intimate connections that strive for more equality within themselves regardless of greater uncontrollable circumstances.

Still even after that is the concept of women coming from other countries and being utilized for cheap exogenous domestic labor in order to alleviate persistent unpaid gendered labor burdens by merely passing the burden along, much the same way as companies finding cheaper labor sources in other countries, causing additional international pressures where some entire countries or regions can be claimed as undertaking significant economic growth due to outsourcing otherwise-endogenous unpaid domestic labor. All I will say in that regard, starting as I did from an original scope in attachment feelings, is that both issues could be further chipped at if individuals in societies whose frameworks are comparatively flexible in matters of gender would start to equalize unpaid domestic labor participation in their own relations; again from reasonable balance of interests frameworks relative to given particular interpersonal situations ('private sphere' labor in a Marxist Feminist context or similar analytical context). Much like challenging the ongoing corporate basis for 'public sphere' labor exploitation via unequal contracts due to treating paid labor as a commodity (little to no inherent ownership for workers; differences in pay according to exact comparative advantage that has been officially assigned) can be done through the modern comparative economic flexibility of certain societies due to legal and political reforms allowing people to start businesses of various kinds under different structures, such as worker co-operative models.

Communicated attachment concerns in a connection as an inflection point for the minimal existence of an ethical duty of care or ethical responsibility for care in an emotional sense - 8/30/2025

As described at a high level in the personal attachment scenarios I've dealt with, within the limits of my perspective, I outlined in my view when exactly good faith negotiation over differences in attachment development in a connection should take place. That is, when after a given length of time of any given people getting to know each other (such as interactions taking place every few weeks across multiple months), one of the people brings up a concern that's ultimately rooted in attachment feelings such as a request to do more social activities together, I find that communication taking place over the concern is what creates the starting point for what amounts to new responsibilities. Prior to that point, one person didn't know how the other necessarily felt but is now faced with an active request, and/or a wide-open concern of some sort.

This inflection over where the connection is truly going, and/or how it should proceed further, to me is what defines the ethics of how a connection is then handled. If this communication represents a difference in attachment development where the person learning of these needs, feelings or requests isn't all that interested in the connection after all in any sense to even want to remotely address the concerns (whether in a friendship context or otherwise), to me there is still an ethical responsibility to communicate back in some minimally productive way or to take responsibility to immediately and definitively stop the connection.

Especially if the person learning of these requests and/or feelings was the one pushing the majority of initiative to form a connection of some sort in the first place such that there has been a pattern of apparent mutual enthusiasm in personal topics covered, tone of voice and body language over the course of building mutual familiarity, yet also has no intention of ever making changes to even remotely accommodate these needs that may have been building in the other person for a while (thus, that a status quo is all that is desired on that person's part), the most ethical outcome is then to actively say that the connection is completely over and follow through on that sentiment. Any semblance of attempting to maintain a status quo without any openness to negotiation or compromise only risks creating further disenfranchised grief or other painful emotional outcomes on the other person's part. The person who learns of these developments while being that far off in actual investment in the connection has actual lopsided emotional power at that point, especially if that person was taking all of the initiative.

I'm still not referring to scenarios where someone who just met another starts 'trauma dumping' or professing all sorts of absolute requirements such as demanding immediate casual intimacy, or even later in a continuously mutual connection where feelings or needs are newly expressed followed by absolute outcomes being demanded. I'm referring to the person who learns of someone else feeling more attached or more invested in the connection and thus is asking for some sort of a change in an open-ended way then resultingly having an imbalanced amount of power, and thus responsibility, over what is done next. This power, and thus what I argue to be a responsibility, doesn't exist until that point.

Again, that means to me if the person who now has an imbalanced amount of emotional power in a connection tries to demand or otherwise keep up a status quo when it obviously isn't working for the other person anymore, or otherwise refuses to negotiate in any way to make changes but also won't actively declare the connection to be done followed by an immediate and definite cut-off, is minimally acting in an unethical manner due to the probable emotional impact inflicted. To me, it is an undue exploitation of power to essentially find someone else's feelings illegitimate.

On the other hand, again, it's fair if such a person learning of someone else's feelings/needs then experiences anxious avoidant shock and thus needs time away to process the development. However, if this counter-need isn't clearly communicated and/or there is never time mutually set aside to actually seriously discuss the concerns (in effect, imposing a status quo or just letting a connection wither passively), to me it's still an unethical exploitation of emotional power due to the painful impact inflicted on the other person. The person refusing to reasonably discuss the other person's concerns or to definitively end the connection is knowingly causing pain at that point, or ought to know.

This is what I'd then define in an ethical sense as a specifically defined duty of care, or responsibility for care. The duty doesn't exist until one person in a connection brings up concerns in a good-faith and open-ended manner. If then the response is to absolutely and indefinitely ignore the concern or to actively dismiss the concern outright without making it clear that the connection is then over and to apologize for letting a connection form in the first place without actually having any capacity to handle changes in it through negotiation, or even to actively impose keeping a status quo going anyway, it casts the connection overall as having been one of one-sided emotional use or having comprised another form of exploitation of some sort.

That's when I find at least in a personal, emotional sense the person who won't respond productively to concerns that have been brought up open-endedly and in good faith has become negligent. As described, this doesn't mean there is then a justification for any sort of ad hominem attacks or threats on the aggrieved person's part, or even to keep pushing and pushing for negotiation even if without threats; the latter of which being what I've done before out of intense attachment anxiety and grief. It also doesn't mean there are any legal responsibilities given that little in fact exists in any legal systems concerning emotional harm due to the varieties of potential circumstances out of each person having different emotional thresholds and patterns of development, alongside few ways to posit directly-resulting economic harm. Unless, at least in a U.S. context, the emotional harm can be related to incapacitation of one's ability to find work or to therapy expenses as a provably direct result.

In any event, because attachment patterns lie in the realm of personal connections and emotional impacts, I'm still primarily referring to a concept for ethical responses toward a mutual finding for the legitimacy of each person's feelings in any given connection, and then to negotiate from there in good faith as a social contract matter (again, assuming there are no absolute outcomes demanded and no assumptions of someone else having an absolute outcome in mind). As described in previous sections, particularly in heterosexual dating contexts or similar intimate relationships, there are gendered concerns to some extent on a social and biological level in the balance of interests where I particularly went over modern concerns in Western societies, but I'm referring back to attachment feelings and relational development patterns without regard to gender and without romantic attraction necessarily being involved as I analyzed in the original sections.

Even in non-mutual romantic situations, however, I find no reason as to why feelings could not be found mutually legitimate and talked through in a compromise-oriented way, such as making small increases in the amount of social activity done together or in the types of activity done without it being unilaterally concluded that the person with different feelings then necessarily has unsavory ultimate intentions. This still assumes the person with less-intense feelings (non-romantic feelings in this such scenario) ever cared about the connection at all up to that point in any sense. In which case, again, I find that the person without enough interest even to negotiate should take minimal responsibility to definitively stop and cut off the entire connection.

The point being is that a connection of any strength and mutual ethical fiber to me is one that takes someone else's uneven development and resultingly communicated concerns as an opportunity to deepen the connection in some way; not that it is a threat. However, again, I'm referring to when such a concern is open-endedly brought up without expectation of a particular result, and if it makes plausible sense relative to how much apparent familiarity has built up in a given connection at the time of these revelations.

Citations

1. Mark Manson, https://markmanson.net/attachment-theory, accessed 6 May 2023.

2. Regain.us, https://www.regain.us/advice/attachment/how-do-you-know-when-youre-emotionally-attached-to-someone/, accessed 6 May 2023.

3. Glamour.com, https://www.glamour.com/story/disenfranchised-grief-is-very-real?utm_source=pocket-newtab, accessed 6 May 2023.

4. PsyPost, https://www.psypost.org/2022/11/insecure-attachment-linked-to-a-psychological-phenomenon-known-as-negative-attribution-bias-64211, accessed 6 May 2023.

5. Exploring your mind, https://exploringyourmind.com/narcissism-and-avoidant-attachment-in-relationships/, accessed 6 May 2023.

6. PsyPost, https://www.psypost.org/2023/02/people-with-attachment-anxiety-tend-to-have-heightened-collective-narcissism-study-finds-67887, accessed 6 May 2023.

7. Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, https://icjia.illinois.gov/researchhub/articles/the-victim-offender-overlap-examining-the-relationship-between-victimization-and-offending, accessed 25 June 2025.

8. DatingAdvice.com, https://www.datingadvice.com/online-dating/dating-site-male-to-female-ratios, accessed 24 October 2021.

9. NIH / British Journal of Anaesthesia, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3690315/, accessed 29 June 2025.

10. Gottman Institute, https://www.gottman.com/blog/turn-toward-instead-of-away/, accessed 1 July 2025.

11. Gottman Institute, https://www.gottman.com/blog/listen-without-getting-defensive/, accessed 1 July 2025.

12. Lifehacker.com, https://lifehacker.com/here-s-how-single-men-can-rise-to-women-s-higher-standa-1849417921, accessed 13 October 2024.

13. BioInteractive.org, https://www.biointeractive.org/sites/default/files/TestosteroneAthletes-Educator-DP.pdf, accessed 3 August 2025.

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