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Introduction
Have you ever wondered why some adults seem to have relationships that are ‘successful’ and others seem to repeatedly have relationships that are not so successful? If you could wave a magic wand and predict whether a person had ‘what it takes’ to be in a lasting relationship, would you use it? If you learned better ways to have a healthy bond in a relationship, would you be open to doing them? First, before peeking into the underpinnings of our attachment styles, it is important to look at how our emotions develop in the first place.
This module addresses one of the most fundamental aspects of the human experience: Emotion. What emotions are we born with? Are we programmed to be emotional? Yes! When we are born, we all seem prewired to be able to experience a few basic, universal emotions. As we mature and continually grow cognitively more complex, we begin to experience an even wider array of emotions. The adult human, as compared to other animals, is a highly emotional being. We experience joy, boredom, surprise, rage, peace, thrill, disgust, and a list of emotions that is well over 300 words. Just how and when do our experiences of emotions come into being?
More importantly, how to we learn our culture’s rules and expectations for displaying emotions? Every culture has a wide variety of emotions, but there is also wide variety in what each society views as acceptable and unacceptable displays of emotion. For example, think about grief. In the European-American tradition, grief is commonly experienced solemnly, quietly, and under a black veil, hiding the deepest pain. In African-American traditions, however, grief is more commonly expressed openly, and shared among family members to ease the burden of pain. The same emotion (grief) is experienced by two cultures, but they each have two very different set of rules about expressing it.
You will also learn about caregiving and attachment styles. If anything is true about human relationships, it is that they are complex and different — and it seems our relationships with our early caregivers affect the types of relationships we create as adults. That being said, psychologists have been studying attachment bonds between parent and child scientifically for a few decades and have discovered a few simple, basic truths about the parent-child relationship and how it does and doesn’t affect us. If you want to know more, keep reading.
So, how do we connect with other people emotionally and what types of attachments do we form to them? Do the emotional bonds we have with our parents when we are young children have any bearing on the emotional aspects we have with our romantic partners as adults? Yes! This material is among the most interesting in developmental psychology because everyone can, in some way, connect to it. What type of person are YOU emotionally and how did you develop into that? These are just a few of the questions you will ponder as you read through this material.
One thing