Building Secure and Joyful Connections Through Understanding Attachment Styles and Emotional Vulnerability - Julie Menanno

Discover how understanding attachment styles can reshape your relationships with insights from licensed marriage and family therapist Julie Menanno. Learn how the complexities of anxious and avoidant attachments often fuel repetitive cycles of conflict, and how recognizing these patterns can lead to healthier, more secure connections. Julie sheds light on the emotional turmoil caused by feelings of unsafety, such as invalidation and misunderstanding, and provides guidance on breaking free from these negative loops. We promise to equip you with the tools needed to transform your interactions, not just in romantic partnerships but also in friendships and professional environments.

In our conversation, we emphasize the power of vulnerability and the pivotal role of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) in fostering deeper emotional bonds. Julie and I discuss how fully experiencing emotions can pave a structured path for relationship transformation, making joy and pleasure integral to resilience and bonding. We also confront the superficiality of modern dating culture, advocating for genuine emotional connections. By understanding and identifying real connections—both emotionally and physically—you'll be better positioned to navigate your relationships and spot potential red flags along the way. Join us for an enlightening discussion on building secure, meaningful, and joyful connections.

Automate Social Media Posts with Marky
Marky.ai an AI marketing platform that automates campaigns and optimizes strategies for better ROI.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:07 Attachment Theory in Relationships
• 9:18 Building Secure and Meaningful Relationships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to Pleasure Principles, the podcast show where we explore the depths of connection, intimacy and joy in our relationship and ourselves. I'm your host, avik, and today's episode is going to hit you right in the feels, literally. Literally, because we are diving into a topic that's fundamental and it's fascinating because attachment theory and how emotionally focused therapy can transform your relationship into secure loving sanctuaries. And who better to guide us than today's incredible guest, julie Menano. Welcome to the show, julie.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Well, thank you for that introduction and thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:57

Lovely lovely. So, dear listeners, before we start our conversation, I'd quickly love to introduce Julie to all of you. Julie is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the author of Secure Love and the genius behind the Secure Relationships, a platform that helped millions to find hope and healing in their relationships. So her work doesn't just focus on the romantic partnerships, but it's all about how we connect, express and ultimately thrive. So buckle up, because this conversation will be equal parts enlightening, entertaining and empowering. So welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:43

Thank you, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 1:47

So, to start with, I mean, what do you think? I mean, why do you think that understanding attachment styles and kind of how you know viewing relationships? Through the lens of attachment theory, is probably you know I'm biased, of course my the most useful way to improve your relationship, or at least just understand your relationship yeah, okay, understood, and um, also like, uh, I have to say, how do you see the attachment theory playing out, not just in the romantic partnerships, but friendships or even work relationships as well?

Speaker 2: 2:56

Yeah, I think you know, anytime there is some sort of emotional issue in a relationship where there's a feeling of unsafety, right, and that could be, you know, I see it. You know in work relationships, I see it in romantic relationships, parent-child relationships, but even in, you know, the broader political climate, right, it's like anytime there is some sort of relationship friction, then we have to figure out. It creates a sense of unsafety and when people don't feel safe with each other, they can't possibly come together and work through a problem or connect with each other. So, you know, at work you're needing to work through problems. So that's going to be a problem if you're not able to kind of get back to a place of safety with each other. In your romantic relationships you're trying to connect and, you know, feel close and work through your life problems together. You know, having a life together, parenting, finances, what have you. And then, if you look at the political climate, yeah, it requires people who have different opinions to work together. And if they're feeling unsafe with each other, how are they going to manage that, right? So what is unsafe? It's feeling invalidated for your perspectives, it's feeling shamed, it's feeling not understood, it's feeling not valuable, like your needs don't really matter to the other person. And so then the question becomes you know, once we have the fear and unsafety, now we have to ask what are people doing with it to manage that so they can get to safety and communicate with each other?

Speaker 2: 4:33

Someone with an anxious attachment they're going to feel a lot of anxiety and they're going to dive in and try to kind of frantically close the distance or frantically get the other person to hear them or understand them, often in ways that end up sort of pushing the other person away. They might do that with a lot of blame or a lot of protest. And then someone with an avoidant attachment. Their way of dealing with this is oh, just pretend it's not there, right. But if you know, in avoiding the pain they're avoiding the solution to the pain.

Speaker 2: 5:06

And so what happens is then you typically will have you know someone on, whether it's, you know, the work relationship again, or the romantic relationship. You're going to have one partner who's sort of taking up all the responsibility for fixing it and closing the distance. And then you're going to have one other partner who's kind of taking responsibility for minimizing the conflict, not fighting. Let's not make it worse, let's not rock the boat. Well, what happens is is then they get in this dance of pursue, defend, try harder, you know, try to make the problem go away by just pretending it's not there. And what happens is is A nothing gets resolved and B all you really do is create more unsafety. You just kind of reinforce the problem to begin with.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Exactly, and also you talk a lot about negative cycles in the relationship. So what's the first step that couples can take to break those loops of the conflicts?

Speaker 2: 6:09

Well, the first step is to recognize that's happening. To begin with, right, a lot of people. Again, attachment theory gives us a real organized way of making sense of all this. And not just attachment theory, but the way emotionally focused therapy the type of work I do has taken attachment theory and even organized it more, more, with more nuance. And so just recognizing this isn't you know, these arguments that we get in, these conflicts that we get in. They're not just these random, nebulous you know feelings that in this thing that doesn't have a you know a pattern. These conflicts are very patterned, very repetitive, and they make a lot of sense when we understand what's really going on.

Speaker 2: 6:51

And a lot of times partners or, you know again, work relationship, whatever you have they don't really understand what's really happening here. How do you fix a problem if you don't really understand what the problem is? So the first thing is just having some information, wherever you get that information to kind of organize okay, this is what's really going on. And then, once you really understand what's going on, then it's a process of learning. Well, now, what do we need to do differently? We need to recognize here's this negative cycle, here's what we're each doing to contribute to it. It's easy to think it's just one partner. You know they're the problem. But when I really work with partners, you know quickly I'll get them to see hey, you both are contributing to this in your own way. Get them to see hey, you both are contributing to this in your own way. And how are we? How is how we're showing up impacting? How are we impacting each other right In making the situation worse? And then we got to figure out okay, what's what's the re? The very good reasons.

Speaker 2: 7:49

Partners are doing these things in negative cycles, like protesting, defending, shutting down. You know, getting stuck in arguing details without really addressing the emotional issue. You know attacking each other, criticizing each other. What is a very good reason? What's fueling that? What are you trying to accomplish? And then I've got to come in and give partners better tools to get those emotional needs met so they don't have to keep going into these moves that aren't working. And at the end of this, you know we expect that, as partners are learning to do these skills, that the relationship symptoms start to decrease because you start building up safety instead of tearing safety down in the way that they're communicating. You know it's, I like to say, disagreements don't create secure attachment. Having an emotionally unsafe interactions and communication around those disagreements is what creates insecure attachment.

Speaker 1: 8:52

That's true, yeah, and for our listeners who might be new to the EFT, how does it differ from the other types of therapies?

Speaker 2: 9:03

Well, a lot of the other types of therapies, one they just focus on, like the behavior and the words you're saying, without really understanding more about why are we needing to behave in these ways and use these words?

Speaker 2: 9:18

And a lot of times you know that that that um, other types of therapies, you know there's a few different things, right.

Speaker 2: 9:26

One is that they it, they focus isn't so much on vulnerability Uh, it's more focused on you know again, just sort of saying things in a new way.

Speaker 2: 9:38

And even if they are teaching you to be vulnerable and say things like I'm sad, a lot of other therapies are missing the felt, the person having the felt experience of sad right, like, a lot of people aren't really used to sitting with their vulnerability and speaking from vulnerability in their body instead of speaking about vulnerability from their head, if that makes any sense. And then really, I think what really, in addition to the emotional and vulnerability focus in EFT and understanding, to going backward and understanding you know how people kind of get to this place in their relationships, based on the emotional climates of their childhood, there's this other piece to it that EFT is very organized. It has a very organized way of going about the transformation process. If you sometimes some other therapies that don't have as much structure, they'll put the cart before the horse. They'll try to get couples to have conversations that they're absolutely not ready to have, and so that's been a real journey. For me in EFT is just learning how to really time what I'm doing with the couple and structure it.

Speaker 1: 10:53

That's awesome, I have to say, that's. That's awesome, I have to say, and also like, uh, the role of pleasure in this secure attachment, right, what do you think like? How does pleasure, be it physical or emotional, or even spiritual, tie into the creation of secure attachment? What do you think, think?

Speaker 2: 11:14

Well, so you know one of the, you know, when we think of vulnerable emotions, we have, you know, fear, and we have sadness, but we also have pleasure and joy. I mean, that's a vulnerable emotion that you really need to feel safe with someone in order to feel relaxed enough to have a mutual, fulfilling, pleasurable experience mutual fulfilling, pleasurable experience. And so I need couples, you know, if I want them to be secure with each other, part of that security is closeness. So I need them to not just be able to, you know, connect from their painful parts, right. I need them to be able to connect with their joy parts also, right? Because not only does the joy and the pleasure create bonding experiences, because that's what bonding is is sharing emotions with someone. You know, not only does it do that, but it also, these bonding experiences give resiliency and safety to the relationship, and the more safety you have, the more you are able to experience pleasure with someone.

Speaker 1: 12:16

To begin with, and do you find that couples often overlook this connection? I mean if you can share from your experiences.

Speaker 2: 12:31

Oh, absolutely Absolutely. I think you know, for the vast majority of struggling couples I mean they're, you know to the degree that they're struggling. They're in a constant state of disconnection. I mean anytime you're in a place in your body where you're not feeling fully safe in the relationship, you're not kind of consistently feeling like you're heard or understood or like you can reach to your partner for those emotional needs to be met and they're going to respond to you positively. You are in a state of disconnection. You know some healthier couples. They're in a state of connection more often than not and sometimes they have ruptures where they do feel disconnected. I'm not feeling heard, I'm not feeling valuable right now, I'm not feeling appreciated right now. But the difference between the struggling couple and the not struggling couple is the healthy couple can repair, they can get when these ruptures without, you know, without a consistent feeling of connectedness, which is the secure attachment. The secure attachment is a consistent state of connection and closeness and safety.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Wow, that's great, that's lovely. Yeah, and also like in today's swipe right culture swipe, you always used to do swipe, right, right, right. So how can someone how do I put like, how can someone cultivate deeper and more meaningful connection instead of setting the surface level relationships?

Speaker 2: 14:12

well, it's hard because you really have to spend time with that person. I mean, there's really no way around repeated interactions with someone to get close to them, and so really what the question is is is this someone I'm interested in being close with? Based on what I'm reading here about them, Am I getting some signs here that they have the ability to be close? They're not just kind of living in the surface areas of life and then are they able? Once you start spending time with someone, you got to learn what to look for as far as what closeness actually is right, what connectedness actually is. A lot of people they just haven't ever experienced real connection and so they don't even know what to look for. And when we don't know what to look for, we just start looking for surface level lists. You know, do they look the right way? Do they have the right job? Do they want the same things out of life as I do? And so I think that you know real closeness comes from again. It's like being really seen, feeling seen, feeling understood, feeling like you can enjoy, relax enough to enjoy pleasurable experiences together, Feeling like your needs matter to the person, Like there's a balance of wants and needs here, and so I want to help people get really explicit and clear about not only what that is, but how it feels in your body.

Speaker 2: 15:45

A lot of people will be around someone and not really feel good in their body, but have such a disconnect between their awareness of their body and what's going on in their body that they miss a lot of red flags and so yeah, so, more than anything, I think that you can't really get out of knowing if someone is going to be able to experience full connection in a relationship without having repeated interactions with them. And that's what's so hard, because in the past we did have repeated interactions with people. Before. We kind of had to decide if we want to go forward with them. Now we have to look at a screen and decide we want to go forward with them before having any experience, a felt sense of experience, in interacting with them. So that's tough.

Speaker 1: 16:22

Exactly exactly. And also like one thing I hear a lot, like I don't want to be dependent on my partner. This is the statement we often get to hear. So how do you address the balance between independence and interdependence in a healthy way?

Speaker 2: 16:47

Well, the first thing I would want to know, when someone says that to me, is how are you defining dependence? Help me understand more about what that word even means to you, right? Does it mean that you don't want to be enmeshed, which is we're too close, we don't spend time apart, we don't think differently in any way, we don't really have separate selves? If that's what the person is saying, then my job is to come in and say, hey, that's really not what we're going for here. That's not closeness, that's the opposite of closeness. It just looks different from you know, more obvious states of disconnection, and then you know.

Speaker 2: 17:25

The second thing is we're going for interdependence. You know what's the point of being in a relationship if we don't have some dependency on the other person for emotional, for the good things. I depend on you for some reasonable emotional support. I depend on you for enjoying life together and spending time together. I depend on you for help moving. You know making a good life together and you know achieving goals together.

Speaker 2: 17:50

Right, you know, if you really get down to the nuts and bolts, anybody that wants to be in a relationship does want some level of interdependence. They maybe just don't understand what that actually means If you don't want interdependence, you don't really need to be in a relationship at all, right? And if that's the case, probably what that person is saying isn't I don't want to be in a relationship. They're saying I don't want to lose my entire sense of self. So, you know, interdependence is kind of that balance between we've got this relationship with each other and we put a lot of, we put time into that and connecting and, you know, working through our disagreements, but we've also got our own selves where we can experience life independent of each other. We're not too, you know, emotionally dependent or you know, I can only feel good if you're okay, right, that's not healthy.

Speaker 1: 18:46

Perfect yeah. So what's the one practice that you would recommend for the partners who want to repair their fight but don't know where to start?

Speaker 2: 18:58

I think that the first thing that they need to do is really kind of A recognize what the attachment issues are here. I mean, that's why I wrote the book right Is the first part of the book is saying, hey, here's what insecure attachment looks like and here's how it's gonna show up in conflict and arguments and in trying to repair and not being able to get there. And then I kind of go into and here's how these negative cycles work based on these insecure attachment styles. Nobody, you know people who have secure attachment. They don't need to engage in negative cycles because they were a variety of reasons. But so the first thing is is understanding what are our attachment and securities. What does that look like? How is that impacting us and what do these negative cycles look like? Right? And then part three would be how do we not do negative cycles? Right? And when we aren't doing negative cycles, not only are we able to repair because we're doing the things that prevent them, but we're also building up attachment security between us. That makes less conflict happen to begin with, so we have less repairing to do Now, with that said, every couple out there the healthiest couple out there is going to have ruptures, right.

Speaker 2: 20:14

But then the other piece of this is the self-work. I mean, you can't really do this relationship work without also doing the self-work that's required to be able to do new things in the relationship. So in EFT, you know, I'm I'm always working with both. I'm kind of like 50 percent working with each person on their own work. How, how am I going to get more emotionally engaged? How am I going to get more emotionally self-regulated so I can do new things? And then I'm working on the relationship part, which is doing those new things with each other.

Speaker 1: 20:49

Exactly Lovely. I really love Julie. What an insightful and inspiring conversation from attachment styles to rekindling pleasure and definitely have given us a lot of to think about and act on. So for everyone who is listening, here's the takeaway like, relationships thrive and we show up with the curiosity, courage and the compassion so for our partners and for ourselves as well. So if you're curious about to dive deeper, then check out julie's book, secure love, and her platform, the secure relationship. And hey, don't just listen, take the action as well. So identify your style, your attachment side, and have that honest conversation, or maybe simply start noticing your own patterns, because small steps actually create the big transformations. So, as always, thank you so much for tuning into Pleasure Principles and if you have loved this episode, hit that subscribe button and share it with someone who actually care about, and definitely share your review to us, because it helps us bring you more life-changing conversations like this. So until next time. This is your host, avik signing off. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Oh, you're very welcome, that was great, thank you.