Three Cousins: Trust, Attachment, and Intimacy

You see three people walking down the street.  By the looks of their features you know they are related, but there are enough differences to make you question how closely related they are to each other.  Siblings? Possibly.  But more likely, they are cousins, you surmise.  They have a common ancestor somewhere back there, but how far back is uncertain to you.

That's how I think about the interpersonal concepts of trust, attachment, and intimacy that I work with every day as a marriage & family therapist (MFT) and as a professor training MFTs.  My experience has taught me that trust, attachment, and intimacy are like three cousins that have similar features with a commonality stemming from the fuzzy murkiness of vulnerability and a deeper "root" (excuse the genealogical double entendre) in self perceptions of worth.

The image below helps outline my ideas about the interrelatedness of trust, attachment, and worth:

Erik Erikson describes the first year of life through the lens of Ego Psychology.  The first developmental task of every infant is learning to either trust or mistrust their parents or primary caregivers.  If the caregiver is reliable, dependable, kind, and attentive to the child's needs, the child learns to trust.  If not, then mistrust ensues and development is hindered.  The child has to learn to trust in order to move on to the next stage of autonomy.  In this epigenetic model of development, we take the success (or failures) with us as resources to the next stage of developmental tasks.

John Bowlby similarly describes the same process as the dependent infant child relies of the parents or caregivers for their basic physical and emotional needs.  As parents consistently meet a child's needs, the child and parents develop a secure connection or attachment to one another.  Consistency is the key, of course.  Winnicott taught us that perfect parenting really messes up kids and we need to focus on "good enough" mothering or fathering.  Attachment is so vital because it also encompasses co-regulation of affect that eventually helps the child to self-regulate or "self-soothe" their emotions.

Notice in both the trust and attachment concepts there is an inherent vulnerability of the infant child.  They are totally vulnerable and completely dependent on the good care of their parents or caregivers.

Years later, in the late teens and young adult phases of life, intimacy will resume this vulnerable theme from the earlier negotiations with trust and attachment from their life.  In an article I published in the March 2015 LDS Living Magazine entitled "Teens, Identity, and Intimacy" I outlined how teen identity development is crucial to healthy intimacy in the young adult years.  I wrote about total human intimacy - emotional, intellectual, physical, spiritual, etc. - every dimension where we can get close to people.

I define intimacy in the following way:

INTIMACY IS THE VULNERABLE SHARING OF ONE'S SELF THAT IS RECEIVED WITH KINDNESS AND OFTEN MUTUALLY RECIPROCATED (OR IN OTHER WORDS RETURNED).


Intimacy requires vulnerability.  When you share a deep thought or personal feeling, there is always the risk that the other person might laugh, scorn, reject, or ignore this tender, personal offering from within your soul.  With physical intimacy (ideally shared fully in marriage), there's the hope that as you bare your body and offer it to another, that they will like, desire, and cherish that which you are sharing.  It is within the safe covenant of marriage that the total expression of all such emotional, intellection, physical and spiritual intimacies are meant to be shared, but any relationship can be fraught with the risk inherent in whatever appraise degree of vulnerable sharing is warranted for the relationship.  Further, all dimensions of intimacy requires the sharing of one's self.  This is why identity formation work in the teen years is so crucial for successful intimacy.  If you don't know yourself, you can't successfully share yourself with another.  Hopefully, the person on the receiving end of your vulnerable sharing of your self recognizes the proffered opportunity to connect and receives it with kindness, appreciation, and respect.

Then, in that magical moment, there's an opportunity for that other person to vulnerably share themselves back with you.  If they do so, a bond, connection, chemistry, or "intimate moment" occurs.  That is the precise time that people really feel heard, understood, valued, and loved.  This experiential path to intimacy deepens as the process is repeated over and over (hence the term "often" in my definition of intimacy).  This is where the couple or other relationship form a deep intimate bond - one that repeated experience has shown that trust, dependability, safety, security, kindness, and tenderness can be reliably expected because that structural pattern in the relationship has often borne that out.

So as trust, attachment, and intimacy build on one another through their interrelatedness, the commonality is how vulnerability is handled, accepted, and embraced.  Vulnerability is a subject for a lengthier discourse, but I would refer you to the work of Brene Brown in Daring Greatly or her other books or TED Talks.  She literally made a science out of the study of vulnerability.

One thing I hope to add to the conversation about trust, attachment, intimacy, and vulnerability is that self-worth is at the core of our capacity to be vulnerable.  If you don't think your ideas, feelings, thoughts, inspirations, or affections are worth sharing, you will build up defenses and resorts of false security within which you will hope to hide your self-perceived flawed self.  It takes a healthy dose of self-worth to generate the confidence to be vulnerable.

So the bottom line is this: Believe in yourself!  Believe you have great worth!  Take this opportunity to share a deeper part of your self with a trusted person in your life.  Start with a thought or idea and take a chance that they may find you fascinating.  Who knows, they may even share a richer part of themselves back with you?  Daring to trust in your great worth is the first step to becoming better acquainted with the three cousins that will enrich your life: trust, attachment, and intimacy.