Relationships

Attachment theory was something I learned about as an undergrad in psychology; a concept that was studied, memorized for the test and discarded from memory shortly afterwards. I never thought the term would have any real relevance in my own life.

My “aha moment” occurred during a wellness retreat in Northern New Mexico when I realized that my relationship with my mother has been a powerful influence on my interactions with men. My mother!? Really? And all this time I thought my “daddy issues” were the source of all problems in my romantic relationships!

Interested in having more likeminded people in your life? Who wouldn’t, right? Finding these people can be extremely easy, if you go about it smartly. You are a unique person with unique interests. But you might not have people in your life to share these interests with. Where are these people hiding? If the internet has proved anything, it’s that you’re not alone. These days, you can find thousands of people around the world with interests similar to yours.

Interacting with these people online is great, but it doesn’t compare to actually meeting with them in the real world. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy to find these people in the flesh. But there’s one convenient technique that allows these people to find you, instead of you having to search for them.

We like to think we know our family and dearest friends, down to the deepest detail. Without telepathy, though, we can never truly know what it’s like to walk in their shoes.

Take one of my good friends, who gave birth to her son around the same time I had my daughter. We had eerily similar birth experiences: the first few hours of labor went okay, but the baby’s heartbeat began to drop so we had emergency C-sections. We hold the same values on parenting, so we exchange advice on breast feeding and sleep training. We both gave up full-time jobs to become full-time mothers. Our situations are so similar that I didn’t know how to respond when she asked me last week, “Why is being a mother so easy for you?”

When my husband (then-boyfriend) and I first started dating, we really hit it off. It took less than a month for us to spend all of our time together. Before long, we had two sets of everything : one for his apartment and one for mine. Then his apartment lease came up, and we decided to move in together. We were eager to take this next step in our relationship.

Having grown up in a conservative household, my boyfriend knew his parents would not approve. He decided to write an email to his folks explaining his decision to move in with me. He took an afternoon off to write it down and didn’t show it to me until after he sent it. When I did read it, I nearly fell out of my chair. It started, “Mom, Dad, I love Deborah, and I don’t care what you think. We’ve moved in together.” The email continued to get more aggressive in tone, ending in the ultimatum, “You will respect her when you meet her next month.”

That’s right. Worse than the email itself, I had never met his parents. Needless to say, when I shook their hands at the airport, I felt like the harlot who had stolen their little boy’s innocence.

In this digital age, we are obsessed with networks. We want to keep in touch with our 3rd grade friends, so we check their Facebook profiles. When we meet new people, we greedily gather their contact information and store them at LinkedIn. Even our mothers love networks, if the sheer amount of forwarded spam email is any indication. Information hording makes us feel like we are part of something bigger, that we have a network of support we can leverage at any time.

Unfortunately, that might not be true. You could have 1,000 friends and not have even a mediocre network. Like all relationships, you need to work at maintaining them in order to get anything from them. If you decide to friend everyone you know and never talk to them, you don’t have a network. You have a list of strangers.

Networks rely on real communication, the kind of bonds that keep us interested in each others’ lives. It may seem like a daunting task, but you can engage in real communication every day with your network. Doing so not only makes you part of the network, but builds relationships over time you can turn to in times of need.