Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

by Jessica Fern

A person with any of the insecure styles will usually struggle with regulating their own emotional states in healthy ways. They may deactivate, suppress or deny their emotions, or they may hyperactivate and inflame their emotions, and be easily taken over by emotional states.

In the absence of the foundational neuropsychological experience of receiving soothing and emotional regulation from our parents, as adults we then have to learn these difficult developmental tasks on our own. We have to figure out how to identify and articulate our emotional states and then find ways to self-soothe as a healthy response instead of pulling away, shutting down or lashing out in emotional reactivity.

A child in this scenario learns that, in order to survive, they need to inhibit their attachment bids for proximity or protection in order to prevent the pain and confusion of neglect or rejection.

This is our first survival strategy because without the loving and attentive presence from others we would die.

At their root, they can also be expressions of the essential human desires for autonomy and connection.

On one hand we have the need for agency, independence and choice, and on the other hand we have the need for closeness, connection, support and union.

When these needs move too far outside of their healthy expressions, agency and autonomy can transform into feeling alienation and isolation, becoming emotionally unreachable, or refusing or even denying the need for connection or help from others.

A person’s boundaries can get too rigid, and they may shut others out and shut themselves too far in.

They may lose themselves in a relationship and see a decreased ability to truly know themselves or even make up their own minds.

We need to find ways to feel sovereign without losing our connection to others, and to be in communion with others without losing our sense of self.

Attachment researcher Mary Main posits that, in childhood, secure attachment arises when a parent responds in a sensitive way to their child’s need for both autonomous exploration and proximity and comfort.

If connection and love from our caretakers was absent, inconsistent or dangerous, we may want love from others, but then have difficulty fully letting it in. We can struggle to believe that it is safe and real, that it doesn’t have strings attached, and that it’s here to stay (or at least that it won’t immediately leave).

It can be extremely vulnerable to try to let people into the deeper places and we may not even allow ourselves to go there. Soaking up the love from our partners and allowing it to penetrate into our bones and cells can be foreign and frightening.

Giving love can also feel problematic when we have attachment wounds. We are unsure whether our partners will receive it, see it as enough, reject it, ta...

When we have attachment insecurity we may find ourselves struggling on both the giving and receiving ends. We may either over-take or under-take from others, as well as over-give or under-give to our partners. All these are forms of boundary issues.

The threat that we experience does not even need to be real, but the repeated perception of a threat, day after day, can push our nervous system into a traumatized state. When this happens, we are living in survival mode, stuck in sympathetic dominance and unable to access our ability to recover and thrive.

They highlight the potentially damaging effects that overuse of technology has on both the parent and child’s ability to develop emotional bonds. The addition of screens into our already busy lives can add further strain on important face-to-face connection time between parents and their children.

While significant achievements have been made for women over the past several decades, many women still experience sexism, objectification, invisibility, exclusion or even servitude within their most intimate relationships.

Many of the personal problems and relationship struggles that we face are actually societal issues impairing our ability to bond, connect and love in secure ways.

Distinct from cheating, where sexual or romantic relations with more than one person are deceitful, consensual nonmonogamy is an umbrella term for the practice of simultaneously having multiple sexual or romantic partners where everyone involved is aware of and consents to the relationship structure.

People practicing CNM value transparency, consent, open and honest communication, personal responsibility, autonomy, compassion, sex positivity and freedom for themselves and others.

Moreover, people practicing CNM typically embrace the following ideas and principles: love is not possessive or a finite resource; it is normal to be attracted to more than one person at the same time; there are multiple ways to practice love, sexual and intimate relationships; and jealousy is not something ...

“This path requires owning jealousy as it arises, accepting others as they are, developing [one’s] own sense of personal wholeness, and letting go of the belief that lovin...

The other notable relationship benefit unique to people in CNM relationships was personal growth—people reported feeling that being nonmonogamous afforded them increased freedom from restriction, self and sexual expression and the ability to grow and develop.

For these people, nonmonogamy is not so much a lifestyle choice, as it is for some people, but rather an expression of their fundamental self.

People who identify as nonmonogamous as orientation describe their nonmonogamy not as a choice, but as who they essentially are and how they are fundamentally wired.

But many people come into their nonmonogamy orientation a bit later, often after having suffered from the belief that they are broken or defective in some way after struggling to be faithful to their partners or feeling that monogamy was never fully right for them.

In monogamous couples, a partner is usually considered to be cheating if they engage sexually with another and/ or if they share deep or romantic emotions with others.

It is not uncommon for me to hear people say that they theoretically want to be poly, but emotionally they don’t know if they can do it because they feel like they are losing their mind.

Attempting to do CNM with an insecure attachment style or having attachment insecurity arise as a result of becoming nonmonogamous can seriously disrupt a person’s sense of self, as well as their inner and outer safety in ways that can feel unbearable and be unsustainable.

Monogamy can also buffer us from our own personal insecurities. These may or may not be attachment-based, but can be rooted in relational and cultural traumas or anxieties about our achievements, looks, intellectual abilities, likability, etc.

After opening up, you are flooded with many of your childhood experiences and/or past traumas. After opening up, you realized that you have patterns of emotional/relational avoidance or codependency.

People who wake up to themselves as being nonmonogamous as an orientation can have a similar coming-out process as people who come out as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

The experience can cause a person to question their own identity, uncertain about which elements still fit and which do not, uncertain as to exactly what authenticity and integrity look like for them now.

Unable to rely on a sense of self for internal safety and security, these people can be left on shaky ground, often without sufficient support to navigate what can become a crisis of identity, a dark night of the soul or a complete reinvention of the self.

However, there is much growth that can come from this hardship. Just as scar tissue is stronger than regular skin tissue, traumas can lead to what researchers and mental health professionals refer to as post-traumatic growth, where 30 to 70 percent of individuals who experienced trauma report positive changes arising out of the traumatic experience they went through.

Nonmonogamy can be a pressure cooker for growth. It is commonly and playfully known in the nonmonogamous world that you shouldn’t enter CNM unless you are ready to process, communicate, grow and then process, communicate and grow some more.

Because of this, I’ve seen how nonmonogamy can actually become an accelerated path to growth, specifically when it comes to attachment, where it offers a path to healing that many people would not experience otherwise.

When we experience our partners as being here with us, it results in the positive beliefs that our partners care about us, we matter to them and we are worthy of their love and attention. Conversely, when our partners are unavailable, unresponsive or mentally elsewhere, attachment insecurity can arise, feeding the fears and doubts that we are not valued, loved or worthy.

Brown and Elliot describe expressed delight as one of the foundational elements of secure attachment.70 When a parent shows pleasure not just in the things that their child does, but in who their child is, a positive sense of self and healthy self-esteem are fostered in the child.

As adults, expressed delight is also needed to promote secure attachment and a healthy sense of self within the relationship.

When our partners are able to articulate the ways that we are special and valuable to them, our interper...

When we express the ways that we appreciate and are grateful for our partners, we create a culture of positivity in our relationships that allows mutual vuln...

We can express the delight we have for our partners through our words, our actions, our touch, as well...

Diane Poole Heller and her colleagues use the term beam gleam (also known as the attachment gaze) to refer to the nonverbal expression of warmth, kindness and love that radiates from our eyes, l...

Attuning to a partner does not mean that you have to agree with them and take on their experience as your own, but it does mean that you are willing to join them in their internal emotional world and their inner state of mind in order to empathize with what they are going through.

Attunement is meeting your partner with curiosity, wanting to understand their feelings and needs. It is the feeling of being seen, understood and “gotten” by the other.

The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples.

Conflicts left unrepaired can leave lasting effects on our sense of trust, safety and security.

I often tell couples and multiple-partner relationships that you can have all the communication techniques and conflict resolution skills in the world, but they do nothing if you still have an attitude of wanting to either be right or prove your partner wrong.