Why do we keep finding ourselves in the same kinds of relationships?
Why can closeness feel deeply comforting to one person and frightening to another? Why do some people become preoccupied with abandonment, while others pull away when intimacy becomes intense? And why can addiction become so closely tied to loneliness, attachment, shame and the search for relief?
The Relationships We Repeat explores attachment, addiction and the patterns that shape the way we connect with other people.
Drawing on attachment theory, recovery, counselling and psychotherapy, John Graham looks at how early relationships can influence later expectations of love, trust, closeness and safety. The book explores secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment patterns, while emphasising that attachment styles are not fixed labels and can change over time and across relationships.
The book considers themes including:
- secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment
- fear of abandonment and fear of engulfment
- how childhood relationships can shape adult expectations
- the connection between attachment and addiction
- loneliness, shame and the search for emotional regulation
- repeated relationship patterns
- rupture, repair and learning to trust
- attachment within recovery
- building secure relationships gradually
- the therapeutic relationship as a possible secure base
- Adult Children of Alcoholics and dysfunctional family patterns
- learning to relate differently to ourselves and others
A central theme throughout the book is that insecure attachment is not a personal failure. Many patterns that create difficulty in adult relationships began as intelligent adaptations to earlier environments.
The book also explores how recovery can involve more than stopping an addictive behaviour. It can involve learning how to remain present in relationships, tolerate closeness, set boundaries, recognise familiar patterns and gradually develop a greater sense of inner and relational security.
John Graham draws on both professional experience and his own life. He reflects on growing up in Scotland, feeling different and sensitive as a child, later developing addiction, and eventually discovering greater security through recovery, therapy, friendship, community and meaningful relationships.
Written for people in recovery, sponsors and sponsees, counsellors, psychotherapists, addiction professionals and anyone interested in attachment and relationships, The Relationships We Repeat offers an accessible and compassionate exploration of why we love the way we do - and how those patterns can begin to change.
We may not choose the relationship patterns we first learn, but with understanding, safety and new experience, we can begin to relate differently.
