Real Life Marriage: Attunement

I work a lot with parents and kids. The parallels between parent-child and relationships never cease to amaze me. Not that my husband is my child, or that I am his, but that the same principles apply. Case in point: attunement. Attunement helps us develop healthy relationships as babies. It is necessary for healthy marriages, too.

What is attunement? Attunement is noticing and responding to needs. This is what a mother does for her baby, until the baby can do it for himself or herself (Gobbel, 2020). This is the foundation for secure attachment, that is the baby feeling safe and secure, even when the mother comes and goes. Attunement benefits marriages, too.

While attunement is a good thing, part of learning attunement requires misattunement, that is missing signals that the other person sends. In marriage, this looks like miscommunication, missing needs, and/or failing to meet needs. As a perfectionist, I really hate this. I want to be a good wife, and missing things feels like failure. Missing things, though, allows for allows for separateness (Gobbel, 2020). That separateness promotes appreciation of one another's differences, and using our strengths to form a better whole. It also promotes learning. If I never see my husband have needs because I've tried to anticipate and pre-empt his needs, I miss opportunities to learn more about him. I risk making my happiness codependent on his (Bren, 2021). That isn't healthy for me, or for him.

Just like we need to learn attunement in our early relationships, we need to learn attunement in marriage. We need to learn to read each other's needs and respond to them. By necessity, this means failure sometimes. While that may not be present, it grows us, just as a mother's attunement grows her baby's social skills, empathy, and more. Parents and kids. Wives and husbands. God made them, and their relationships all. It's no wonder that a learning process that starts at birth continues into adulthood. I think God in His grace, made it that way.

References:

Bren, S. (2021, June 14). 02. Attachment theory and fostering secure attachment relationships. DrSarahBren. https://drsarahbren.com/02-attachment-theory-and-fostering-secure-attachment-relationships/

Gobbel, R. (2020, January 25). Becoming securely attached. RobynGobbel. https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/8402073935441541124/2874949773406719455