Here’s a revelation: if you grew up in a close family, you’ll probably build a close family once you’re married.

Here’s another: close relationships with your parents will probably make you more successful.

Worth looking at what makes close families tick? Probably!

Dr. Irit Yanir of the University of Haifa says that a parent-child relationship is connected to one’s ability to fulfill society’s expectations in terms of settling down and establishing an intimate relationship.

“While a close relationship is often viewed as a sign of dependence, the research results show that those with close relationships with their parents were more financially self-sufficient, more independent in their day-to-day lives, professionally stable, felt more mature and were more likely to be involved in a stable intimate relationship,” she reported.

Meanwhile, Shirley Hirsh from the Sociology and Anthropology Department at the University, found that close relationships with a partner prior to marriage can be disastrous.

Her research found that the chance of divorcing among couples who lived together before marriage was three times more likely than among those who didn’t live together before marriage.

And Ofra Mayseless and Miri Scharf from the same university found that state of mind with regard to attachment and attachment styles uniquely predicted capacity for romantic intimacy and affective relationships with friends.

Sound like some threads to happiness and independence there?

OK, here’s more food for thought. But first, a bit of background.

Hazan and Shaver (1987) suggested that adult romantic relationships include an attachment component. They proposed a classification of romantic attachment patterns similar to the three main attachment classifications identified in infancy.

  • Secure adults evinced low anxiety over abandonment and high comfort with dependency and closeness.
  • Avoidant adults reported low anxiety over abandonment but low comfort with dependency and closeness.
  • Ambivalent adults reported high anxiety over abandonment and intermediate levels of comfort with dependency and closeness.

With regard to friendships, secure attachment style was associated with smoother interactions between same-sex adolescent friends that promoted a sense of connection (Weimer, Kerns, & Oldenburg, 2004).

In addition, a secure attachment style was associated with greater relationship satisfaction, greater use of prosocial maintenance strategies, and prosocial conflict resolution styles as reported by close friends (Bippus & Rollin, 2003).

Further, a secure attachment style was associated with reports of higher self-disclosure (e.g., Mayseless, 1993), responsiveness to partner’s disclosure, and feeling validated and understood in the friendship.However, observations of intimate communication provided only limited support for this reported association (Grabill & Kerns, 2000).

As for romantic relationships, a large number of studies with samples of late adolescents or young adults (see review papers by Feeney, 1999;Fraley & Shaver, 2000; Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002) consistently found that secure individuals had more trusting attitudes and higher levels of satisfaction and intimacy in their romantic relationships, as reported by them and by their partners through questionnaires and interviews (e.g., Mi-kulincer & Erev, 1991).

Ambivalent individuals, on the other hand, expressed the highest degrees of dependence, jealousy, and obsessive preoccupation with the love partner, and the lowest levels of satisfaction in their romantic relationships (e.g., Collins & Read, 1994; Mayseless,Sharabany, & Sagi, 1997).

Finally, avoidant individuals evinced more mistrust and less intimacy in romantic relationships than others, as reported and observed concurrently (Guerrero, 1996) and longitudinally (Collins,Cooper, Albino, & Allard, 2002).

In sum, secure attachment style was associated with higher intimacy in romantic relationships and in friendships, whereas insecure attachment,in particular avoidance, was associated with lower levels of closeness and intimacy in these relationships.

So it sounds as though we can all benefit from developing a close relationship with our parents or children. That simply means a relationship in which children talk with their parents often and regularly spend time together (eating meals together, for example), and one in which a child feels comfortable sharing his thoughts and experiences with his parents.

So… is a close relationship doable in your family?

Marriage and Family and ... Happiness?

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Filed under: Relationships

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