ABSTRACT
In trying to understand the reasons behind our sexual addiction, it is important to have an understanding of the concept of ‘attachment’. Attachment refers to the way we connect to other people and, in particular, to the way we connect in our intimate relationships. Our attachment style is set up in childhood and reflects the way in which we attached to our parents or caregivers. There are four possible attachment styles: secure, avoidant, anxious and disorganised. The securely attached person received good enough parenting with appropriately responsible parents. There was a healthy interaction between caregiver and the child. The secure child can form secure relationships as an adult and is good at managing his own emotional states. The avoidant attachment style is a response to indifferent, absent or abusive patterns of the caregiver to the child. The child simply avoids the caregiver. He has learned that to be safe, he has to rely upon himself. He is likely to grow into an adult who avoids too much emotional commitment and who goes to great lengths to avoid experiencing difficult emotional states. Alternatively, with the same situation, the child can become needy and anxious about the loss of the caregiver. In his adult relationships, he is likely to be needy and clingy, worrying that his partners will leave him. The child with a disorganised attachment style lives in perpetual fear or anger and this results in the formation of seriously disturbed individuals in later life.
