Adult Attachment and the Break-Up of Romantic Relationships

Abstract

The study of the break-up of romantic relationships was integrated into research on adults' attachment representations. Eighty-three female subjects, currently married mothers of one child, were given the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985), supplemented with questions about the break-up of relationships with former husbands or boyfriends. Subjects who were classified as Unresolved with respect to loss to death of a close person more often indicated that they had experienced the break-up of romantic relationships and they also reported a larger number of former relationships. All subjects who had former romantic relationships indicated that they-and not their partners-decided to break up the relationship. With a more exploratory aim, we examined whether the AAI scoring system for unresolved loss (Main, DeMoss, & Hesse, 1991) could also be used for determining whether subjects have come to terms with the break-up of a romantic relationship. Although scores could be assigned reliably, results could not easily be interpreted: Subjects who were classified as unresolved with respect to the breakup of a romantic relationship appeared to be more sociable, and less fearful. Subjects who were classified as unresolved due to a loss through death were more often classified as not unresolved regarding the break-up of their romantic relationships.