'Healthy Relationships' is the title of an active and highly recommended support group here on Daily Strength. Deciding whether to post here or there will be a perpetual dilemma. The other group gets a lot more input, but the typical responses is lame and/or prosaic. You have to discard a lot of chaff to find a kernel of sagacity.

The reason I mention it here is that I have been reading a lot of chaff posted on the internet about attachment disorder in adults. The subject does not seem to have been studied sytematically. Some of the self-help sites suggest that the best way to develop a 'secure' attachment style is to attach ourselves to someone who already has one, and emulate them. This idea, akin to psychological 'training wheels,' is ludicrous. It is appropriate only for individuals who are almost ready for a healthy relationship, with 'trainers' who enjoy the mentoring experience.

Those of us with severe attachment disorders are individuals who carry with us the seeds of relationship destruction. While supposedly learning secure attachment, we will be busily sabotaging our lives in the usual way, through jealousy/controlling, withdrawal/distancing or ranting/abuse. Socialization is partly instinctive and partly a learned skill. Before undertaking a relationship in real life, we should study our own gestalt in a managed milieu.

I suspect that we would be better served by watching a series of psychodramas, which were produced in pairs, where one of each pair would depict a healthy human affiliation or conflict resolution scenario. The other would demonstrate how toxic attitudes, expression and behaviors would be likely to produce sub-optimum results in the same scenario.