Imagine being an eight-year-old on holiday, making sandcastles on the beach. Then another kid shyly approaches and asks if they can help. They have their own bucket and spade, are about your age and seem friendly enough, so you say, Sure. You probably don’t talk much, just dig, fetch seawater for the moat, focus on building your indomitable sand fortress. Then mum says it’s time to go, so you take one last, longing look at your construction and wave goodbye to the other kid.

The next day, as you start over, the same kid sidles up. And again, you probably don’t say too much, but spend the whole day digging, carrying, pouring, building. By the end of that day, you are firm friends – and every day for the rest of your holidays you hang out, gradually chatting more about inconsequential stuff, but things that might seem very important for a pair of eight-year-olds.

After the holiday, you might stay in touch or you might not (that’s up to both of your parents, really). Either way, you made a friend and, whether that was a holiday friend or a long-term friend, it felt good, right? You probably didn’t think too much about it, but you both had fun, you got on, neither of you did anything especially annoying. And that was enough.

We are wired for friendship

It felt good because, apart from the simple pleasures of sandcastle-building together, something much deeper was going on. When that kid shyly asked to help, your brain quickly checked him out and put him into one of two categories: threatening or safe. If he had been a hulking teenager kicking your castle to bits, you would have put him in category one and called your parents to protect you. But this kid was small, friendly and nice, so you gave him a ‘safe’ badge and got busy playing.

This might seem simplistic, but it’s what we do, all the time, with every person we ever meet. Your nervous system is constantly checking people (and situations) out to decide whether they are threatening or safe. If they are threatening (or just seem that way) your threat system kicks in, as your fight-flight-freeze response is triggered and you act, quickly and decisively, to deal with the threat.

But if someone seems warm, friendly, open, kind, trusting, nice or is sending a whole bunch of other safe-seeming signals, an equally powerful system comes online: your attachment system. And while the threat system says, Go away! your attachment system says, Get closer. This is how we make friends, whether we are eight years old on a beach, an adolescent at school, or young adult at college.

And we are wired for this – to attach, get closer, hug, love, commit, be open and intimate. Attaching like this is in your DNA, because your ancestors on this planet have been doing it since mammals first walked the Earth, because humans, like other mammals, are wired for attachment. It’s why cats and dogs care for and feed their young, keeping them close until they are old enough to fend for themselves (it’s also why sea turtles do not, just laying their eggs on a beach before heading back out to sea – no attachment system).

When relationships are hard

Of course, for many of us, making friends and forming lasting relationships is not so easy. If you have a trauma history, this may be especially true for you. That’s because your attachment system probably didn’t get the warm, positive, loving responses it needed when you were young. If your parent or other caregiver was angry, anxious, unpredictable, unreliable or downright hurtful to you, the person who was supposed to be your warm, safe, loving attachment figure was none of those things. Instead, their behaviour fired up your threat system, which is essentially the opposite of your attachment system in terms of how it makes you think, feel and behave.

So your attachment style (how you relate to other people) is probably not secure, unlike our eight-year-old’s on the beach. This style might be some form of insecure attachment, either anxious, avoidant or disorganised (which is basically a mixture of the two). This will make it hard to form friendships and romantic relationships; it might also make it difficult to fit in and feel relaxed among fellow students or colleagues, especially if they are new. Many of my clients struggle with all of these different types of relationship.

But, as I am always telling them, the good news is that your attachment style is not set or fixed. It can change throughout your lifetime. So if you have, say, an anxious attachment style, it can become more secure throughout your life. How? Well, an attachment-based therapy, like schema therapy, is designed to help with that. A long-term romantic relationship – especially with a partner who has a secure attachment style – will also help a great deal.

Keep working and everything can change

So, as I am always emphasising in these posts, however bad it was for you as a child – and if your childhood in no way resembled that idyllic holiday scene, above – and however hard you have found it to form warm, close, long-term relationships, please remember that this is not a life sentence. It can change, if you put the work in – and get help from the right person.

Keep going, even if it’s a struggle at first. Don’t give up if you try dating, for example, and it doesn’t go well. Eventually you will find the right person for you. Keep working at those friendships too, because the rewards, long-term, are absolutely worth the effort. And better to have one or two close friends than a whole bunch of superficial friendships, or relationships with people who don’t make you feel good.

You deserve love, warmth, intimacy and happiness with your fellow humans as much as any other person on this planet. I very much hope you find all of them soon.

Warm wishes,

Dan