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Proximity: Protection from Danger
    The safety of young children is dependent on caregivers being close and attentive. Even as children mature into adolescence and young adulthood, they still rely on their parents, though the parent-child relationship changes significantly. They broaden their network of attachment figures and so might also rely on other family members, mentors, clergy, or close friends. And then, significantly, they often look to a romantic partner (eventually a spouse) as their principal attachment figure to help them feel safe and to support their interests.
    However, “closeness” means something a bit different for an adult than for a young child. Adults are more effective in using
mental representations
, or images, of attachment figures for a sense of comfort. This means that
thinking
of your partner, parent, or close friend can give you the sense that they are emotionally close, which allows you to symbolically return to them as a safe haven and a secure base. Over time, you might come to identify so much with certain caregivers that you incorporate their way of relating to you into yourself, enabling you to maintain a sense that you have value and to generally expect that others will be supportive. Unfortunately, the more you struggle with attachment-related anxiety, the less likely you are to truly believe that you have value or that others value you. As a result, you will have more difficulty using mental representations as a safe haven to self-soothe or as a secure base for exploration.
    (I will return to the idea of mental representations later in the book, because developing them is crucial to lessening your anxiety and distress in relationships.)

Safe Haven: The Need for Comfort
    Children are biologically wired to look to their parents as a safe haven from threats. For instance, many young children run to their parents for protection during loud thunderstorms or when they meet a clown at the circus (which, from their perspective, is an understandably scary creature). However, it’s not enough for parents to offer physical safety. Children must
feel
safe and comforted in their parents’ presence.
    Parents who can maintain their emotional equilibrium do the best job of this. By not getting caught up in their own emotions, they are free to have empathy for their children’s experiences right from infancy. When children feel that their parents empathize with and respect their experiences, they feel good about themselves and their developing abilities. As the children mature, these parents continue to provide sensitive responses as a way to help them accept, understand, and cope with their emotions. (Keep in mind that no parent is perfectly consistent or in tune with her child. Rather than being perfect, caregivers only need to be what psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott [1953] calls “good enough.”)
    Unfortunately, not all parents are able to do this—even when they love their children. As a result, their children do not experience a reliable safe haven. They don’t feel fully accepted, and might not feel worthy of love. They might also view their parents (and by extension, others) as emotionally unavailable and unsupportive. These experiences of self and others persist into adulthood. (And, as you might remember from chapter 1, experiences of self and experiences of others are the two working models that underlie attachment styles.) So to the extent that childhood caretakers were inconsistent or unavailable in providing you with a safe haven, you will likely be preoccupied with the fear of your partner leaving you; or you might just not even look to your partner for comfort.
    To enjoy a secure and happy relationship, you need to face your fears of being unlovable and rejected, understand them, and nurture a new sense of having a safe haven in your adult relationships. It’s not an easy task, but it is definitely doable. To help you face and understand this struggle