Insecure Attachment and Relationship Burnout
Insecure Attachment and Relationship Burnout
All relationships experience ups and downs, but understanding the link between insecure attachment and relationship burnout can help us manage the effects.
Love is the early stages of a relationship is undoubtedly exciting; we feel butterflies in our stomach, nervous excitement, and adrenaline just from the thought of seeing the other person. Yet, as relationships progress and become more comfortable and habitual, these initial feelings can fizzle out–but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, in some cases, these early feelings may transition past comfort and be replaced by exhaustion, lethargy, and negative thoughts and feelings about our partners.
If you’ve felt this switch from fire to fizzle before, you may have experienced relationship burnout. Relationship burnout is when we feel a distance or detachment from our partners within our relationship. It tends to happen gradually, so sometimes, we may not notice it until we feel completely drained of energy.
To answer all of your questions about relationship burnout, this article will cover:
- What relationship burnout is
- The causes of relationship burnout
- How insecure attachment can trigger relationship burnout
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What Is Relationship Burnout?
You may have heard the term “burnout” before, but not been entirely sure of it’s meaning. It’s a phenomenon that has taken social media by storm in recent years, with around 4.4 million posts using #burnout on Instagram alone. We often use “burnout” to describe how we feel in regard to work and sometimes about parenting. Relationship burnout is similar, but it involves romantic relationships instead.
Relationship burnout involves feeling distant or detached from your partner. You may start off feeling hopeful that your relationship will flourish but end up feeling disappointed and depleted when it doesn’t go as you had hoped.
But if you experience relationship burnout, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost all love for your partner or that you want to end the relationship—that’s far from the case in most instances. Instead, it can relate more to feeling emotionally exhausted or a lack of excitement about the relationship. Even healthy relationships can go through periods of burnout. However, it may happen more frequently in unhealthy relationships or for people with an insecure attachment style.
Relationship burnout doesn’t happen overnight, either. It usually arises from a build-up of things over time, which can make it difficult to spot. So, what factors may make us feel relationally burned out?
What Causes Relationship Burnout?
There isn’t one single cause of relationship burnout—the reasons behind feeling burned out can differ from couple to couple. Yet, there are some patterns and factors that tend to trigger relationship burnout among couples more often than others.
One of the main causes of relationship burnout is feeling unappreciated or unsupported by your partner. Yet, one person’s road to feeling this way will likely differ from the next’s. For example, some people may feel unappreciated when their partner doesn’t text them enough. However, others may feel unsupported if their partner doesn’t respect their need for time apart. Whatever the journey to get there looks like, the end result is often the same—relationship burnout.
Another cause of relationship burnout is chronic stress. According to Yale Medicine, chronic stress is “a consistent sense of feeling pressured and overwhelmed for a long period of time.” Chronic stress can have a big impact on our mental and physical well-being, as well as how we feel about ourselves, our partners, and the relationship as a whole.
Experiencing stress from continual external pressures can also trigger relationship burnout. For example, if you’ve had money troubles for a long time or if one of you has been battling a long-term illness, this can cause emotional exhaustion and general relationship burnout.
Other Causes of Relationship Burnout Include…
When your personality type or attachment style clashes with your partner’s, as this may cause you to feel burned out over time, particularly if you find it difficult to communicate in healthy ways with one another–resulting in frequent arguments or disagreements.
And finally, relationship burnout can naturally occur when two people in a relationship grow apart. At this point, the relationship may have become overly habitual and comfortable—it’s not exciting anymore, but there’s nothing drastically wrong with it. Sometimes, people describe relationships like this as feeling platonic.
Yet, while these factors are widely considered to be the common causes of relationship burnout, they’re not the only elements that could factor into it. Psychologist Ayala Malach Pines has a different perspective on relationship burnout. In her book, “Couples Burnout,” she argues that relationship burnout happens because of the ideology of romantic love many of us hold based on what we’re exposed to in society and the media. Within Western cultures, ideas surrounding “love at first sight” and “happily ever after” are extremely common. Because of this, and what is portrayed in films and TV shows, we come to have high expectations of love as something without flaws or trials and tribulations. Pines proposes that when we are faced with the reality of everyday living, we may be at risk of developing relationship burnout. She believes that relationship burnout is caused by a combination of
a) A build-up of disappointments as reality doesn’t meet our lofty expectations of love
OR
b) The day-to-day stresses of everyday life.
So, there’s this whole list of causes of relationship burnout, but big a role does insecure attachment play in them?
Insecure Attachment and Relationship Burnout
The research on relationship burnout and insecure attachment is very much still evolving, with currently little evidence considering the link between the two. However, when we think about the causes of relationship burnout, it becomes clear how insecure attachment may increase a person’s risk of relationship burnout in more ways than one.
Feeling Unappreciated and Insecure Attachment
Insecure attachers tend to report less relationship satisfaction and generally feel less supported by their partner. Yet the causes of these feelings may differ depending on a person’s specific attachment style.
For example, an anxious attacher may feel unsupported or unappreciated when their partner doesn’t give them enough attention or reassurance. Typically, this stems from a deep-seated fear of being abandoned or not being good enough after they felt emotionally or physically abandoned by their caregiver in childhood.
An avoidant attacher partner, on the other hand, may feel unappreciated or unsupported if their partner doesn’t respect their need for independence. They may also feel a lack of support if their partner attempts to increase the intimacy in their relationship beyond what the avoidant attacher is comfortable with. Avoidant attachers tend to prefer to stay independent and avoid others relying on them due to a fear of intimacy, manifesting from childhood experiences of their caregiver being unreliable or rejecting.
Chronic Stress and Insecure Attachment
As we mentioned earlier, relationship burnout is more likely to occur when people experience long-term stress. People with an insecure attachment style generally experience higher levels of stress than secure attachers, including chronic stress. This may make them more prone to relationship burnout in adulthood, but in different ways depending on their attachment style.
Anxious attachers tend to have an overactive stress response system because of their caregiver’s inconsistent patterns of care. Someone with an anxious attachment may also feel helpless when they are stressed. This can make them the most prone to stress of all of the attachment styles.
When it comes to avoidant attachers, they generally suppress their emotions, including stress. So, when they become stressed, they minimize this feeling or use unhealthy coping strategies to manage it. While this can have short-term benefits—providing temporary relief from the stress—it can lead to emotional and physical burnout in the long run. This, in turn, may cause relationship burnout.
Disorganized attachers tend to switch between hypersensitivity towards stress and minimizing this feeling. This constant to-ing and fro-ing can cause chronic stress and burnout, which could also potentially lead to relationship burnout.
Want to know more about how attachment links to stress? Check out our article on Attachment Styles and Stress Responses.
Communication Difficulties and Insecure Attachment
Research suggests that couples who are better at communicating, solving problems, and resolving conflicts are less likely to experience relationship burnout. Furthermore, those who struggle with problem-solving and have high levels of conflict in relationships tend to report more relationship dissatisfaction, which could trigger relationship burnout.
But you may wonder what this has to do with attachment styles; well, evidence indicates that those with an insecure attachment style find problem-solving more difficult and tend to lean on unhealthy communication methods, which can lead to high levels of conflict and relationship dissatisfaction. In this way, having an insecure attachment style may make someone more likely to feel burned out in their romantic relationship.
Final Word on Insecure Attachment and Relationship Burnout
Relationship burnout involves feeling emotionally drained in your relationship and often negative thoughts and feelings towards your partner. It generally comes on gradually, so it may not be something you notice until you’ve felt it for a while.
There’s no one definitive cause of relationship burnout. Instead, it can occur due to a number of factors, which may differ depending on your attachment style. Insecure attachers tend to feel less appreciated and supported by their partners in relationships, which can make them feel less satisfied. They may also be more prone to chronic stress and struggle to communicate their needs and solve problems with their partners. All of these factors can contribute to relationship burnout.
Relationships can feel tough when you’re experiencing burnout—you may not understand why you’ve lost interest in your partner, or you may be angry at them for not supporting you. Whatever the case, it’s important to know that it’s possible to overcome relationship burnout. Our article on how to manage relationship burnout may help you with this process.
Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P. R. (1999). Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications. Guilford Publications.
Egeci, I. S., & Gencoz, T. (2011). The effects of attachment styles, problem-solving skills, and communication skills on relationship satisfaction. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 30, 2324-2329.
Feeney, J. A. (1994). Attachment style, communication patterns, and satisfaction across the life cycle of marriage. Personal Relationships, 1(4), 333-348.
Nejatian, M., Alami, A., Momeniyan, V., Noghabi, A. D., & Jafari, A. (2021). Investigating the status of marital burnout and related factors in married women referred to health centers. BMC Women’s Health, 21(1).
Pines, A. (2013). Couple Burnout: Causes and Cures. Taylor & Francis.
Yale Medicine. (2022). Chronic Stress.
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