Case Study 1 — Chapter 15: Attachment — The Foundation of Human Connection

Jordan: The Pattern Behind the Pattern

Background

Jordan has been with Dev for five years. It is, by most measures, a good relationship — stable, intelligent, with real warmth underneath the ongoing negotiation of two people with distinct needs and strong personalities. Dev is thoughtful, perceptive, direct in a way Jordan sometimes experiences as confrontational and more often experiences as clarifying. They have built something real together.

Jordan knows this. And yet.

There is a pattern in the relationship that Jordan has noticed over the years without fully naming it. When things are going well — easy, comfortable, connected — he is at ease. But when Dev is frustrated, or preoccupied, or critical, or simply quiet in a way that Jordan cannot read, something activates in him that is out of proportion to what is actually happening. A drop in Dev's warmth that registers as potential abandonment. A period of distance that feels like indictment.

It took the Part 2 work to give this pattern a name. It took reading Chapter 15 to understand where it came from.

The Working Model

Jordan traces his attachment history with the same systematic precision he brings to work problems — which means he has the tools but also the potential to stay analytical rather than actually feeling what he is examining.

His mother was the primary caregiver. She was also — and he has known this factually for years without fully integrating it — inconsistently present. Not absent: she was physically there, working from home, available much of the time. But her emotional availability varied significantly with her own state. On her good days — which were many — she was warm, engaged, genuinely interested in Jordan's experience. On her harder days — which were fewer but unpredictable — she was withdrawn, short, and occasionally sharp in ways that left Jordan uncertain about what he had done wrong.

He never knew, as a child, which version of her would be available when he came home from school. He learned to read the apartment's atmosphere before he entered — the quality of the silence, whether she was at her desk or on the couch, the specific kind of absence that meant she needed to be left alone.

In attachment terms, this is the caregiving environment that produces anxious-preoccupied attachment: inconsistently responsive, producing hyperactivation of the attachment system — keeping it on constant alert to catch the caregiver on a good day.

Jordan's internal working model: She is available sometimes. The signal is unstable. I need to monitor constantly to catch the reliable moments and avoid triggering the unavailable ones.

He can see this now. He can see exactly how it installed itself, and he can see exactly where it goes when Dev is quiet on a Wednesday evening.

The Pattern with Dev

Jordan and Dev's most recurring conflict has a specific texture.

Dev becomes preoccupied — with work, with a creative project, with the ordinary internal weather of a person who has their own rich inner life. They are not withdrawing from Jordan; they are simply elsewhere. In Dev's experience, this is self-evident. In Jordan's threat-detection system, it is ambiguous at best and alarming at worst.

Jordan has two modes in response. The first is pursuit: finding reasons to check in, starting conversations about logistics or plans that are really about making contact, being slightly more present and attentive than usual in ways that hover between affectionate and intrusive. The second mode — which arrives when pursuit doesn't produce the reconnection Jordan's system is seeking — is withdrawal: pulling back, becoming quieter, protecting himself from the indignity of needing something that isn't being offered.

Dev's experience of these modes: confusing. Sometimes Jordan is very present; sometimes he disappears without explanation. Sometimes he seems to need a lot of reassurance; sometimes he is guarded and hard to reach.

What Dev does not see, because Jordan has not shown them, is the underlying logic: the threat-detection system monitoring for signs that the relationship is still real, the protest behaviors when the signals are ambiguous.

This is not an unusual pattern. It is precisely the anxious-preoccupied pattern, operating in a five-year adult relationship with a good partner, because the working model does not distinguish between the consistency of Dev's character and the inconsistency of his mother's emotional availability. The system is running old software.

The Conversation

After reading Chapter 15, Jordan does something that does not come easily: he talks to Dev about it.

Not as a presentation — not the analytical summary version that keeps everything at arm's length — but the actual thing. That he notices when Dev gets quiet. That it activates something in him that predates this relationship by three decades. That when Dev is preoccupied, some part of him registers it as potential withdrawal, even though he knows — cognitively, completely — that it is not.

Dev listens. Jordan is watching for the familiar response-reading — Will this be too much? Is this okay? — and catches himself doing it, which is something.

Dev says: "I always wondered why you'd disappear sometimes. Like I'd notice you weren't really there anymore, and I couldn't figure out what I'd done."

"You hadn't done anything. The signal just went ambiguous."

Dev is quiet for a moment. "So what do you need from me when that happens?"

This is the question Jordan has never been asked. He thinks about it. "Probably just... acknowledgment. Not reassurance exactly. Just — that you know I'm there."

"I can do that," Dev says. "But you have to tell me when it's happening. I can't see it when you go quiet."

This is the transaction that the attachment system, in its anxious configuration, resists: asking for what you need directly, rather than signaling it in ways that can be misread. The anxious pattern operates on amplified signals and hopes — expects, needs — the partner to decode them. Direct communication requires the assumption that it is safe to ask, which is precisely what the working model has not established.

Jordan is trying to update the assumption. It is slow work.

The Ongoing Pattern

The conversation does not fix the pattern. Patterns this deep are not fixed by conversations. But it does two things.

First, it gives Dev a map. They now know what Jordan's quiet means — not indifference, not anger, but the threat-detection system going into monitoring mode. This changes Dev's response: instead of reading Jordan's silence as withdrawal and becoming puzzled or hurt, they can recognize the pattern and make a small gesture of contact — a hand on the shoulder, a brief "Hey, I'm here" — that interrupts the cycle before it escalates.

Second, it gives Jordan language for what is happening inside him. When he feels the activation — the drop-in-temperature signal, the ambiguous reading of Dev's preoccupation — he can now name it internally: "That's the anxious system. That's not Dev." This naming does not eliminate the activation. It creates enough distance from the automatic response to introduce a pause.

He begins, gradually, to notice the difference between the actual signal (Dev is withdrawn, something is wrong with the relationship) and the predicted signal (Dev seems quieter than usual, this might mean something is wrong). Most of the activations, examined this way, are predicted signals. The actual signal — the real thing — happens far less often than the system predicts.

He is, in the chapter's terms, checking the accuracy of his threat detection. This is not the same as earned security. It is a step in that direction.

Analysis Questions

1. Jordan's caregiving history is described as producing an anxious-preoccupied pattern through inconsistent maternal availability. How does the mechanism — the infant hyperactivating the system to "catch" the caregiver on responsive days — manifest in Jordan's adult behavior with Dev?

2. Jordan's two modes with Dev (pursuit and withdrawal) are described as characteristic of anxious attachment. How do they relate to the infant's behavior in the Strange Situation? What does each mode accomplish — and fail to accomplish?

3. The conversation with Dev changes two things: Dev gets a map, Jordan gets language. Why does language (naming the activation) create a different outcome than simply knowing intellectually that the pattern exists?

4. Jordan notices himself monitoring for Dev's response while having the conversation ("Will this be too much? Is this okay?"). What does this moment of self-observation represent in terms of the mentalization capacity described in the chapter?

5. The case study ends with Jordan checking the accuracy of his threat detection — distinguishing actual signals from predicted signals. Is this the same as earned security? What would distinguish this intermediate step from the endpoint the chapter describes?