Reader’s Question

I am a 25-year-old woman. For the past ten years, I have become quickly and easily attached to women 10 to 20 years older than me. I find myself bonding with them, wanting to have conversations with them, wanting to spend quality time together, and wanting to hug them a lot. These are accompanied by intense feelings of love (not romantic) towards them and missing them when we are apart.

I am primarily wondering if this is an attachment issue that has been researched at all. I would appreciate any information you can find in regards to it as well as any thoughts you may have.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Emotional bonds are developed for a variety of reasons. For example:

• We tend to emotionally bond with a person related to the way they make us feel. People who make us feel happy and valuable create strong bonds. Other people make us feel loved, protected, respected, supported, attractive, important, etc.
• We often bond with people who replace other people in our lives. In your situation, the age gap might suggest that these women are maternal/mother figures for you — providing some maternal support and affection. When we consider your age of 25 years, it may be important in your life to have both a friend and maternal influence to keep your life stable and happy. Some seek brother and sister substitutes in relationships.
• We often bond with people who improve our lives. We may benefit from their maturity, stability, guidance, or their lifestyle.
• Bonds also develop through shared activities and interests. Co-workers frequently develop strong emotional ties, even to the point of developing romantic feelings for each other. Nonsexual yet “emotional affairs” are not unusual on the job. This is especially true when working in high stress positions.
• Bonds also develop based on the level of sharing with another person. In the development of a romantic relationship, we move from sharing common-knowledge information (age, work, hobbies, etc.) to family information and on to our hopes and dreams. The more intimate our sharing, the stronger the bonds become. This has created problems in internet and/or email relationships as the shared intimate information is somewhat artifical…creating the illusion of an emotionally healthy bond when such a bond doesn’t exist in real, face-to-face life.

There is no problem with your current attachment preference. While you may seek a more maternal bond, many of your older friends may enjoy the mother-daughter type of relationship. This may be especially true if they had sons or daughters who are out of the home. It’s also normal to miss them and feel affection for them.

The intensity of your feelings during these attachments may tell you that you are investing too much in the relationships, however. You may be emphasizing these relationships — motherly and safe — as a way of avoiding other intense relationships on a romantic or peer level. In a way, you are placing most of your emotional support in only one or two sources. I would recommend spreading your network of friends and attachments, including several levels. Some very close friends, some shared-interest friends, some shopping/dinner friends, some at-work and some off-work friends, etc. When we have friends at multiple levels of involvement, we can better accept the normal ups and downs found in individual relationships.