# 202011040909 Childhood attachment can influence adult relationships Source: [[Book - The Velvet Rage]] Chapter 12. **My thoughts** - I thought this passage highlight the impact of being in an ambivalent relationship. - And also how client who have history of moving, losing friends may develop "relationship helplessness" The following passage: "Tim had been raised by a single mother who moved around a great deal and had had several different boyfriends when Tim was young. He always yearned for a stable life like his friends had. Every year or so, he had to pick up, move with his mother to another town, and change schools. And that meant leaving one set of friends and being forced to make a whole new set of friends. He had learned his relationship helplessness long before he met Walter. Walter, it seems, only reinforced what Tim had learned as a child: "I am helpless within relationships." One gay man said to me, "It would have been easier if he had hit me. At least then there would have been bruises as evidence of the injury. Instead, it was a slow drain on me that eventually destroyed my self-confidence." ==Ambivalent relationships are as damaging as virtually any form of physical or emotional abuse, sometimes even more so, because on the surface the relationship may seem safe but in reality is anything but.== The backs and forths and ups and downs of these relationships slowly tax the gay man's emotional resources." Related to[[Attachment Theory]]