Different Perspectives on the Sex-Attachment Link: Towards an Emotion-Motivational Account

Abstract

Although the link between sex and attachment was made decades ago (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), theories on sexual and attachment functioning have been developed in relative isolation. Recent efforts to integrate both literatures have been complicated by the fact that the sex–attachment link has been approached from very different perspectives, including biological, evolutionary, developmental, cognitive, and social psychology approaches. Also, at the empirical level, research on sex and attachment lacks overarching synthesis. This article gives an overview of the most important theoretical ideas and empirical insights on sex and attachment. It starts with describing general models that approach the sex–attachment link from an evolutionary and neurobiological perspective. Then, it summarizes theoretical and empirical ideas of attachment theory and describes how attachment style differences are manifested in intimate and sexual relationships. Research so far has been limited to studying the predicted link between sex and attachment in terms of broad descriptives, and it would benefit the literature to specify the processes and pathways that mediate the sex–attachment link. After a short discussion of the functional similarities between the sexual and the attachment systems, the article describes some specific—dynamical—models that focus on the emotional and cognitive-motivational processes through which attachment schemas influence sexual experiences. Such an emotion–motivational perspective on sex and attachment can help to organize theoretical ideas and empirical findings and eventually promote an integrative view on how attachment dynamics can interact with sexual experiences.