September 12, 2025 • 18 mins
In this powerful episode of 15 Minutes with Dad, host Lirec Williams explores how attachment theory explains the hidden scripts that shape men in adulthood. From homes shaped by addiction, untreated mental health, or generational trauma in the 1950s–80s, many fathers inherited patterns of emotional distance, physical punishment, and survival-based parenting.
Learn how anxious, avoidant, and dismissive-avoidant attachment styles play out in marriages, co-parenting, and fatherhood challenges, and how these cycles quietly reinforce the father wound. Through research-based growth insights and personal development for dads, you’ll discover how to identify your style, recognize unhealthy patterns, and begin writing a new story of emotional presence, parenting resilience, and healthy masculinity for your children and relationships.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back to this special series of 15 Minutes
with Dad.
I'm your host, lyric Williams,and today we're looking into the
mirror Not just any mirror theattachment mirror, the
reflection of the home you grewup in, the relationships that
shaped you and the silentlessons about love that were
passed down whether you askedfor them or not.
(00:23):
This episode is called theAttachment Mirror how Childhood
Scripts Shape Men, fathers andPartners.
We're going to talk about howyour attachment style still
drives your adult relationships,how addiction, untreated mental
health and generational traumashape masculinity between 50s
and the 80s, and how thesescripts show up today, not just
(00:46):
in fatherhood, but in marriage,co-parenting and romantic
partnerships.
This one is going to hit closeto home, but if you're ready to
see yourself clearly, you canstart to rewrite the story for
your kids, for your partner andfor yourself.
Attachment Theory, firstdeveloped by John Bowlby and
(01:07):
later expanded by Mary Ainsworth, says that the way we bonded
with caregivers in childhoodshapes the way we form
relationships for the rest ofour lives.
There are four main styles.
There's secure attachment,which means that love feels safe
and steady.
There's anxious attachment,which love feels fragile and
(01:29):
easily lost.
There's avoidant and dismissiveattachment, where closeness
feels threatening Independenceis safer.
And then disorganizedattachment, where love feels
chaotic, both longed for andfeared.
Now, very few of us grew up inhomes that consistently modeled
(01:49):
secure attachments.
Especially if you were raisedbetween the 1950s and the 2000s,
the cultural script aroundfatherhood was very different
and fathers were providers.
Mothers often carried theemotional load and emotions
weren't talked about, they weresuppressed.
And if discipline happened, itoften came with the belt, a
(02:12):
backhand or threat.
And if you put on top of that alayer of the cultural aspect in
regards to that time period inparenting where there was these
different, these differentsocioeconomic issues the war on
drugs, the opioid epidemic, thecrack epidemic all of these
(02:33):
things play a role in how wewere parents, whether by single
mothers, whether by both parentsand navigating alcoholism and
all of those such things all ofthat plays a role in how we as
men have attachment styles today.
Here's where it gets even morecomplex.
Many of our parents were notjust strict, they were wounded
(02:57):
themselves.
Think about it In the 1950sthrough the 1980s, mental health
issues like borderlinepersonality disorder, bipolar
disorder or severe depressionwere rarely diagnosed, let alone
treated.
Parents with unstable moods orunpredictable behavior often
(03:17):
left children walking oneggshells.
One day love felt warm, thenext it felt cold or violent.
Addiction to drugs or alcoholwas common in the household,
often normalized and rarelydiscussed.
A father who drank heavilymight swing from affectionate to
abusive within hours.
(03:38):
A mother numbing herself withpills might be physically
present but emotionally absent.
Many parents were also traumasurvivors themselves.
Some were war veterans,children of the Great Depression
or victims of abuse from theirown parents.
They brought their scars intothe home, often unknowingly, and
because therapy wasn't ahousehold word.
(03:58):
Their pain leaked out into theonly way they knew control,
physical punishment, silence oraddiction.
For many boys, the script lookedlike this Emotions are unsafe,
vulnerability invites danger,love is inconsistent,
conditional or tied to yourperformance, and masculinity
(04:22):
means toughness and control, nottenderness or trust.
And that belt hanging on theback of the door was the
reminder that stepping out ofline had physical consequences.
That's the environment thatwrote our scripts.
Now fast forward.
Now you're the father andunless you've done intentional
(04:45):
healing, those old scripts arestill running in the background.
If you had an unpredictableparent, you may swing between
affection and withdraw withoutrealizing it.
If you had an alcoholic parent,you may either avoid alcohol
altogether or be repeating thecycle.
And if your household was ruledby fear, you may raise your
(05:06):
voice more than you mean to,because it's what you know.
And if you were taught emotionsare weakness, you may shut down
when your child cries or whenyour partner cries or when your
partner reacts in a highemotional way, rather than lean
in.
That's the attachment mirror.
Emotion away rather than leanin that's the attachment mirror.
(05:29):
We think we've left the pastbehind, but in reality we often
parent and marry through thelens of what we survived and
unless we name it, weunknowingly pass it down.
And as I mentioned before, whatyou experience as a child
doesn't just show up in yourfatherhood.
It shows up naturally withinyou, entirely as a man.
(05:53):
It shows up in yourrelationships, every single one
of them.
If your father was emotionallyabsent, you may struggle to be
emotionally present with yourpartner.
Or if your father wasn't there,you may not have learned how to
regulate those emotions.
If your mother's love wasconditional or your caregiver's
love was conditional, you mayfear rejection, become clingy or
(06:16):
even jealous.
And if's love was conditional,you may fear rejection, become
clingy or even jealous.
And if your home wasunpredictable, chaotic because
addiction, untreated mentalhealth or violence, you may
crave control in yourrelationships or shut down when
conflict rises.
This is how attachment stylesplay out.
As a boyfriend or a husband.
Anxious attachments look likechecking your partner's phone,
(06:39):
panicking when they don't textback or overgiving to keep them
from leaving.
Avoidant attachments look likewithdrawing during arguments,
refusing to talk about feelingsor keeping an emotional wall
high.
Feelings or keeping anemotional wall high.
Now, disorganized attachmentswings between the two, wanting
closeness but fearing it,starting fights to test love or
(07:03):
sabotaging intimacy.
And here's what's important.
None of this means that you'rebroken.
It means your script is stillrunning.
The question is will you letthat script run your
relationship or will you takeauthorship and start rewriting
it?
Now one of the most commonclashes I see and I've lived it
(07:25):
myself is anxious-avoidantpairing.
The anxious partner says do youstill love me?
Prove it, stay close.
The avoidant partner says Ifeel suffocated, give me space.
The anxious pursues harder, theavoidant withdraws further.
Both end up feeling unloved.
Both end up feelingmisunderstood.
(07:47):
Now, when you add untreatedtrauma, addiction or mental
illness into the mix, argumentsescalate quickly.
Every disagreement feels like athreat of abandonment and the
anxious partner may scream to beheard.
The avoidant may go silent fordays and kids.
In that environment they learnlove looks like chaos and as a
(08:13):
husband or a boyfriend.
If you don't recognize thesecycles, you'll keep reenacting
them and you'll blame yourpartner for what is really your
wound clashing with theirs.
Here is the hard truth.
Attachment wounds don't justdamage marriages.
They quietly destroy trust, andtrust is the oxygen of intimacy
(08:39):
.
So how do we change this?
How do we love differently, asmen, as fathers and as partners?
We start with the love skills.
Most of us were never taughthow to love.
We were taught how to provide,protect and endure, but no one
(09:04):
showed us how to stay calm inconflict, how to express
affection freely or how torebuild trust after we mess up.
Here are five skills thattransform both parenting and
partnership.
One stay present in conflictInstead of shutting down or
(09:25):
blowing up pause.
Tell your partner I need fiveminutes to calm down, but I'm
not walking away.
To calm down, but I'm notwalking away.
That single sentence buildssecurity.
Two validate before you defend.
When your partner says I feelunseen, don't argue.
(09:46):
Say I hear you, I want tounderstand more.
Validation diffusesdefensiveness.
Repair quickly and honestly.
Kids need to see this, and sodo partners.
Apologize without excuses,something like I shouldn't have
(10:09):
said that I was wrong.
That humility builds trust.
Four express affection daily.
Don't wait for specialoccasions.
Hug your kids, kiss yourpartner's forehead, send a
midday text thinking of you.
Little acts build secureattachments.
(10:31):
If you don't have the words,borrow them.
Use feeling charts with yourkids, share therapy insights
with your partner.
Expanding language expands yourconnections and here's what
happens when you practice theselove skills as a father, your
children grows up secure, safeand emotionally literate.
(10:52):
As a husband or a boyfriend,your partner feels safe to be
vulnerable because they know youwon't run or retaliate.
That's how you start rewritingthe script Now.
I've lived this cycle of anxiousand avoiding.
I've been the man who shutsdown.
I've been the man whoover-pursued and I've seen how
(11:16):
it hurt the women that I lovedand how it confused the kids.
I have a disorganizedattachment because I grew up in
a home where there was drugaddiction.
Because I grew up in a homewhere there was drug addiction,
there was mental health issues,but there was no actual work
(11:38):
being done on that and I wasjust a punching bag for all of
that and, on top of that, goingto school, getting bullied on a
regular basis all the waythrough ninth, 10th, 11th grade.
I fought more in that time, butdefinitely fought for no reason
at all except for to protectmyself.
And so through all of this, Ihad no secure attachments with
(12:02):
anybody.
I didn't grow up predominantlywith my mother.
My father was in prison all mylife and I didn't have a secure
attachment with a person thatwas taking care of me, which was
my grandmother at the time, mymaternal grandmother and given
that she was going through hersituations, I became caregiver
(12:24):
for her earlier on in my lifeand with that becomes a
disorganized attachment because,again, I don't know what she's
going to feel at any given time.
And so in my previousrelationship we had this issue
because my partner was a certainattachment style and I was this
(12:51):
disorganized attachment style,and it clashed a lot the entire
time, from the beginning all theway up until the end.
And I spent a lot of time intherapy over the last years year
and a half.
I mean like sometimes, likeevery week at some points and
then every other week, no lessthan twice a month.
But when I learned that the waywe are won't give each other
(13:21):
the space to be who we want tobe in our relationship was a
moment that it was clear to methat I had to, that it was clear
to me that I had to separatefrom this relationship, and I
hate that.
I did it because all the lovein me tells me that it could
(13:42):
have worked.
We could have worked somethingout, something could have
changed.
But at every step of the waythat we put work into these,
attachment styles came into playand it caused some issues.
And I'm still working on this.
I'm still working on myattachment style.
I'm really focusing on healingthat portion of where I get into
(14:02):
relationships that seeminglyreplicate my childhood, and so
I'm working on these love skills.
I can employ them with my kids.
I've learned to be able toemploy them to the kids and not
relive that cycle.
But it's the partner thing,it's the relationship part where
(14:24):
I am wanting to create a spacethat's more safer for those
anxious attachment styles oravoidant attachment styles.
But like, here's the takeawayyour attachment style is not
just about your childhood.
It's alive in your relationshiptoday, as it is in mine.
(14:45):
It shapes how you parent, itshapes how you love and it
shapes whether your childreninherit wounds or security.
Here's your challenge this week,reflect on your current
relationship or pastrelationships.
Write down how you showed upduring conflict, during silence
and during intimacy.
Then ask is this me or is thismy script?
(15:09):
Because once you see the script, you can rewrite it.
And when you rewrite it, youdon't just heal yourself, you
heal your family, your marriageand your legacy.
Next week, make sure to tune in.
We'll dive deeper intoavoidance.
We're going to be talking aboutbreaking the cycle and how
(15:31):
avoidant attachment createsdistance in love and fatherhood.
Make sure you subscribe to Fit,to Immune with Dad.
Follow us on all social mediaand remember healing is the
greatest gift you can give toyour kids and the people who
love you.
Welcome back to this special series of 15 Minutes
with Dad.
I'm your host, lyric Williams,and today we're looking into the
mirror Not just any mirror theattachment mirror, the
reflection of the home you grewup in, the relationships that
shaped you and the silentlessons about love that were
passed down whether you askedfor them or not.
(00:23):
This episode is called theAttachment Mirror how Childhood
Scripts Shape Men, fathers andPartners.
We're going to talk about howyour attachment style still
drives your adult relationships,how addiction, untreated mental
health and generational traumashape masculinity between 50s
and the 80s, and how thesescripts show up today, not just
(00:46):
in fatherhood, but in marriage,co-parenting and romantic
partnerships.
This one is going to hit closeto home, but if you're ready to
see yourself clearly, you canstart to rewrite the story for
your kids, for your partner andfor yourself.
Attachment Theory, firstdeveloped by John Bowlby and
(01:07):
later expanded by Mary Ainsworth, says that the way we bonded
with caregivers in childhoodshapes the way we form
relationships for the rest ofour lives.
There are four main styles.
There's secure attachment,which means that love feels safe
and steady.
There's anxious attachment,which love feels fragile and
(01:29):
easily lost.
There's avoidant and dismissiveattachment, where closeness
feels threatening Independenceis safer.
And then disorganizedattachment, where love feels
chaotic, both longed for andfeared.
Now, very few of us grew up inhomes that consistently modeled
(01:49):
secure attachments.
Especially if you were raisedbetween the 1950s and the 2000s,
the cultural script aroundfatherhood was very different
and fathers were providers.
Mothers often carried theemotional load and emotions
weren't talked about, they weresuppressed.
And if discipline happened, itoften came with the belt, a
(02:12):
backhand or threat.
And if you put on top of that alayer of the cultural aspect in
regards to that time period inparenting where there was these
different, these differentsocioeconomic issues the war on
drugs, the opioid epidemic, thecrack epidemic all of these
(02:33):
things play a role in how wewere parents, whether by single
mothers, whether by both parentsand navigating alcoholism and
all of those such things all ofthat plays a role in how we as
men have attachment styles today.
Here's where it gets even morecomplex.
Many of our parents were notjust strict, they were wounded
(02:57):
themselves.
Think about it In the 1950sthrough the 1980s, mental health
issues like borderlinepersonality disorder, bipolar
disorder or severe depressionwere rarely diagnosed, let alone
treated.
Parents with unstable moods orunpredictable behavior often
(03:17):
left children walking oneggshells.
One day love felt warm, thenext it felt cold or violent.
Addiction to drugs or alcoholwas common in the household,
often normalized and rarelydiscussed.
A father who drank heavilymight swing from affectionate to
abusive within hours.
(03:38):
A mother numbing herself withpills might be physically
present but emotionally absent.
Many parents were also traumasurvivors themselves.
Some were war veterans,children of the Great Depression
or victims of abuse from theirown parents.
They brought their scars intothe home, often unknowingly, and
because therapy wasn't ahousehold word.
(03:58):
Their pain leaked out into theonly way they knew control,
physical punishment, silence oraddiction.
For many boys, the script lookedlike this Emotions are unsafe,
vulnerability invites danger,love is inconsistent,
conditional or tied to yourperformance, and masculinity
(04:22):
means toughness and control, nottenderness or trust.
And that belt hanging on theback of the door was the
reminder that stepping out ofline had physical consequences.
That's the environment thatwrote our scripts.
Now fast forward.
Now you're the father andunless you've done intentional
(04:45):
healing, those old scripts arestill running in the background.
If you had an unpredictableparent, you may swing between
affection and withdraw withoutrealizing it.
If you had an alcoholic parent,you may either avoid alcohol
altogether or be repeating thecycle.
And if your household was ruledby fear, you may raise your
(05:06):
voice more than you mean to,because it's what you know.
And if you were taught emotionsare weakness, you may shut down
when your child cries or whenyour partner cries or when your
partner reacts in a highemotional way, rather than lean
in.
That's the attachment mirror.
Emotion away rather than leanin that's the attachment mirror.
(05:29):
We think we've left the pastbehind, but in reality we often
parent and marry through thelens of what we survived and
unless we name it, weunknowingly pass it down.
And as I mentioned before, whatyou experience as a child
doesn't just show up in yourfatherhood.
It shows up naturally withinyou, entirely as a man.
(05:53):
It shows up in yourrelationships, every single one
of them.
If your father was emotionallyabsent, you may struggle to be
emotionally present with yourpartner.
Or if your father wasn't there,you may not have learned how to
regulate those emotions.
If your mother's love wasconditional or your caregiver's
love was conditional, you mayfear rejection, become clingy or
(06:16):
even jealous.
And if's love was conditional,you may fear rejection, become
clingy or even jealous.
And if your home wasunpredictable, chaotic because
addiction, untreated mentalhealth or violence, you may
crave control in yourrelationships or shut down when
conflict rises.
This is how attachment stylesplay out.
As a boyfriend or a husband.
Anxious attachments look likechecking your partner's phone,
(06:39):
panicking when they don't textback or overgiving to keep them
from leaving.
Avoidant attachments look likewithdrawing during arguments,
refusing to talk about feelingsor keeping an emotional wall
high.
Feelings or keeping anemotional wall high.
Now, disorganized attachmentswings between the two, wanting
closeness but fearing it,starting fights to test love or
(07:03):
sabotaging intimacy.
And here's what's important.
None of this means that you'rebroken.
It means your script is stillrunning.
The question is will you letthat script run your
relationship or will you takeauthorship and start rewriting
it?
Now one of the most commonclashes I see and I've lived it
(07:25):
myself is anxious-avoidantpairing.
The anxious partner says do youstill love me?
Prove it, stay close.
The avoidant partner says Ifeel suffocated, give me space.
The anxious pursues harder, theavoidant withdraws further.
Both end up feeling unloved.
Both end up feelingmisunderstood.
(07:47):
Now, when you add untreatedtrauma, addiction or mental
illness into the mix, argumentsescalate quickly.
Every disagreement feels like athreat of abandonment and the
anxious partner may scream to beheard.
The avoidant may go silent fordays and kids.
In that environment they learnlove looks like chaos and as a
(08:13):
husband or a boyfriend.
If you don't recognize thesecycles, you'll keep reenacting
them and you'll blame yourpartner for what is really your
wound clashing with theirs.
Here is the hard truth.
Attachment wounds don't justdamage marriages.
They quietly destroy trust, andtrust is the oxygen of intimacy
(08:39):
.
So how do we change this?
How do we love differently, asmen, as fathers and as partners?
We start with the love skills.
Most of us were never taughthow to love.
We were taught how to provide,protect and endure, but no one
(09:04):
showed us how to stay calm inconflict, how to express
affection freely or how torebuild trust after we mess up.
Here are five skills thattransform both parenting and
partnership.
One stay present in conflictInstead of shutting down or
(09:25):
blowing up pause.
Tell your partner I need fiveminutes to calm down, but I'm
not walking away.
To calm down, but I'm notwalking away.
That single sentence buildssecurity.
Two validate before you defend.
When your partner says I feelunseen, don't argue.
(09:46):
Say I hear you, I want tounderstand more.
Validation diffusesdefensiveness.
Repair quickly and honestly.
Kids need to see this, and sodo partners.
Apologize without excuses,something like I shouldn't have
(10:09):
said that I was wrong.
That humility builds trust.
Four express affection daily.
Don't wait for specialoccasions.
Hug your kids, kiss yourpartner's forehead, send a
midday text thinking of you.
Little acts build secureattachments.
(10:31):
If you don't have the words,borrow them.
Use feeling charts with yourkids, share therapy insights
with your partner.
Expanding language expands yourconnections and here's what
happens when you practice theselove skills as a father, your
children grows up secure, safeand emotionally literate.
(10:52):
As a husband or a boyfriend,your partner feels safe to be
vulnerable because they know youwon't run or retaliate.
That's how you start rewritingthe script Now.
I've lived this cycle of anxiousand avoiding.
I've been the man who shutsdown.
I've been the man whoover-pursued and I've seen how
(11:16):
it hurt the women that I lovedand how it confused the kids.
I have a disorganizedattachment because I grew up in
a home where there was drugaddiction.
Because I grew up in a homewhere there was drug addiction,
there was mental health issues,but there was no actual work
(11:38):
being done on that and I wasjust a punching bag for all of
that and, on top of that, goingto school, getting bullied on a
regular basis all the waythrough ninth, 10th, 11th grade.
I fought more in that time, butdefinitely fought for no reason
at all except for to protectmyself.
And so through all of this, Ihad no secure attachments with
(12:02):
anybody.
I didn't grow up predominantlywith my mother.
My father was in prison all mylife and I didn't have a secure
attachment with a person thatwas taking care of me, which was
my grandmother at the time, mymaternal grandmother and given
that she was going through hersituations, I became caregiver
(12:24):
for her earlier on in my lifeand with that becomes a
disorganized attachment because,again, I don't know what she's
going to feel at any given time.
And so in my previousrelationship we had this issue
because my partner was a certainattachment style and I was this
(12:51):
disorganized attachment style,and it clashed a lot the entire
time, from the beginning all theway up until the end.
And I spent a lot of time intherapy over the last years year
and a half.
I mean like sometimes, likeevery week at some points and
then every other week, no lessthan twice a month.
But when I learned that the waywe are won't give each other
(13:21):
the space to be who we want tobe in our relationship was a
moment that it was clear to methat I had to, that it was clear
to me that I had to separatefrom this relationship, and I
hate that.
I did it because all the lovein me tells me that it could
(13:42):
have worked.
We could have worked somethingout, something could have
changed.
But at every step of the waythat we put work into these,
attachment styles came into playand it caused some issues.
And I'm still working on this.
I'm still working on myattachment style.
I'm really focusing on healingthat portion of where I get into
(14:02):
relationships that seeminglyreplicate my childhood, and so
I'm working on these love skills.
I can employ them with my kids.
I've learned to be able toemploy them to the kids and not
relive that cycle.
But it's the partner thing,it's the relationship part where
(14:24):
I am wanting to create a spacethat's more safer for those
anxious attachment styles oravoidant attachment styles.
But like, here's the takeawayyour attachment style is not
just about your childhood.
It's alive in your relationshiptoday, as it is in mine.
(14:45):
It shapes how you parent, itshapes how you love and it
shapes whether your childreninherit wounds or security.
Here's your challenge this week,reflect on your current
relationship or pastrelationships.
Write down how you showed upduring conflict, during silence
and during intimacy.
Then ask is this me or is thismy script?
(15:09):
Because once you see the script, you can rewrite it.
And when you rewrite it, youdon't just heal yourself, you
heal your family, your marriageand your legacy.
Next week, make sure to tune in.
We'll dive deeper intoavoidance.
We're going to be talking aboutbreaking the cycle and how
(15:31):
avoidant attachment createsdistance in love and fatherhood.
Make sure you subscribe to Fit,to Immune with Dad.
Follow us on all social mediaand remember healing is the
greatest gift you can give toyour kids and the people who
love you.
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