Effects of Childhood Trauma on Emotional Attachment and Romantic Relationships in Adults: A Correlational Study

Abstract

The current study aimed to explore the effects of childhood trauma on emotional attachment and romantic relationship satisfaction in adults. The sample consisted of 206 adults (111 males, 95 females) aged 20-48. Data was collected using three self-report inventories; Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) assessed childhood trauma exposure across five subscales (emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect), Adult attachment Scale (AAS) measuring three subscales close, depend and anxiety, and the Love & Relationships (B), which includes three scales (love, conflict and ambivalence) from the four-factor inventory of intimate relations developed by Braiker and Kelley (1979). It is based on the hypothesis that higher levels of childhood trauma will be negatively associated with relationship satisfaction by an increase in level of conflict and ambivalence in adult romantic relationships, and will be associated with higher levels of attachment anxiety with lower levels of closeness and dependency. The results indicated that childhood trauma had a significant positive correlation with attachment anxiety and a negative correlation with close and depend subscales. Relationship conflict and ambivalence were also significantly and positively correlated with childhood trauma.