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The Impact of Blamer‐softening on Romantic Attachment in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

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Journal of Marital and Family Therapy

Published online on

Abstract

--- - |2 Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT; Johnson, ) treats relationship distress by targeting couples' relationship‐specific attachment insecurity. In this study, we used hierarchical linear modeling (Singer & Willett, ) to examine intercept and slope discontinuities in softened couples' trajectories of change in relationship satisfaction and relationship‐specific attachment over the course of therapy from a total sample of 32 couples. Softened couples (n = 16) reported a significant increase in relationship satisfaction and a significant decrease in attachment avoidance at the softening session. Although softened couples displayed an initial increase in relationship‐specific attachment anxiety at the softening session, their scores significantly decreased across post‐softening sessions. Results demonstrated the importance of the blamer‐softening change event in facilitating change in EFT. - Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Volume 44, Issue 4, Page 640-654, October 2018.