Attachment anxiety might explain how early trauma shapes emotions during sexual disagreements

People with a history of childhood trauma tend to feel fewer positive emotions and more negative emotions when discussing sexual disagreements with their partners, according to new research published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. These emotional patterns were most strongly linked to attachment anxiety — a form of insecurity rooted in fears of rejection and abandonment — rather than avoidance.

Sexual disagreements can be sensitive and emotionally charged, often touching on issues of vulnerability, intimacy, and trust. For people who experienced trauma during childhood — such as abuse or neglect — these conversations may feel even more threatening. The research team sought to explore how early relational wounds might shape how partners experience and express emotion in real-time during discussions about their sexual relationships, and whether adult attachment insecurities might explain these patterns.

Attachment theory suggests that people form internal models of themselves and others based on early relationships with caregivers. Two common forms of adult attachment insecurity are attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. People high in attachment anxiety often fear rejection and may become emotionally overwhelmed or seek constant reassurance. Those high in attachment avoidance tend to feel uncomfortable with emotional closeness and may suppress or disengage from emotional expression.

The researchers proposed that these insecure attachment styles could be key mechanisms linking childhood trauma to emotional difficulties in adult romantic relationships, particularly during high-stakes discussions about sex.

“Previous studies have shown significant associations between childhood trauma and emotion regulation difficulties in adulthood, for example people were resorting to various tension reduction activities, have difficulty returning to a neutral emotional state but we did not really know about how this unfold in the context of couple conversations on the sensitive topic of sexuality. Also, we know people are having difficulty managing their emotions but we did not really know what were the emotional processes at play during these conversations,” said study author Noémie Bigras, an assistant professor at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, Gatineau.

For their study, the researchers recruited 151 romantic couples living in Canada. Participants varied in gender identity, sexual orientation, and cultural background, though the majority identified as heterosexual and were in long-term, cohabiting relationships. All participants completed an online survey that assessed their history of childhood trauma using a standardized questionnaire. This included emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, as well as emotional and physical neglect before the age of 18. They also completed a validated measure of attachment insecurity, capturing both anxiety and avoidance in romantic relationships.

The heart of the study took place in a laboratory setting. Each couple participated in a filmed 8-minute discussion about the most significant sexual problem in their relationship. Before the discussion, both partners independently identified and ranked up to three sexual concerns, such as differences in sexual frequency or initiation. They were then asked to talk as naturally as possible about the most pressing issue.

Immediately after the conversation, participants completed self-report measures of their emotional state. They rated the extent to which they felt various positive and negative emotions, such as feeling inspired or upset. Then, in a separate room, each partner watched a recording of the conversation and used a joystick to continuously rate their moment-to-moment emotional experience — from very negative to very positive — as they re-watched the interaction. This allowed researchers to measure the duration of positive and negative emotional experiences during the conversation.

To capture how participants outwardly expressed their emotions during the discussion, trained coders also viewed the recordings and used a similar joystick-based method to evaluate the emotional tone of participants’ facial expressions, gestures, and vocal cues. These observational ratings provided an objective measure of how long participants expressed positive or negative emotions during the discussion.

The researchers found that people who reported more childhood trauma experienced fewer positive emotions and more negative emotions after the discussion. They also spent less time feeling and expressing positive emotions during the conversation, and more time feeling and expressing negative ones. Importantly, these associations were not explained by attachment avoidance, but rather by attachment anxiety.

Attachment anxiety played a strong mediating role. People with a greater trauma history tended to score higher on attachment anxiety, which in turn predicted stronger negative and weaker positive emotional reactions during and after the conflict. This pattern held true for self-reported emotions, joystick-rated emotional experience, and coder-observed emotional expression.

In addition to their own emotional experience, participants’ attachment anxiety was also linked to how their partners felt. When one person scored high in attachment anxiety, their partner reported experiencing shorter periods of positive emotions during the conversation, suggesting that the emotional impact of trauma-related insecurity can ripple across the relationship.

“People who went through trauma in childhood may carry emotional patterns that affect how they handle sensitive conversations with their partner, especially about sexual concerns,” Bigras told PsyPost. “How safe and secure someone feels in their relationship is therefore especially important. If someone feels unworthy of love or fears being abandoned (i.e., attachment anxiety), they’re more likely to get stuck in negative emotions and report fewer and shorter positive emotions during a conflictual discussion about their sexuality.”

Surprisingly, attachment avoidance did not play a mediating role between childhood trauma and emotional dynamics. However, people high in avoidance did tend to report less positive emotion after the conversation and expressed fewer positive emotions during the discussion, possibly due to their tendency to suppress emotional displays and avoid vulnerability.

The study also examined how gender identity related to emotional reactions. Women reported more negative emotions and shorter experiences of positive emotion than men. Non-binary participants expressed more positive and fewer negative emotions than men, though these differences should be interpreted cautiously due to the small sample size of non-binary individuals in the study.

These findings add to a growing body of research showing that childhood trauma can shape emotional regulation in adulthood, especially in the context of close relationships. The use of real-time, dyadic observations — including self-reports, continuous emotional ratings, and third-party observations — provided a rare and detailed view into how trauma history and attachment insecurities influence emotional dynamics as they unfold between partners.

But there are some limitations to consider. The sample consisted mainly of well-functioning community couples who were not actively seeking treatment, which may limit the generalizability of the results to more distressed or clinical populations. The study was also cross-sectional, meaning that causal conclusions cannot be drawn.

The long-term goal of this line of research is “to better understand the dyadic processes at play when couples engage in discussion and share information—particularly through the lens of their respective and shared histories of childhood trauma,” Bigras said. “Our future research will therefore include longitudinal designs using multiple time points and daily diary methods over several days.”

“These designs would help identify whether certain processes are more significant than others. It will also be important to observe couples as they discuss positive topics, to explore how they naturally experience and regulate positive emotions with their partner in the context of past trauma.”

The study, “Attachment Insecurity Mediates the Associations Between Childhood Trauma and Duration of Emotions During a Laboratory‑Based Sexual Conflict Discussion Among Couples,” was authored by Noémie Bigras, Natalie O. Rosen, Justin P. Dubé, Marie‑Ève Daspe, Myriam Bosisio, Katherine Péloquin, and Sophie Bergeron.