When Relationships Begin to Think for Us: Attachment, and the Stories We Cannot Tell

Recently, I have found myself returning to a question that first emerged while working with survivors of grooming. The question is deceptively simple: what happens when a person gradually loses confidence in their own experience.

One of the ideas that continues to help me think about this comes from the LUUUTT model developed by  Pearce & Pearce (1990). I'm repurposing slightly, but the model distinguishes between different kinds of stories: those that are lived, those that are told, those that remain untold, those that go unheard, and those that remain unknown even to the people living them. What interests me is the space that opens between these layers. Especially when relationships become distorted.

It is tempting to imagine that abuse should reveal itself clearly, that a child would naturally move away from danger and towards protection. But human attachment is rarely so straightforward. One of the perplexing features of grooming is that children often move closer to the person or people harming them. They may defend them fiercely, protect them, lie for them, determindly seek them out. Sometimes they become angry with those attempting to keep them safe. This can be deeply confusing for everyone involved, not least the child.

The child’s body may register fear. Something may feel wrong. Fragments of reality may surface in symptoms, behaviours, dreams, or moments of confusion. And yet the child may become increasingly invested in preserving the very relationship that is causing harm. The lived story and the spoken story begin to diverge.

Over time I have come to wonder whether versions of this process appear elsewhere. Organisations are not the same as families, nor workplaces the same as abusive relationships. But human beings bring the same psychological equipment wherever we go.

A conversation with a colleague recently stayed with me. Several experienced staff members had left an organisation over a relatively short period. New managers had arrived. Longstanding relationships had disappeared. The feeling of the place had changed. When I mentioned that sounds difficult, their response was immediate: I’m used to it. Many of us might say something similar. Organisations change. People leave. Roles evolve. But what difference does being used to something make?

I found myself wondering whether some realities remain true whether or not we acknowledge them. In psychology we don't to dodge any of the bullets. They all wound because whether we admit it or not, whether we like it or not, relationships matter. And in that trust takes time. And as such loss has consequences. Attachments shape how people experience institutions. These feel less like opinions and more like observations about human life. We do not always notice gravity, but gravity continues operating. Perhaps relationships work in a similar way. The effects may not be visible immediately, but they accumulate. If enough trusted colleagues leave, something changes. If enough relationships are disrupted, something changes. The question is not whether the change occurs but how it becomes known or whether it becomes speakable at all.

An example of this can occur in any system of thought, including psychological, political, religious, or academic ones. Ideas often begin as attempts to understand reality. They help us notice patterns we might otherwise miss. They make aspects of experience visible.

Yet there is a paradox. The more useful an idea becomes, the greater the temptation to rely upon it. Gradually the theory that once expanded perception can begin to narrow it. Experience becomes interpreted through an increasingly fixed lens. New information is sorted more quickly. Ambiguity becomes harder to tolerate. Surprises become less welcome.

At this point, a subtle shift can occur. Instead of helping us think about reality, the theory begins telling us in advance what reality means.

The danger is not the existence of theory. Human beings cannot think without frameworks. The danger arises when a framework loses its capacity to be surprised.

When this happens, curiosity begins to contract. Questions arrive already carrying their answers. The world becomes more predictable, but perhaps also less alive.

The issue is not whether a theory is right or wrong. The issue is whether it remains in conversation with experience.

There is another aspect of this that I find increasingly important. C. S. Lewis once observed that we discover the strength of a force not by yielding to it but by resisting it. We learn the force of a wind by trying to walk against it. We discover the power of temptation by attempting not to give in. The same may be true of psychological and social realities. We often do not recognise the strength of an attachment, an assumption, an ideology, or an institutional norm while moving comfortably within it. Their force becomes visible when someone hesitates, questions, dissents, or attempts to think differently. It is often only at the point of resistance that we discover what has been organising us. The resulting discomfort can be revealing. What appears at first to be conflict, disloyalty, or disruption may sometimes be evidence that a previously invisible reality has begun to emerge into awareness.

This brings me to the work of the French psychoanalyst and group analyst René Kaës. Kaës was interested in how groups manage realities that are difficult to bear. He proposed that groups develop unconscious alliances: shared arrangements that help maintain cohesion and stability. Many of these are healthy and necessary. Yet he also described what he called negative pacts, collective agreements organised around not knowing. Not deliberate lies. Not censorship. Something more ordinary and perhaps more unsettling: a gradual narrowing of what can be thought about, a shrinking of curiosity, a tendency for certain questions to lose their place in the conversation.

Reading Kaës, I found myself thinking again about the child trying to remain close to the abuser. Not because the child is irrational or weak, but because human beings sometimes become organised around preserving relationships that feel necessary. Reality does not disappear. The question becomes how much of it can be acknowledged.

Perhaps every family encounters this challenge. Perhaps every organisation does too. Perhaps every profession. Perhaps every culture. The issue may not be whether blind spots exist, they almost certainly do. The issue may be whether there is enough space left to notice them.

This leads me to another question: does a relationship help us think with our experience, or does it increasingly think for us. The distinction feels important. A thoughtful parent does not tell a child what reality is; they help the child explore it. A good therapist does not replace a person’s thinking; they help restore it. A healthy group does not eliminate uncertainty; it creates conditions in which uncertainty can be tolerated. The aim is not agreement. The aim is greater contact with reality.

Perhaps this is why curiosity matters so much. Curiosity keeps the conversation between experience and meaning alive. Without it, stories can harden. Questions can become answers. Language can begin serving belonging more than understanding. The LUUUTT model reminds us that there are always stories that remain untold, unheard, or unknown. The challenge is not to eliminate these gaps, that is impossible. The challenge is to remain curious about what they contain.

What have we stopped noticing. What have we stopped asking. And what realities might become available again if we found a way to think about them together.