Video Games and Disengagement.

So I already introduced different attachment styles in an earlier post, but I wanted to discuss some specific attachment behaviors here.  Regardless of how secure someone is in their attachment, everyone employs at least three different attachment behaviors in their relationships: accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement.

Accessibility is essentially how often you're around or, like it sounds, accessible.  Someone who's across the country and doesn't have cell service is pretty inaccessible.  Someone who's always at work and can't take calls during the day is also inaccessible.  Someone who's just a phone call away is mildly accessible.  And someone standing in the same room as you is very accessible.  Accessibility is important in relationships, but just being accessible can fall flat if we don't follow through with the next two attachment behaviors.

Responsiveness is measured by how you respond to someone.  (sounds obvious, I know)  So someone can answer their phone (making them accessible), but if they just respond with "yeah", or "uh-huh" during the whole conversation, instead of actually listening and answering, they're not being responsive.  Similarly, someone can be sitting in the same room as you, but if you can't hold a conversation with them, they're not being very responsive.  When you can successfully have a conversation where the other person is mentally there, answering and asking questions, and responding to you, you are experiencing responsiveness.

Engagement is how well you can have serious, deep, meaningful conversations with someone.  For example, you can be responsive by just talking about what's for dinner, or what the kids did all day, but engagement comes when you discuss more meaningful things in your lives, i.e. talking about your future, why you love each other, resolving conflicts, and other important conversations.

As it turns out, high level of engagement is a pretty high predictor of marital satisfaction.  You can't get to engagement with each other, however, if you don't make yourself accessible or responsive first.

When someone sits in front of the computer or TV playing video games, they are technically accessible because they are physically in the same room as you, but they may not mentally be in the same room with you at all.  Responsiveness is going to be extremely difficult because their head is somewhere else, and there's really no hope for engagement while someone's in the middle of an alternate reality that doesn't involve you.

I have to add the caveat here that there are other situations that can cause the same inaccessibility and unresponsiveness.  TV can have the same effect as video games.  If someone's watching a tv show while you're trying to talk to them, they're accessible (meaning at least they're home), but they'll hardly be responsive, and it would be impossible for them to seriously engage with you while paying attention to the drama happening in the show in front of them.

Of course, there's a happy medium and moderation in both of these activities can be totally healthy and actually beneficial.  But in excess, they can really start to wear down a relationship by taking away the time and energy needed for engagement to occur.