Attachment, Sense of Entitlement in Romantic Relationships, and Sexual Revictimization Among Adult CSA Survivors

Abstract

Insecure attachment orientations are disproportionately frequent in child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors and have been found to mediate some of the effects of CSA on adult interpersonal and romantic difficulties, including sexual revictimization (SR). A sense of relational entitlement (SRE) has received growing attention in psychological discourse and research in recent years. It reflects both adaptive (assertive) and pathological (restricted or inflated) attitudes to the assertion of needs and rights and has not been studied in adult CSA survivors. The purpose of this study was to examine associations between CSA, attachment orientations, SR, and SRE. Sixty-seven Israeli women aged 25 ± 3.95 years (30 adult CSA survivors and 37 healthy female controls with no history of CSA) completed a demographic questionnaire and self-reported measures of adult attachment orientations, sense of entitlement in romantic relationships, and adult SR. CSA survivors reported greater attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, more restricted SRE, and higher revictimization rates than control women. No difference was found between the groups in inflated SRE. In the CSA but not the control group, anxious and avoidant attachment orientations were significantly and negatively associated with assertive SRE. Insecure (anxious and avoidant) attachment fully mediated the association between CSA and restricted SRE. Our findings suggest that the interplay between insecure attachment and CSA is related to a sense of impaired assertive entitlement and elevated restricted entitlement in adult CSA survivors. This entitlement pattern can be destructive to survivors’ romantic relationships and should be addressed in therapy.

Risk for Revictimization of Intimate Partner Violence by Multiple Partners: a Systematic Review

“…IPV victimization contributed both to higher likelihood of reporting experiences of Childhood sexual abuse and higher scores on Uncomfortable with openness. These findings concur with previous findings that sexual abuse was associated with attachment avoidance (Brenner et al, 2019) and that childhood sexual abuse was associated with women's engagement with multiple violent partners . A deactivating strategy associated with attachment avoidance may develop in the context of childhood sexual abuse as a way to regulate intolerable emotions, gain control over their lives, and maintain independence and a positive self-view.…”

“…Research has shown that adult attachment style can be measured along two orthogonal dimensions: attachment anxiety and attachment-related avoidance (Brenner et al, 2019;. According to Brennan et al, these two dimensions underlie virtually all self-report adult romantic attachment measures and appear crucial for capturing important individual differences in adult romantic attachment .…”

The Role of Relational Entitlement, Self-Disclosure and Perceived Partner Responsiveness in Predicting Couple Satisfaction: A Daily-Diary Study

“…The authors defined the concept as the extent to which a person expects that his/her needs and wishes will be fulfilled by the romantic partner, and as a person's affective and cognitive responses to a romantic partner's failure to fulfill these needs and hopes (Tolmacz and Mikulincer, 2011 ). In recent years, the concept of SRE was applied in various studies concerning interpersonal relationships, being linked to caregiving style (George-Levi et al, 2016 ), attachment orientations (Shadach et al, 2017 ; Brenner et al, 2019 ), pathological concern (Shavit and Tolmacz, 2014 ), dating abuse (Warrener and Tasso, 2017 ), relationship with parents (Tolmacz et al, 2016 ), and the quality of one's intimate relationship (Bar-Kalifa et al, 2016 ; Tolmacz et al, 2017 ; Williams et al, 2018 ; Candel and Turliuc, 2019 ; Turliuc and Candel, 2019 ). The conceptual innovation of Tolmacz and Mikulincer ( 2011 ) was completed with the development of a specific scale for measuring the sense of entitlement in couple relationships: The Sense of Relational Entitlement Scale (SRES).…”

“…It seems that people with excessive SRE are more sensitive to negative aspects of the partner and relationship and have higher expectations for their partner attention and understanding (Tolmacz and Mikulincer, 2011 ). Also, an inflated sense of entitlement has been associated with inadequate early parental care, maldaptive attachment styles, and early trauma, such as sexual abuse (Shadach et al, 2017 ; Brenner et al, 2019 ). Thus, it was presumed that this type of relational entitlement will have the highest impact on couple satisfaction because excessively entitled people have stronger reaction to the degree of fulfillment of their needs and wishes (Bar-Kalifa et al, 2016 ).…”

The Dyadic Interaction Model of Relationship Quality and the Impact of Attachment Orientation and Empathy on Infertile Couples in China

“…When discussing romantic relationships, the influence of adult attachment orientation is especially important [19,20]. So far, there are few studies in Chinese research that have focused on the effects of attachment in the romantic relationship of infertile couples.…”