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

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.