Before I joined the ranks of the starving artist brigade and became an English major, I was studying Freud, Skinner, Piaget, Erikson, Pavlov, Jung, and all the other prominent white, male psychologists at community college.
While the subject matter itself was intriguing and certainly not a bore to study, I’ll admit that most of what I spent hours in the library reading slipped my mind shortly after taking an exam. However, one concept that stuck with me is Piaget’s object permanence theory, which was hypothesized to develop in infants during the sensorimotor stage and allow them to be cognizant of an object’s existence, despite not being able to perceive them directly.
I’ve been thinking about this theory in regards to relationships, specifically, long-distance relationships. There seems to be a direct correlation between the absence of a partner and the effect this can have on the other partner’s feeling of security, or rather lack thereof, in the relationship. In other words, even though you may not physically see your partner, you should still be comforted by the fact that they still continue to exist as a part of your life.
Yet, from speaking to friends, acquaintances, reading up on Reddit threads, and watching TikTok videos that my algorithm keeps recommending to me, it appears that many people feel uneasy by this type of separation and therefore develop an anxious attachment style. This can manifest itself in the form of withdrawals from having to undergo time apart from their partner.
I later realized that it wasn’t long-distance relationships in relation to object permanence that I was thinking about, but rather in relation to object constancy, which is the emotional version of the former psychological concept. Instead of an infant being aware that their parent exists even away from their view, with object constancy, an infant is aware that they are loved by their parent, regardless of their parent is or is not physically present.
But if we are supposed to have made these reassuring connections during our cognitive development when we were infants, why do so many adults still feel insecure and anxious about their relationships, especially when separated by distance?
As I stated at the very beginning, a subtle disclaimer if you will, I never actually stuck it out as a psychology major and am by no means qualified to answer the question I just posed to my imaginary audience. If we want to go with the stereotypical psychoanalytical approach, then let me stop and agree with the stream of consciousness developing in your mind. Yes, this concept probably does have to do with our childhood upbringings, how our parents loved us, and hence developed our perspective on how love should look and feel.
In fact, I stumbled upon a Psychology Today article titled “Are Your Loved Ones ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’?” by Imi Lo when I was researching object constancy in relationship to long-distance relationships, which is a great resource to further explore this topic and the correlation between “fear of abandonment, object constancy, and borderline personality disorder (BPD).”
If you’re not in the mood to answer one of life’s deeper questions, no hard feelings. It’s not exactly a light-hearted ice breaker question to talk about with a total stranger. If anything, I hope this question resonated with you or at least introduced you to a new perspective from an, ironically enough, total stranger.