When Childhood Teaches You Not to Settle: Why Unpredictable Upbringings Create Restless Relationships

Sunday, January 25, 2026.

There is a quiet assumption many people carry into adulthood:
that once you find your person, your nervous system will finally stand down.

This study suggests that for many life-partners, that moment never quite arrives—not because they are avoidant, unloving, or incapable of intimacy, but because their early environment trained them to keep scanning for exits.

The research, published in Evolutionary Psychology, examines adults who grew up in harsh or unpredictable childhood environments and asks a blunt question:

What if the problem in their adult relationships isn’t attachment alone—but strategy?

The Invisible Mechanism: Residual Contingency Orientation

This study is not really about attachment.

It is about what I’ll call residual contingency orientation:
the habit of living as if stability must always be re-earned.

When childhood is marked by instability—financial stress, parental absence, frequent moves, emotional volatility—the nervous system adapts.

It learns that continuity is fragile and that security depends on remaining alert, flexible, and ready to pivot.

That adaptation works beautifully in chaos.
It works less well in long-term intimacy.

Two Theories, One Uncomfortable Marriage

Most of my gentle readers are familiar with Attachment Theory, which explains how early caregiving shapes expectations around closeness, trust, and emotional safety.

This study adds a second lens: Life History Theory, an evolutionary framework that looks at how life-partners allocate energy in response to early environments.

Very simply:

• Stable childhoods encourage long-term investment.

• Unpredictable childhoods encourage optionality and speed.

In adult romantic life, that shows up as a difference between:

• Parenting effort: caregiving, emotional investment, continuity.

• Mating effort: monitoring alternatives, flirting, competitiveness, novelty-seeking.

Both can coexist in the same person.
But they do not pull a relationship in the same direction.

What the Researchers Found

The researchers studied 332 Polish adults with children—middle-aged, highly educated, and outside the usual North American undergraduate sample.

Participants reported on their childhood environments, attachment styles, relationship satisfaction and conflict, and their tendencies toward mating and parenting effort.

Here is the finding that matters most:

People who grew up in harsher or more unpredictable environments reported poorer adult romantic relationships partly because they invested more energy in mating effort.

Not because they lacked love.
Not because they failed at parenting.
But because a portion of their attention remained outward-facing.

Crucially, this effect remained even after controlling for attachment anxiety and avoidance.

This wasn’t just insecure attachment with better vocabulary.
It was something else.

Why Mating Effort Undermines Relationships

Mating effort is not promiscuity.
It is vigilance.

It is the habit of scanning the horizon even while sitting at the dinner table.

A nervous system oriented toward contingency behaves differently under stress:

• It escalates conflict faster.

• It hedges emotionally.

• It keeps mental receipts.

• It struggles to trust repair will hold.

The problem is not desire, fidelity, or moral commitment.

The problem is orientation.

You cannot fully relax into a relationship if some part of you believes stability is temporary.

The Parenting Surprise

One of the most unsettling findings in this study is also the simplest:

You can be an excellent parent and still be a restless partner.

Although childhood adversity was related to parenting effort, parenting effort itself had no meaningful relationship to romantic satisfaction or conflict.

This explains a pattern science-based couples therapists see constantly: couples who co-parent beautifully while emotionally misfiring with each other.

The systems governing caregiving and pair-bonding overlap—but they are not the same system.

Attachment Isn’t the Whole Story

Attachment still mattered, but more narrowly than we often assume:

• Attachment avoidance predicted lower parenting effort.

• Attachment anxiety did not predict mating effort.

• Neither attachment dimension explained the mating-related relationship problems.

This suggests two parallel pathways shaping adult intimacy:

• Attachment organizes closeness and trust.

• Life History Strategy organizes attention, risk, and optionality.

Therapy that addresses only the first often exhausts couples without resolving the second.

Why Reassurance Often Fails

This is why some couples feel worse after doing “everything right.”

They communicate.
They reassure.
They validate.

But reassurance does not retrain a nervous system oriented toward contingency.

You cannot talk someone out of a strategy that once kept them safe.

What heals this pattern is not more reassurance, but retraining the nervous system to tolerate permanence—to stay when staying feels dangerous, to stop monitoring exits, to let continuity become ordinary rather than remarkable.

Therapist’s Note

If one partner is oriented toward contingency and the other toward permanence, conflict is inevitable—not because either is wrong, but because they are solving different problems.

One is asking, “Will this last?”
The other is asking, “Why are you still bracing?”

Until that difference is named, couples argue in circles. When you’re ready, let’s talk about that.

FAQ

What does it mean to grow up in an “unpredictable” childhood environment?

An unpredictable childhood is one in which stability could not be assumed. This can include financial insecurity, frequent moves, parental absence, emotional volatility, or chronic uncertainty about safety and care. What matters is not trauma alone, but the absence of reliable continuity—the sense that conditions could change without warning.

How does an unpredictable childhood affect adult romantic relationships?

Research shows that people raised in unpredictable environments are more likely to experience lower relationship satisfaction and higher conflict in adulthood. This is partly because early instability trains the nervous system to remain vigilant and flexible rather than settled—shaping how adults approach commitment, trust, and emotional investment.

What is “mating effort,” and why does it matter in long-term relationships?

Mating effort refers to the energy spent on attracting, monitoring, or keeping alternative partners available—such as flirting, competitiveness, comparison, or novelty-seeking. In long-term relationships, elevated mating effort can quietly undermine intimacy by keeping attention oriented outward rather than toward repair, stability, and mutual reliance.

Is higher mating effort the same thing as infidelity?

No. Mating effort is not about cheating. It is about orientation, not behavior. A person can be faithful, committed, and still internally organized around contingency—remaining alert to alternatives even when they have chosen a partner.

How is this different from attachment anxiety or avoidance?

Attachment theory focuses on how people experience closeness, fear abandonment, or pull away from intimacy. This study shows that mating effort operates independently of attachment style. In other words, someone can have relatively secure attachment and still struggle in relationships due to a life-history strategy shaped by early unpredictability.

Why doesn’t reassurance fix this problem?

Reassurance addresses emotional fear, but mating effort reflects a deeper nervous-system strategy. For people shaped by early instability, reassurance can momentarily soothe without changing the underlying expectation that stability is temporary. What’s needed is not more reassurance, but learning to tolerate continuity without scanning for exits.

Can someone be a good parent and still struggle as a partner?

Yes. The study found that parenting effort was not associated with romantic relationship satisfaction or conflict. This means someone can be deeply invested, attentive, and reliable as a parent while still experiencing restlessness, mistrust, or conflict in their romantic partnership.

Does this mean people from difficult childhoods are doomed in relationships?

No. It means they may be running a strategy that once made sense but now creates friction. Strategies can be examined, updated, and renegotiated—especially in therapy that recognizes the difference between attachment wounds and life-history adaptations.

How can couples therapy help with this pattern?

Effective therapy helps partners name the difference between orientation toward contingency and orientation toward permanence. Once that difference is explicit, therapy can focus on retraining tolerance for stability, repairing conflict without escalation, and reducing the need for constant monitoring of alternatives.

The Quiet Takeaway

This study does not say that people from difficult childhoods are bad at relationships.

It says something more precise—and more useful:

Some people are loyal in behavior, committed in values, and still neurologically oriented toward contingency.

They love deeply.
They parent intensely.
They just never learned that relational stability could be trusted.

That is not a character flaw.
It is not a communication problem.

It is a strategy that once worked—and now invites renegotiation.

And science-based couples therapy, at its best, is where that renegotiation finally becomes possible.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Kwiek, M., Kruger, D. J., & Piotrowski, P. (2023). Life history, attachment and romantic relationship outcomes in an Eastern European adult sample. Evolutionary Psychology, 21 (3), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/14747049231190943