"I'm a screw up Lee, try to keep that in mind" a study ofKara Thrace.
I have to admit Latteaddict's wonderful photgraphic essay on why Kara Thrace loves Lee adama greatly inspired me and I got to thinking about her closing comments. I am completely shippery when it comes to Lee and Kara, a died in the wool romantic. It has often been been easier for *me* to understand Lee's character because I feel that I have a greater understanding of his psychology. I realise that many viewers don't share this view , instead finding Lee a very difficult to read character, but I feel that Lee's love for Kara has never really been in doubt for the viewer (taking a break only really confirmed it for me), and that over the course of the series, he has been much more overt in his intentions towards Kara - the love of his life- and easier to read (his ability to totally frak things up, and keep his emotions on a tight leash until he reaches flashpoint, not withstanding ), for Lee has just as many relationship issues as Kara - but that will be another post). Kara, however, has been somewhat harder for me to interpret, having a more alien psychology, with strong, prickly defenses that have been difficult at times to understand. I often find myself so distracted by her swaggering feline beauty and her larger than life grandstanding, that her extreme emotional vulnerability and insecurity (when it comes to relationships) - and more often than not this occurs with either Lee or Bill - totally blindsides me. It is these moments that convince me of what Latteaddict has so well proposed in her wonderful photographic essay, that there has been much evidence (a lot of it non verbal and often instinctive, unconscious, and reactive) pointing to both Kara's deep feelings and regard for Lee, and also to the possible reasons why she is unable to *allow* herself to love Lee and *be* loved by Lee in return. This is my attempt at trying to understand Kara and her choices (why she ran away from shared declarations of love on New Caprica, particularly), and why I still believe that Lee and Kara still have great potential to get their relationship right next season. It's just my thoughts, remember, not set in stone. I probably tend to overanalyse these things, but that is just the way my mind works.
This is for Latte.
"I'm a screw up Lee, try to keep that in mind"
"I know this picspam includes lots of ugly moments (as well as pretty ones), and I didn’t do very well at explaining the reasons behind her monumental screw ups, but it seemed important to include as much as I could because the bad things that happened often coloured the good. Hopefully it all makes sense and proves how I know that Kara Thrace loves Lee Adama."
I have to admit Latteaddict's wonderful photgraphic essay on why Kara Thrace loves Lee adama greatly inspired me and I got to thinking about her closing comments. I am completely shippery when it comes to Lee and Kara, a died in the wool romantic. It has often been been easier for *me* to understand Lee's character because I feel that I have a greater understanding of his psychology. I realise that many viewers don't share this view , instead finding Lee a very difficult to read character, but I feel that Lee's love for Kara has never really been in doubt for the viewer (taking a break only really confirmed it for me), and that over the course of the series, he has been much more overt in his intentions towards Kara - the love of his life- and easier to read (his ability to totally frak things up, and keep his emotions on a tight leash until he reaches flashpoint, not withstanding ), for Lee has just as many relationship issues as Kara - but that will be another post). Kara, however, has been somewhat harder for me to interpret, having a more alien psychology, with strong, prickly defenses that have been difficult at times to understand. I often find myself so distracted by her swaggering feline beauty and her larger than life grandstanding, that her extreme emotional vulnerability and insecurity (when it comes to relationships) - and more often than not this occurs with either Lee or Bill - totally blindsides me. It is these moments that convince me of what Latteaddict has so well proposed in her wonderful photographic essay, that there has been much evidence (a lot of it non verbal and often instinctive, unconscious, and reactive) pointing to both Kara's deep feelings and regard for Lee, and also to the possible reasons why she is unable to *allow* herself to love Lee and *be* loved by Lee in return. This is my attempt at trying to understand Kara and her choices (why she ran away from shared declarations of love on New Caprica, particularly), and why I still believe that Lee and Kara still have great potential to get their relationship right next season. It's just my thoughts, remember, not set in stone. I probably tend to overanalyse these things, but that is just the way my mind works.
This is for Latte.
So what might be some of the reasons behind Kara's "monumental screwups?"
Psychological research proposes that the way we relate to those closest to us may be guided by our upbringing (nurture), and that the pattern of electro - chemistry in our brain creating our unique thoughts and feelings, and even the size of different structures within the brain, may be heavily influenced by our early childhood upbringing. In fact the first six years of our lives can play a critical role in shaping who we are as adults, physically and psychologically and whether dysfunctional or not, we bring our brain patterns and chemistry to bear when we are seeking friends, lovers, and occupations etc.
Our patterns of attachment are greatly informed by the kind of childcare that we recieved. For example, if you were repeatedly let down during early childhood, either because you were maltreated, because the people you most relied upon kept disappearing, or because they were emotionally unresponsive when they are there, then that is the behavior that you tend to expect of the people you depend on later in life, at work and in love. Although not a mental illness initself, an insecure attament pattern can predict an increased liklihood of psychological problems. In general, the earlier a negative pattern of exerience occurs in our childhood, be it sexual or physical abuse, neglect, parental divorce or separation, the greater the chance of it still affecting us into adulthood. Emotional unresponsiveness or physical absense of primary carers at a very young age can create a persistent state of fear that the carer will be emotionally unavailable and this anxiety continues into adulthood, triggered by subsequent intimate emotional attachments. Not having our attachment needs met at a young age can leave us unable to relax and to feel confident that everything will be ok, insecure adults fear being abandoned or rejected by their intimate others because that is what happened in early childhood.
In attachment theory 4 patterns of attachment are described:
The avoidant - I am comfortable without close relationships. It is very important for me to feel independent and self sufficient and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend upon me.
the clinger - I want to be emotionally intimate with others, but I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, and I worry that others don't / won't value me
as much as I value them.
the wobbler - I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely or to depend on them. I sometimes worry that I will be hurt if I allow
myself to become too close to others
the secure (50% of the pop) - it is relatively easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending upon others and having others depend on me. I don't worry about being alone or having others not
accept me.
We know from canon that Kara had an unhappy, difficult childhood, filled with both physical and psychological abuse at the hands of her mother. Kara was so frequently beaten by her mother Socrata Thrace, that she came to accept pain as a way of life. Her father was a pianist who was absent from her life at an early age for reasons unknown to the viewer (and possibly to Kara herself). From early in her life, Kara Thrace had been guided through her mother's actions for a special role in life and she left home to join the military where she proved herself to be highly skilled in in many areas: was a very talented pyramid player receiving a scholarship to the Fleet Academy to play pyramid, and following injury to her knee and no longer being able able to play pyramid at a professional level, discovering a passion and skill at being a fighter pilot. On graduating from Colonial Flight School, she undertook a period of active duty before returning to flight school as an instructor and becoming engaged to one of her recruits, Zak Adama. Kara, despite Zak's mediocre performance, passed him on his final flight examination, despite failing three of the required maneuvers. Kara's engagement to Zak ends when he was killed during a routine mission shortly after graduating. At the time, Lee Adama, Zak's elder brother, blamed their father (William) for Zak's death. Kara did little to alter this idea. She did, however, meet William Adama shortly after the accident, and the two struck up such a strong rapport that Kara resigned from flight school as an instructor and transferred as an operational pilot to the battlestar Galactica under the command of William Adama, where she served for some two years prior to the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies. Before the Cylon attack, she was second in command of the remaining pilots.
Kara is outwardly very outgoing, loud, brash and swaggeringly confident - full of bravado and certain of her position as the best pilot in the fleet - , but she has few real friends, and although mixing well with the crew, tends to be a loner - aggressive, solitary and rejecting of overtures of intimacy. She repeatedly flaunts the rules and rebels against authority but thrives on military structure and seemingly strives for the approval of the people in authority that she respects eg. Commander Adama and Admiral Cain. She's sexually uninhibited - promiscuous even maybe - but she was engaged to one man (Zak), married another (Sam), and is overtly religious. In spite of her outward demeanor of self assurance and reliance, she can at times be overwhelmed by guilt, and fear, self doubt.
I suspect that out of all of the above mentioned pattern types, Kara would seem to demonstrate most of the features of an avoidant pattern of attachment - an allergy to intense involvement with others, wanting self sufficiency, finding it difficult to trust, unwilling to depend or be depended upon, and seemingly assuming that others will be, if not immediately, then eventually, hostile and rejecting. Avoidants are likely to have been the object of harsh insensitivity throughout their childhood with unsympathetic, harsh and critical reactions to the usual pitfalls of adolescence with the end result that avoidant adults expect rejection in relationships and put the boot in first, reject before being rejected. In anticipation of this rejection, she has developed spiky, well reinforced defenses, a self reliant, stubborn, opinionated manner - and when becoming romantically involved, a dominating style. We do not know much about Kara's relationship with Zac, but we do know that Kara was in a position of dominance (by rank, qualifications, experience, position, and quite possibly age as well) and we have observed in canon, that in her relationship with Sam she was also usually dominant, with Sam generally deferrential to Kara's wishes - directing the ebbs and flows of that relationship in most instances. Interestingly (and I will expand upon this a little later) although we do not know much about Zac himself -from what we do know (Zac was protected as a child by his older brother Lee and was thus afforded a more sheltered childhood, with greater comparative freedoms than his brother enjoyed, more exuberant and easy-going, loved by all and, in Lee's eyes, preferred by his parents) - he most likely demonstrated a secure pattern of attachment, and cylon or not, I would suggest that Sam does also. Upon splitting up, she seems not to care, dwelling on neither what has been lost or what might have been, but this insousciance is a front. She is deeply upset on the inside, she simply doesn't allow herself to show it.
In much research, traditionally, the female avoidant tends to not have as many sexual partners as a male - he tending to have a penchant for one night stands, sex without love or with partners already spoken for. This pattern of behaviour could still easily be attributed to Kara however, given her place in a ( traditionally?) male dominated environment such as the military. Both avoidant sexes report disliking the lovey dovey side of sex - caressing, hugging, kissing, gazing into a partners eyes and so on - tending instead to favour pratices that involve less emotional contact, and Kara has demonstrated physically on numerous occasions her seeming distaste for post coital closeness ('get your boots on the way out, Sammy!'). In addition, female avoiders with absent fathers are liabel to viewing men in general, as being unreliable. Avoidants tend to prefer work to love (work is more amenable to control - yet work can prove to be a source of annoyance because our fellow workers are so incompetent and non compliant), and yet tend to be highly critical of work peers, preferring to work alone (flying a viper comes close - greater ability of keeping control of one's own environment to some extent there) which can protect from the frustration and stress of having to deal with infuriating, incompetent peers. Kara has a dedicated career with the military (down time on New caprica aside - and then she was involved in the resistance) and a history in canon of being insubordinate and regularly reprimanded ( she began the series with a stint in the Brig), and while being highly skilled at what she does, she has high expectations of others ('You're the CAG, act like one" ) . Avoidants are more likely than others to be agnostic, but if having a god (or gods, perhaps), tend to imagine him (them) to be distant figure/s, inaccessible, controlling, rejecting and punitive - unlikely to care very much - a fear based relationship with adherence to rituals and customs strong belief . This tends to be much like the image held of the mother - rejecting, abusive, negative, punitive, because that is what she was actually like. Kara is shown to be very religious in canon, but I suspect that her views about the Gods may be quite closely related to that which I have just outlined, given her earl upbringing, and her subsequent harsh life and multiple losses may only have served to accentuate and reinforce these beliefs.
It is with regard to Kara's choice's of partner in the 2 major relationships demonstrated in canon thus far (Zac and Sam - whom I have speculated as probably representing secure attachments), over a comitted exclusive romantic relationship with Lee who she clearly has deep, longstanding feelings for, things become quite interesting. With regard to Zack, well we can't possibly know at this stage, but, perhaps she met Zack first. But now, if she is so attracted to / has such a strong bond with Lee, why would she choose to become romanticlly involved with and marry Sam? Studies generally suggest that individuals are most attracted to partners with similar attachment styles and that people who evidence avoidant attachment patterns, who prefer to rely on themselves and avoid demonstrations of intimacy, are less likely to use others as a way of regulating their feelings about the self, even when confronted with a threat. However, instead, they may actively engage in strategies that promote self-reliance. Such strategies may include becoming involved in a relationship with another person (eg. Sam) who can function as an an interaction partner who can provide a sense of closeness or pleasure, which can come from companionship and shared activities, for reasons that are unrelated to enhancing or maintaining their avoidance patterns and sense of self. Intimacy in the relationship might serve the function of providing a sense of closeness and connectedness, while providing help with regulating feelings about the self - in other words, this kind of relationship can be reasonably functional at a certain level, non threatening to long established patterns of behavior, not creating anxiety or resulting in stress or pressure as long as long as the ground rules are adhered to by both parties. In this case, the relationship serves the function of enhancing or restoring positive feelings about the self, or providing “esteem support” at times of emotional distress without challenging the avoidance behaviour pattern on any real level. Things seemed to go better between Kara and Sam whenever Sam played by Kara's rules. Generally, in canon, whenever Kara felt intimately threatened by Sam, she would tend to close him out, reject his advances towards a more comitted relationship, and revert to her self reliant. Again, I can only speculate on what their relationship was like on New Caprica as it was not shown to us, but given Kara's avoidant patterns of behavior, I suspect it was largely controlled by Kara, and probably emotionally superficial at best - fragile. That is not to say that their relationship was necessarily dysfunctional as relationship research has shown that although people of different attachment styles may tend, on average, to view their partners in a positive or negative light, that findings suggest a complex, dynamic process in that people of different attachment styles may emphasize different interpersonal goals and feel positively toward their interaction partners based on meeting those goals. Thus, relationship quality may vary depending on the degree to which partners are able to meet each other’s particular goals. Sam and Kara's joint goals for the resistence and shared experiences both on Caprica and New Caprica would have contributed to them having a satisfactory relationship on some levels until Sam began to feel that the level of intimacy was not meeting *his* attachment pattern of behavior which as I have previously speculated would most likely have been secure. Kara's relationship with Lee, therefore, when you think about it terms of patterns of attachment, starts to make a lot of sense. Lee has a similar attachment style to Kara - I think that it was becisvolatile who proposed that Lee and Kara are two sides of the same coin - which may explain (apart from their immediate and obvious sexual attraction) why they are at once drawn together at a deep emotional level and yet at the same time unable to maintain a connection.
So, does this mean that I think that Lee and Kara don't have a chance in hell? That they are too enmeshed in their attachment patterns to connect in any prolonged and meaningful way? Not at all. I feel that apart from their obvious physical attraction, common interests and given the intense situation that has been thrust upon them, that Lee and Kara may have been drawn to each other *because* of their similar exposure to early trauma in their upbringing and quite possibly due to them having similar attachment patterns. Unempathic care in infancy can result in setting us off on the wrong foot when it comes to relationships in later life, creating a set of negative beliefs and subsequent patterns of behavior that can affect our interactions with, and the behaviour of others, and in the situation where there has been childhood abuse, abandonment and rejection, a template of mistrust and insecurity is established that can take a lot of changing.
It is *normal* to be screwed up to some extent, and everyone suffers problems of some description from childhood, the thing is though, we *can* simply continue to re-enact the past, allowing our relationships to follow the same sometimes destructive patterns over and over again, or we can choose to try and understand what went wrong in our past and rewrite the script. Simply understanding why we do something, or remembering incidents from the past can be helpful, but in order for insight to happen, there needs to be a combination of awareness, emotion and re-experience which means that insights may need to be rediscovered several times over before they really have meaning. It is my belief that Lee and Kara may be well on the way to being in a position in season 4, to having begun to develop this insight into the way the past can affect the present. bop_radar discusses this rather beautifully in her essay "Battlestar Galactica Essay: Kara/Lee/Destiny (Part II) - Heroes, Heroines and their Anti-forms", describing how Kara's *death* enabled the head space that Lee needed to concentrate on himself: to face that his marriage failed for its own reasons, not because of Kara, to acknowledge his love of Kara, and to begun to define himself as his 'own man' with the trial of Gaius Baltar providing Lee with the chance to "resolve emotional burdens that he's carrying". Similarly, Kara, before her death, through Leoben, is exposed to her past via the significant people in her life, providing an opportunity for her to reflect on her relationships with them and while as Bop_radar proposes, it still remains to be seen whether or not Kara (and Lee for that matter) has moved beyond past her relationship issues and patterns of attachment, "it's possible that she'll be more open to and accepting of love, maybe even believe that she is worthy of love" in season 4. A positive emotional shift of such proportions as has just been proposed, from either Lee or Kara (or both) could well be the catalyst for their future relationship with each other, for although people with avoidant attachment styles tend to increase their relationship-enhancing choices more gradually, the more positive relationship-enhancing choices that are made, and the more positive and open the responses to said choices, the the greater the likelihood of mutually satisfying and beneficial relationship in the end.
It's Battlestar Galactica, and Lee and Kara, so anything is possible, and I must admit that this long hiatus has laid siege to my positive thoughts at times. Having said that,I believe that there are signs that there was plenty of potential at the end of season three for Lee and Kara to get it right in season 4, and to achieve the kind of emotional intimacy that they have both been aching for, finally, with each other.
This is for Latte.
"I'm a screw up Lee, try to keep that in mind"
"I know this picspam includes lots of ugly moments (as well as pretty ones), and I didn’t do very well at explaining the reasons behind her monumental screw ups, but it seemed important to include as much as I could because the bad things that happened often coloured the good. Hopefully it all makes sense and proves how I know that Kara Thrace loves Lee Adama."
I have to admit Latteaddict's wonderful photgraphic essay on why Kara Thrace loves Lee adama greatly inspired me and I got to thinking about her closing comments. I am completely shippery when it comes to Lee and Kara, a died in the wool romantic. It has often been been easier for *me* to understand Lee's character because I feel that I have a greater understanding of his psychology. I realise that many viewers don't share this view , instead finding Lee a very difficult to read character, but I feel that Lee's love for Kara has never really been in doubt for the viewer (taking a break only really confirmed it for me), and that over the course of the series, he has been much more overt in his intentions towards Kara - the love of his life- and easier to read (his ability to totally frak things up, and keep his emotions on a tight leash until he reaches flashpoint, not withstanding ), for Lee has just as many relationship issues as Kara - but that will be another post). Kara, however, has been somewhat harder for me to interpret, having a more alien psychology, with strong, prickly defenses that have been difficult at times to understand. I often find myself so distracted by her swaggering feline beauty and her larger than life grandstanding, that her extreme emotional vulnerability and insecurity (when it comes to relationships) - and more often than not this occurs with either Lee or Bill - totally blindsides me. It is these moments that convince me of what Latteaddict has so well proposed in her wonderful photographic essay, that there has been much evidence (a lot of it non verbal and often instinctive, unconscious, and reactive) pointing to both Kara's deep feelings and regard for Lee, and also to the possible reasons why she is unable to *allow* herself to love Lee and *be* loved by Lee in return. This is my attempt at trying to understand Kara and her choices (why she ran away from shared declarations of love on New Caprica, particularly), and why I still believe that Lee and Kara still have great potential to get their relationship right next season. It's just my thoughts, remember, not set in stone. I probably tend to overanalyse these things, but that is just the way my mind works.
This is for Latte.
So what might be some of the reasons behind Kara's "monumental screwups?"
Psychological research proposes that the way we relate to those closest to us may be guided by our upbringing (nurture), and that the pattern of electro - chemistry in our brain creating our unique thoughts and feelings, and even the size of different structures within the brain, may be heavily influenced by our early childhood upbringing. In fact the first six years of our lives can play a critical role in shaping who we are as adults, physically and psychologically and whether dysfunctional or not, we bring our brain patterns and chemistry to bear when we are seeking friends, lovers, and occupations etc.
Our patterns of attachment are greatly informed by the kind of childcare that we recieved. For example, if you were repeatedly let down during early childhood, either because you were maltreated, because the people you most relied upon kept disappearing, or because they were emotionally unresponsive when they are there, then that is the behavior that you tend to expect of the people you depend on later in life, at work and in love. Although not a mental illness initself, an insecure attament pattern can predict an increased liklihood of psychological problems. In general, the earlier a negative pattern of exerience occurs in our childhood, be it sexual or physical abuse, neglect, parental divorce or separation, the greater the chance of it still affecting us into adulthood. Emotional unresponsiveness or physical absense of primary carers at a very young age can create a persistent state of fear that the carer will be emotionally unavailable and this anxiety continues into adulthood, triggered by subsequent intimate emotional attachments. Not having our attachment needs met at a young age can leave us unable to relax and to feel confident that everything will be ok, insecure adults fear being abandoned or rejected by their intimate others because that is what happened in early childhood.
In attachment theory 4 patterns of attachment are described:
The avoidant - I am comfortable without close relationships. It is very important for me to feel independent and self sufficient and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend upon me.
the clinger - I want to be emotionally intimate with others, but I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, and I worry that others don't / won't value me
as much as I value them.
the wobbler - I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely or to depend on them. I sometimes worry that I will be hurt if I allow
myself to become too close to others
the secure (50% of the pop) - it is relatively easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending upon others and having others depend on me. I don't worry about being alone or having others not
accept me.
We know from canon that Kara had an unhappy, difficult childhood, filled with both physical and psychological abuse at the hands of her mother. Kara was so frequently beaten by her mother Socrata Thrace, that she came to accept pain as a way of life. Her father was a pianist who was absent from her life at an early age for reasons unknown to the viewer (and possibly to Kara herself). From early in her life, Kara Thrace had been guided through her mother's actions for a special role in life and she left home to join the military where she proved herself to be highly skilled in in many areas: was a very talented pyramid player receiving a scholarship to the Fleet Academy to play pyramid, and following injury to her knee and no longer being able able to play pyramid at a professional level, discovering a passion and skill at being a fighter pilot. On graduating from Colonial Flight School, she undertook a period of active duty before returning to flight school as an instructor and becoming engaged to one of her recruits, Zak Adama. Kara, despite Zak's mediocre performance, passed him on his final flight examination, despite failing three of the required maneuvers. Kara's engagement to Zak ends when he was killed during a routine mission shortly after graduating. At the time, Lee Adama, Zak's elder brother, blamed their father (William) for Zak's death. Kara did little to alter this idea. She did, however, meet William Adama shortly after the accident, and the two struck up such a strong rapport that Kara resigned from flight school as an instructor and transferred as an operational pilot to the battlestar Galactica under the command of William Adama, where she served for some two years prior to the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies. Before the Cylon attack, she was second in command of the remaining pilots.
Kara is outwardly very outgoing, loud, brash and swaggeringly confident - full of bravado and certain of her position as the best pilot in the fleet - , but she has few real friends, and although mixing well with the crew, tends to be a loner - aggressive, solitary and rejecting of overtures of intimacy. She repeatedly flaunts the rules and rebels against authority but thrives on military structure and seemingly strives for the approval of the people in authority that she respects eg. Commander Adama and Admiral Cain. She's sexually uninhibited - promiscuous even maybe - but she was engaged to one man (Zak), married another (Sam), and is overtly religious. In spite of her outward demeanor of self assurance and reliance, she can at times be overwhelmed by guilt, and fear, self doubt.
I suspect that out of all of the above mentioned pattern types, Kara would seem to demonstrate most of the features of an avoidant pattern of attachment - an allergy to intense involvement with others, wanting self sufficiency, finding it difficult to trust, unwilling to depend or be depended upon, and seemingly assuming that others will be, if not immediately, then eventually, hostile and rejecting. Avoidants are likely to have been the object of harsh insensitivity throughout their childhood with unsympathetic, harsh and critical reactions to the usual pitfalls of adolescence with the end result that avoidant adults expect rejection in relationships and put the boot in first, reject before being rejected. In anticipation of this rejection, she has developed spiky, well reinforced defenses, a self reliant, stubborn, opinionated manner - and when becoming romantically involved, a dominating style. We do not know much about Kara's relationship with Zac, but we do know that Kara was in a position of dominance (by rank, qualifications, experience, position, and quite possibly age as well) and we have observed in canon, that in her relationship with Sam she was also usually dominant, with Sam generally deferrential to Kara's wishes - directing the ebbs and flows of that relationship in most instances. Interestingly (and I will expand upon this a little later) although we do not know much about Zac himself -from what we do know (Zac was protected as a child by his older brother Lee and was thus afforded a more sheltered childhood, with greater comparative freedoms than his brother enjoyed, more exuberant and easy-going, loved by all and, in Lee's eyes, preferred by his parents) - he most likely demonstrated a secure pattern of attachment, and cylon or not, I would suggest that Sam does also. Upon splitting up, she seems not to care, dwelling on neither what has been lost or what might have been, but this insousciance is a front. She is deeply upset on the inside, she simply doesn't allow herself to show it.
In much research, traditionally, the female avoidant tends to not have as many sexual partners as a male - he tending to have a penchant for one night stands, sex without love or with partners already spoken for. This pattern of behaviour could still easily be attributed to Kara however, given her place in a ( traditionally?) male dominated environment such as the military. Both avoidant sexes report disliking the lovey dovey side of sex - caressing, hugging, kissing, gazing into a partners eyes and so on - tending instead to favour pratices that involve less emotional contact, and Kara has demonstrated physically on numerous occasions her seeming distaste for post coital closeness ('get your boots on the way out, Sammy!'). In addition, female avoiders with absent fathers are liabel to viewing men in general, as being unreliable. Avoidants tend to prefer work to love (work is more amenable to control - yet work can prove to be a source of annoyance because our fellow workers are so incompetent and non compliant), and yet tend to be highly critical of work peers, preferring to work alone (flying a viper comes close - greater ability of keeping control of one's own environment to some extent there) which can protect from the frustration and stress of having to deal with infuriating, incompetent peers. Kara has a dedicated career with the military (down time on New caprica aside - and then she was involved in the resistance) and a history in canon of being insubordinate and regularly reprimanded ( she began the series with a stint in the Brig), and while being highly skilled at what she does, she has high expectations of others ('You're the CAG, act like one" ) . Avoidants are more likely than others to be agnostic, but if having a god (or gods, perhaps), tend to imagine him (them) to be distant figure/s, inaccessible, controlling, rejecting and punitive - unlikely to care very much - a fear based relationship with adherence to rituals and customs strong belief . This tends to be much like the image held of the mother - rejecting, abusive, negative, punitive, because that is what she was actually like. Kara is shown to be very religious in canon, but I suspect that her views about the Gods may be quite closely related to that which I have just outlined, given her earl upbringing, and her subsequent harsh life and multiple losses may only have served to accentuate and reinforce these beliefs.
It is with regard to Kara's choice's of partner in the 2 major relationships demonstrated in canon thus far (Zac and Sam - whom I have speculated as probably representing secure attachments), over a comitted exclusive romantic relationship with Lee who she clearly has deep, longstanding feelings for, things become quite interesting. With regard to Zack, well we can't possibly know at this stage, but, perhaps she met Zack first. But now, if she is so attracted to / has such a strong bond with Lee, why would she choose to become romanticlly involved with and marry Sam? Studies generally suggest that individuals are most attracted to partners with similar attachment styles and that people who evidence avoidant attachment patterns, who prefer to rely on themselves and avoid demonstrations of intimacy, are less likely to use others as a way of regulating their feelings about the self, even when confronted with a threat. However, instead, they may actively engage in strategies that promote self-reliance. Such strategies may include becoming involved in a relationship with another person (eg. Sam) who can function as an an interaction partner who can provide a sense of closeness or pleasure, which can come from companionship and shared activities, for reasons that are unrelated to enhancing or maintaining their avoidance patterns and sense of self. Intimacy in the relationship might serve the function of providing a sense of closeness and connectedness, while providing help with regulating feelings about the self - in other words, this kind of relationship can be reasonably functional at a certain level, non threatening to long established patterns of behavior, not creating anxiety or resulting in stress or pressure as long as long as the ground rules are adhered to by both parties. In this case, the relationship serves the function of enhancing or restoring positive feelings about the self, or providing “esteem support” at times of emotional distress without challenging the avoidance behaviour pattern on any real level. Things seemed to go better between Kara and Sam whenever Sam played by Kara's rules. Generally, in canon, whenever Kara felt intimately threatened by Sam, she would tend to close him out, reject his advances towards a more comitted relationship, and revert to her self reliant. Again, I can only speculate on what their relationship was like on New Caprica as it was not shown to us, but given Kara's avoidant patterns of behavior, I suspect it was largely controlled by Kara, and probably emotionally superficial at best - fragile. That is not to say that their relationship was necessarily dysfunctional as relationship research has shown that although people of different attachment styles may tend, on average, to view their partners in a positive or negative light, that findings suggest a complex, dynamic process in that people of different attachment styles may emphasize different interpersonal goals and feel positively toward their interaction partners based on meeting those goals. Thus, relationship quality may vary depending on the degree to which partners are able to meet each other’s particular goals. Sam and Kara's joint goals for the resistence and shared experiences both on Caprica and New Caprica would have contributed to them having a satisfactory relationship on some levels until Sam began to feel that the level of intimacy was not meeting *his* attachment pattern of behavior which as I have previously speculated would most likely have been secure. Kara's relationship with Lee, therefore, when you think about it terms of patterns of attachment, starts to make a lot of sense. Lee has a similar attachment style to Kara - I think that it was becisvolatile who proposed that Lee and Kara are two sides of the same coin - which may explain (apart from their immediate and obvious sexual attraction) why they are at once drawn together at a deep emotional level and yet at the same time unable to maintain a connection.
So, does this mean that I think that Lee and Kara don't have a chance in hell? That they are too enmeshed in their attachment patterns to connect in any prolonged and meaningful way? Not at all. I feel that apart from their obvious physical attraction, common interests and given the intense situation that has been thrust upon them, that Lee and Kara may have been drawn to each other *because* of their similar exposure to early trauma in their upbringing and quite possibly due to them having similar attachment patterns. Unempathic care in infancy can result in setting us off on the wrong foot when it comes to relationships in later life, creating a set of negative beliefs and subsequent patterns of behavior that can affect our interactions with, and the behaviour of others, and in the situation where there has been childhood abuse, abandonment and rejection, a template of mistrust and insecurity is established that can take a lot of changing.
It is *normal* to be screwed up to some extent, and everyone suffers problems of some description from childhood, the thing is though, we *can* simply continue to re-enact the past, allowing our relationships to follow the same sometimes destructive patterns over and over again, or we can choose to try and understand what went wrong in our past and rewrite the script. Simply understanding why we do something, or remembering incidents from the past can be helpful, but in order for insight to happen, there needs to be a combination of awareness, emotion and re-experience which means that insights may need to be rediscovered several times over before they really have meaning. It is my belief that Lee and Kara may be well on the way to being in a position in season 4, to having begun to develop this insight into the way the past can affect the present. bop_radar discusses this rather beautifully in her essay "Battlestar Galactica Essay: Kara/Lee/Destiny (Part II) - Heroes, Heroines and their Anti-forms", describing how Kara's *death* enabled the head space that Lee needed to concentrate on himself: to face that his marriage failed for its own reasons, not because of Kara, to acknowledge his love of Kara, and to begun to define himself as his 'own man' with the trial of Gaius Baltar providing Lee with the chance to "resolve emotional burdens that he's carrying". Similarly, Kara, before her death, through Leoben, is exposed to her past via the significant people in her life, providing an opportunity for her to reflect on her relationships with them and while as Bop_radar proposes, it still remains to be seen whether or not Kara (and Lee for that matter) has moved beyond past her relationship issues and patterns of attachment, "it's possible that she'll be more open to and accepting of love, maybe even believe that she is worthy of love" in season 4. A positive emotional shift of such proportions as has just been proposed, from either Lee or Kara (or both) could well be the catalyst for their future relationship with each other, for although people with avoidant attachment styles tend to increase their relationship-enhancing choices more gradually, the more positive relationship-enhancing choices that are made, and the more positive and open the responses to said choices, the the greater the likelihood of mutually satisfying and beneficial relationship in the end.
It's Battlestar Galactica, and Lee and Kara, so anything is possible, and I must admit that this long hiatus has laid siege to my positive thoughts at times. Having said that,I believe that there are signs that there was plenty of potential at the end of season three for Lee and Kara to get it right in season 4, and to achieve the kind of emotional intimacy that they have both been aching for, finally, with each other.