Renewing Bonds

We know the moments when we find connection again: the universe lights up. These instances leap from the pages of novels, burn in our brains when we watch them in movies—or even in dusty research tapes—and, of course, entrance us when they happen in our own precious relationships. Everything comes together: suddenly all the blocks roll away, and there is an open, easy connection. But how did we get there? If we don’t know the path, how can we get there again?

Patrick, 45, a results-oriented businessman who unearthed my now fossilized PhD thesis before our first session, tells me, “Look, I am here because my relationship is on fire. Anna and I have been together ten years. Two years ago we moved back here from California, just like she wanted, and I sold my company. But now everything is burning up. My wife is either spitting rage or ignoring me. I can’t handle it anymore.” He impatiently brushes a tear from his eye. “So just tell me what to say in this new kind of conversation that your research says can change a relationship, and I will say it. Then we can get done here in two sessions.”

I see that he wants the pain to stop. I explain that first he and his wife need to be able to help each other out of the stuck conversations that fuel constant hurt and fear. They must create a secure base to stand on and get their balance before taking the risky steps involved in new, connected kinds of conversations. He is not convinced. He asks, “But aren’t there some people who just do this new kind of talk naturally?” I agree, but add, “Some of us have been lucky enough to have had great relationships in which someone walked through this kind of conversation with us before, and we learned what it felt like.” As John Bowlby said way back, “We do as we have been done by.” I try to explain to Patrick that when we think of others as basically safe and caring, we tend to have seen and practiced constructive ways to handle our emotions and respond to a partner in the past. So we have more options stored in our memory.

Still, no one can be open and responsive all the time. You always need help from your partner. I tell him, “Renewing your connection is something you do together. You both help each other keep your emotional balance and turn toward each other and tune in. It’s a dance. It’s not something you can ‘fix’ all by yourself from the outside by just saying the right words.” The final straw for him is when I add, “Many of us aren’t comfortable even talking about our softer, deeper feelings and can’t imagine sharing them with our partner.”

He shakes his head, blows through his nose, and stares at the door. Then his face falls, and he whispers, “I don’t know about feelings. I just know that I don’t want to lose my wife and my family. My sons are four and six. I love them so much.” I ask, “But this all seems like foreign territory to you?” He nods. Anna, a former high school teacher, stares at me with beautiful green eyes and says quietly and slowly, “We have never really talked about deeper feelings. We have never been to that place.” We begin.

Ten weeks later Patrick and Anna have learned to recognize and curtail their version of the Protest Polka. In their dance, which they have named “the Maze,” Patrick reacts to Anna’s upsets with the children or her problem with insomnia with cool rationality. Both then twist around and around, but the more they try to find a way out of their mutual frustration, the more lost and confused they become. Patrick tries desperately to offer solution after solution while totally bypassing Anna’s emotional distress. In response, she becomes even more distraught and berates him for being “unfeeling”; he counters by calling her “hysterical.” “Now I get that Anna sees me as distant and unapproachable,” says Patrick. “I stay away from feeling stuff and go into fix-it mode, and then she feels alone and hurt. I get that.” Anna observes, “I don’t think I understood my anger, either. I’d call out for him and get this office-manager response and a list of solutions like ‘Stop being so sensitive.’ So I’d just start up the accusations. But I’ve started to see how this hurts him. He does care. Maybe he just doesn’t know what to do when I call.”

Now that they understand their disconnection dance, they are breaking out of it quickly. Says Anna, “The other night, Patrick said, ‘Hey, this is the “round and round but always lost” thing again taking over. I’m in fix-it mode. It’s so easy to go there when I hear that you are upset and disappointed with us. So you must be getting that left-alone feeling right now, like I am immune to your hurt and don’t care.’ I was blown away when he said that. I just went and hugged him, and he made a little joke. [She scrunches up her nose.] It wasn’t funny, but that was okay.” She laughs.

But healing a relationship isn’t just about recognizing and stopping destructive behavior. That is just the first step. The second, and even harder, step is actively working together to build a stronger and more durable emotional union. That requires dumping old notions—for example, that love operates in a fixed, steady state—and becoming more proactive, such as by being alert to the small rents in the fabric of emotional connection and knowing how to repair them. The process of renewing bonds, we have learned, is continuous and inspiring, taking emotional connection to a whole new level. It makes us more emotionally accessible, responsive, and engaged, and thus it leads to deeper bonding and greater relationship stability and satisfaction. It also transforms us as people. As we take risks and confront our vulnerabilities, our trust grows—not just in our partners but also in ourselves.

The Rhythm of Disconnection and Reconnection

A love relationship is never static; it ebbs and flows. If we want love to last, we have to grasp this fact and get used to paying attention to and readjusting our level of emotional engagement.

“I just assumed that once you are married, you both know you are partners and you can kind of relax and take the relationship for granted,” Jeremy tells Harriet. “You can focus on the big picture. You know I love you. We aren’t mean to each other. I haven’t been unfaithful to you or anything like that. Can’t you just roll with the less romantic, less touchy-feely times?” Harriet sits up straight in her chair and declares, “No, Jeremy. I can’t. Not anymore.”

“Well, that is just very immature, then,” Jeremy replies.

He is right in a way. In a good relationship, where we feel basically secure, we can fill in the blanks left by our partner’s occasional emotional absence. We can substitute positive feelings from past encounters and accept that there may be legitimate reasons for the inattention. But only some of the time, and only if we know we can reconnect if we really need to.

Loving is a process that constantly moves from harmony to disharmony, from mutual attunement and responsiveness to misattunement and disconnection—and back again. But to really understand what happens, we have to zoom down into these interactions and atomize them. Remember Seurat’s paintings: when we move in really close, we realize that the vast scenes are composed of thousands and thousands of little dots. Researchers are doing the same with love relationships. By freeze-framing videos of romantic partners talking or arguing, and of babies playing with a parent, they are discovering how love, without our being aware, is shaped, for better or worse, in micromoments and micromoves of connection and disconnection.

Up close, this is what love looks like: I look at you with my eyes wide open, trying to capture your glance, and you catch my expression, widen your eyes, and take my arm. Alternatively, you ignore my bid for your attention, continue talking about your thoughts, and I turn away. In the next step, we resynchronize and reconnect. I turn back to you and lean forward and touch your arm; this time, you get my cue and turn toward me, smile, and ask me how I am. This tiny, fleeting moment of repair brings a rush of positive emotion. Moments of meeting are mutually delightful. (I always think that if we stopped and verbalized our innermost thoughts at this point, we would say something like “Oh, there you are” or even “Ah, here we are together.”)

It’s important to emphasize that misattunement is not a sign of lack of love or commitment. It is inevitable and normal; in fact, it is startlingly common. Ed Tronick of Harvard Medical School, who has spent years absorbed in monitoring the interactions between mother and child, finds that even happily bonded mothers and infants miss each other’s signals fully 70 percent of the time. Adults miss their partner’s cues most of the time, too! We all send unclear signals and misread cues. We become distracted, we suddenly shift our level of emotional intensity and leave our partner behind, or we simply overload each other with too many signals and messages. Only in the movies does one poignant gaze predictably follow another and one small touch always elicit an exquisitely timed gesture in return. We are sorely mistaken if we believe that love is about always being in tune.

What matters is if we can repair tiny moments of misattunement and come back into harmony. Bonding is an eternal process of renewal. Relationship stability depends not on healing huge rifts but on mending the constant small tears. Indeed, says John Gottman of the University of Washington, what distinguishes master couples, the term he gives successful pairs, is not the ability to avoid fights but the ability to repair routine disconnections.

We learn about mini-misattunement and repair in our earliest interactions. Tronick and his team have detailed what happens by analyzing videos of infants and their mothers playing a game of peekaboo that grows gradually more intense. At first the infant is happy, but as the game builds, he becomes overstimulated and turns away and sucks his thumb. Mom, intent on playing, misses this cue, and loudly cries “Boo” again. The baby looks down with no expression. He shuts down to avoid her signals, which are suddenly too fast and too strong for him.

There are two basic scenarios for what happens next, one positive, the other negative. In the first, Mom picks up the cue that her child is overwhelmed, and she goes quiet. She tunes in to his emotional expression. She waits until he looks up and smiles at him very slowly, and then more invitingly, lifting her eyebrows and opening her eyes. Then she starts the game again. Misattunement and momentary disconnection shift to renewed attunement and easy synchrony. All it takes is a smile or tender touch.

In the second scenario, Mom ignores or doesn’t get her baby’s signal. She moves in faster and closer, insisting her child stay engaged with her. He continues to turn away, and the mother reaches out and pushes his face back toward her. The infant closes his eyes and erupts in agitated wails. The mother, annoyed, now turns away. This is misattunement with no repair, what Tronick calls “interactive failure.” Both mother and infant feel disconnected and emotionally upset.

Over time, thousands of these micromoves accumulate until they coalesce into a pattern typical of secure or insecure bonding. Tronick notes that at just seven months of age, infants with the most positive, attuned mothers express the most joy and positive emotion, while those with the most disengaged moms show the greatest amount of crying and other protest behaviors. Those with the most intrusive moms look away the most. We learn in these earliest exchanges with our loved ones whether people are likely to respond to our cues and just how correctable moments of misattunement are.

Those of us who wind up securely attached have learned that momentary disconnection is tolerable rather than catastrophic and that another person will be there to help us regain our emotional balance and reconnect. Those who become anxiously attached have been taught a different lesson: that we cannot rely on another person to respond and reconnect, and so momentary disconnection is always potentially calamitous. Those who become avoidant have absorbed a still harsher lesson: that no one will come when needed no matter what we do, so it’s better not to bother trying to connect at all.

We carry these lessons forward into adulthood, where they color our romantic relationships. “The past is never dead,” wrote novelist William Faulkner. “It’s not even past.” Psychologist Jessica Salvatore, along with her colleagues at the University of Minnesota, studied the romantic relationships of 73 young adult men and women. They had all been enrolled since birth in a longitudinal study of attachment, and their relationship with their mother had been assessed when they were between twelve and eighteen months old. They were invited to the lab with their romantic partner, where they were interviewed separately. Then they were instructed to discuss a key conflict between them for ten minutes and then talk about areas where they were in agreement for another four “cool down” minutes.

Researchers videotaped these talks and observed how well the 73 adults could let go of their conflict and shift out of a negative emotional tone. Some made the switch quickly and easily; others persisted in talking about the conflict and brought up new issues; still others refused to talk at all. Those who were good at cool down were generally happier in their relationship, and so was their partner. And, as we might expect, those who had been rated securely attached as babies generally moved out of the conflict discussion most successfully.

But is a person’s own attachment history the key predictor of stability in a romantic relationship? Or is a partner’s ability to resolve conflict also a major factor? Salvatore assessed the 73 subjects two years later and found that even among those who had histories marked by insecurity, their romantic relationship was more likely to have endured if their partner was able to recover well from an argument and help them transition into a positive conversation.

I call this the buffer, balance, bounce effect. A more secure partner buffers your fears and helps you regain your emotional balance so you can reconnect. Then together, you both bounce back from separation distress, distance, and conflict. We are never so secure that we do not need our partner’s help in readjusting the emotional music in our attachment dance. Relationship distress and repair are always a two-person affair; a dance is never defined by just one person.

Some of us, however, need more structured help in finding our way back to emotional harmony. Drawing from my discoveries in thirty years of practice and research and the findings of the new science of love outlined in these pages, I and my colleagues have created a powerful model for repairing relationship bonds, Emotionally Focused Therapy. The only intervention based on attachment, EFT is redefining the field of couple therapy and education. Sixteen studies now validate its success. Couples who have had EFT show overall increased satisfaction with their relationships and in the elements of secure attachment, including intimacy, trust, and forgiveness. Moreover, the more secure emotional bond remains stable years after therapy.

One of our newest and most exciting studies, discussed in Chapter 3, demonstrates through fMRI brain scans that after couples go through EFT and become more secure, holding the hand of their partner actually dampens fear and the pain of an electric shock. Just as predicted by attachment science, contact with a loving, responsive partner is a powerful buffer against danger and threat. When we change our love relationships, we change our brains and change our world.

The science of love allows us to hone our interventions—to be on target and aim high. The goal is to create lasting lifelong bonds that offer safe-haven security to both partners. Recently we have also created a group educational program based on my earlier book Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love that helps couples take all we have learned in decades of research and use it in their own relationship.

Repairing Bonds Moment to Moment

As we discussed in Chapter 2, happy, lasting bonds are all about emotional responsiveness. The core attachment question—“Are you there for me?”—requires a “yes” in response. A secure bond has three basic elements:

When these elements are missing and alienation and disconnection take over, renewing a bond that is truly coming undone is essentially a two-step process. First, partners have to help each other slow down and contain the circular dance that keeps them emotionally off balance and hypervigilant for signs of threat or loss. Relationships begin to improve when partners can stop these runaway cycles that create emotional starvation and attachment panic.

To curb these demand-withdraw cycles, we first need to recognize that they are cycles. We get caught up in focusing on our partner’s actions and forget that we are players, too. We have to realize that we are in a feedback loop that we both contribute to. When we see that this is a dance we do together, we can stop our automatic, blaming, “You always step on my foot” response. This allows us to see the power and momentum of the dance and how we are both controlled and freaked out by it.

Prue accuses Larry of being hypercritical. “He’s always complaining about whatever I do—how I cook, how I make love. I feel picked on all the time. It’s devastating.” Larry argues that Prue always refuses to talk seriously about any problems they’re having. “She just goes distant. I can’t find her,” he says. In our sessions, they’ve now realized that they are prisoners of a pattern they call “the Pit.” I encourage clients to give a name to their pattern to help them see it and begin to recognize that the pattern, not the partner, is the enemy. They have both unwittingly created this enemy that is taking over their relationship, and they must work together to wrest their relationship from its clutches.

Now we can explore the triggers and emotions that shape the pattern. Prue and Larry recount a specific incident when they fell into the Pit, and we bring it into high focus and play it in slow motion, scrutinizing each detail, until its impact on each partner and their bond is clear. They were on holiday in Europe after a period when Prue had been away taking care of her dying aunt and Larry had resented her absence. They were in a station heading to catch a train when Larry suddenly realized that it had begun moving. Afraid they would miss it, he jumped on the step and yelled to Prue, who was carrying a coffee cup, “Run.” Larry shouted to the conductor to slow down and held his hand out to Prue, but she froze. Finally, she grasped his hand and struggled onto the train, out of breath. Larry turned to her and said, “You are so damn slow.” Shocked and hurt, she refused to speak to him the rest of the journey. Inside, she vacillated between rage at Larry’s reprimands and dread that she really is too “slow” and too flawed for him to love. She shut him out and, preoccupied with her own fears of inadequacy, began a downward spiral into depression.

I turn to Larry and we go over and over this incident moment by moment and tune in to the emotions he was feeling then and how they reflect his overall feeling about Prue and their relationship. He says he feels “agitated” when she does not keep up with him on hikes. He notes she doesn’t take her arthritis medication consistently. “I get anxious when she does not stay with me. I can’t count on her.” He recalls the image of “distance” that flooded him when the train started to move off and Prue froze. “She wasn’t running, working to be with me,” he says. He felt panicked. Larry then begins to talk about his sense of isolation when Prue stayed with her aunt for three months and his habit of dismissing, or “pushing down,” this frequent feeling. Sometimes he can’t, though, and it rises up and engulfs him, and he winds up being angry and sarcastic. He begins weeping as he realizes just how much he needs her and is afraid that she will remain “unavailable.” The slide into the Pit begins with attachment terror.

For Prue, too, the terror that freezes her and turns her away from Larry is a hopeless certainty that she is flawed and worthless, so rejection is certain. As they recognize and find their balance in these emotional moments, they can see the drama of distress as it occurs in their everyday life and then help each other halt its momentum. They can limit the extent of the rift between them and find a secure base. The next night, Larry lashes out, and Prue responds, “Is this a panic moment for you? I am not going to freeze up here, and I want you to slow down.” Each partner begins to see the other in a new light: Prue sees Larry as afraid rather than judgmental and aggressive, and he sees her as protecting herself from rejection rather than simply abandoning him and “sulking.”

Recent research by psychologist Shiri Cohen and her colleagues at Harvard Medical School confirms that partners do not suddenly have to become masters of empathy or emotional gymnasts in this kind of process. Partners, especially women, really respond to signs that their loved one is trying to tune in and actually cares about their feelings. This, in and of itself, creates a new safety zone where partners can begin to expand their dance steps and take risks with each other. New ways of dealing with emotion shape new steps in the dance, which in turn shape new chances for reattunement and repair. But this ability to keep miscues and missteps in check is not enough.

The second step in renewing bonds is much harder but more significant. This is when we move into powerful positive interactions and actually reach for each other. Specifically, withdrawn partners have to open up and engage on an emotional level, and blaming partners have to risk asking for what they need from a place of vulnerability. Partners have to tune in to the bonding channel and stay there. They find this process risky, but if they follow it through, their relationship becomes flooded with positive emotion and ascends to a whole new level. This process is not only a corrective move that kick-starts trust but also, for many, a transforming and liberating emotional experience.

These experiences are deeply emotional; partners each reach for the other in a simple and coherent way that pulls forth a tender, compassionate response. This begins a new positive bonding cycle, a reach-and-respond sequence that builds a mental model of relationships as a safe haven. It addresses each person’s most basic needs for safety, connection, and comfort. These kinds of primal emotional moments are so significant that, as with all such “hot” moments, our brain seems to faithfully store them, filing them in our neural networks as the protocol for how to be close to others. Our follow-up studies of EFT couples show that their ability to stay with and shape these emotional moments is the best predictor of stable relationship repair and satisfaction years later.

So what actually happens in these exchanges—I call them Hold Me Tight conversations—when real connection begins to form and a couple moves from antagonism into harmony? Until recently we have not known what specific responses in intimate exchanges make for tender loving bonds between adults. We have had, to quote psychologists Linda Roberts and Danielle Greenberg of the University of Wisconsin, “a typology of conflict…but no road maps for positive intimate behavior.” Years of watching couples reconnect in a therapy that deliberately builds bonds can offer us just this.

In Hold Me Tight conversations, couples have to handle a series of mini-tasks. Partners, whether pursuing and blaming or defending and withdrawing, attempt to:

John: “I did snap at you. But when I look inside, it’s that I find it worrying, upsetting that you go out to those clubs with your girlfriends. It somehow messes me up. It’s hard to tell you this. I am not used to talking about this kind of stuff.”

John: “I feel a little silly, kind of wide open saying this. But there it is. It doesn’t work to deny it and say nothing. Then we get farther apart. Can you hear me? What do you think?” His wife, Kim, comes and hugs him.

John: “I know I sometimes go off about you being tired after coming home late or the money you spend. But that is not it. Those are side issues. It reminds me of past relationships. I guess I am really sensitive here. I really find it difficult. It scares me. I wanted to run after you and say, ‘Don’t go.’ It’s like you are choosing them and the club scene over me, over us. That is how it feels.” His eyes widen, showing how anxious he is.

John: “You aren’t saying anything. Are you mad now? I want us to talk about this kind of stuff when I get unsure of us and not push things under the rug. I want to hear how you feel right now.” Kim tells him she is confused because she feels loyal to her friends but that his feelings are important.

John: “I want to know you are committed to us, to me. I want to feel like you are my partner and that nothing is more important than that. I need that reassurance that my needs matter. Then I can keep taking risks here. I am out on a limb otherwise.”

John: “I know I have been kind of controlling in the past. It’s a bit hard to hear you talk about it, but I know you need to make choices, and you have fun with your friends. I am not giving orders here. I want to know if we can work this out together.”

John: “Well, you have tickets for the concert, so I guess you will go. I can handle that. I hadn’t really shared with you openly about this. It helps if I feel included somehow, if you tell me about it afterward. And I appreciate that you are listening and telling me that you can consider how I feel about this.” Kim tells him she still feels scared to put herself in his hands completely. Her nights out are her statement that she is still holding on to her boundaries and showing she can stand up to him. But she hears his fears. She tells him that she does not flirt or drink too much on her outings, and she reminds him that she is going out less often now.

John: “I don’t want to tell you what to do. I know this upsets you. You have good reasons for this. I get that you are not trying to hurt me. I don’t want you to feel dictated to. I just get anxious about this stuff.” He reaches out for her, and she turns to him and holds him.

When this conversation goes off track, John—and hopefully Kim—can bring it back and stay with the main emotional message, the need to connect. For example, if John gets caught up ranting about the “seedy” clubs she visits, she is able to stay calm and soothe him by telling him that she is concerned that he worries about this, and this brings him back to talking about his fears. Both partners help each other keep their emotional balance and stay in the deeper emotion and bonding channel. John is attempting to repair his sense of disconnection, and he does it by exploring his own emotions and engaging with Kim. In the past he had tried criticizing his lover’s taste in friends or making deals about how many times each could go out without the other every month. Now he goes to the core dialogue in an attachment relationship, the one that matters most, where the question “Are you there for me?” is palpable. He shares and asks for her emotional support, for her help in dealing with his attachment fears.

This is very different from the way attempts at connection show up in distressed relationships and even in routine interactions in relatively happy relationships. We often bypass the attachment emotions and messages. We do not say what we need. Our signals to our loved one remain hidden, general, and ambiguous. Hal tells Lulu, “I don’t think I have ever asked you for affection. It’s not what I do. When you just give it, everything is fine. But when you get depressed…So then I say, ‘Want to watch a movie?’ or ‘You should go for a walk and cheer up.’ But you turn away, and in two seconds flat I am enraged. In my head, I am still thinking it’s about the movie or you not taking care of yourself. Not that you have gone missing on me.” When Hal can express his sense of loss at Lulu’s withdrawal, they can deal with it and her bout of depression differently—that is, in a way that leaves them more connected rather than less.

The most intense and attachment-focused Hold Me Tight conversations build tangible safety and connection, even in secure, happy relationships. They can occur at times when partners do not feel disconnected but simply want more intense intimacy. Lulu opens up one night and tells Hal of a moment after their lovemaking when she felt herself “sinking into a certain soft place where we just belong and belong and there is no more fear of risking.” He responds and shares his similar feelings. Each time these lovers share their “soft places” and their need for each other and respond with empathy and care, they offer their loved one reassurance that he or she is the chosen, irreplaceable one, and the bond between them deepens.

Let’s see how this applies to Patrick and Anna, the couple we met at the beginning of this chapter, who came to couple therapy to renew their bond. They have been able to contain their negative cycle. When Anna complains, “I gave up my career for this relationship. Things are a little better now, but I still don’t get the comfort I need,” Patrick’s initial reaction is still to withdraw. But then he looks into Anna’s face and reaches for her, putting his hand over hers. “Yeah, well, giving comfort hasn’t been my strong suit, has it?” he murmurs. They talk about how they know they need to learn to trust again and come close, but neither of them is quite sure how to do this.

So now they move into the second part of therapy—restructuring the bond by digging deeper into their feelings in Hold Me Tight conversations. “What happens to you right now when Anna gets upset and points out how much she has given to the relationship?” I ask Patrick.

“I don’t want to shut her out,” Patrick replies softly. “I know that doesn’t work. But it’s still very hard to stay here and listen. I hear the old song about how dissatisfied she is with me. I go into this, ‘How can I ever be enough and make it up to her’ thing. It’s like we have found out in these sessions: I feel that I’m failing her, and I feel threatened. So my brain gets scrambled. Basically, I guess I get scared.”

I want him to dig deeper into his feelings. “And when you begin to close down, like a little while ago—what’s going on inside?”

“Oh…hmm…I guess that is like a kind of despair—helplessness, maybe. I search for a solution in my head [he taps his head with his finger], come up empty, and then I cut off. Nothing to do here. Yes, it’s like despair. If I am such a raw deal for her [he pauses for a long time], then this relationship is all washed up. [He looks up at me and Anna, and smiles an ironic smile.] No wonder I turn off, huh?”

“I’ll say,” I respond. “Anna gets upset, and you go into fear with no apparent solution. You hear that you can never make it and be seen as valued and precious to your wife. Despair and helplessness and a sense that the relationship is doomed; this is the kind of black wave that has you turning off and has Anna feeling so deserted. What is happening to you right now as we talk about this? Can you help her really tune in to this?”

What I am really urging Patrick to do is show Anna that he can fully engage with her. And he doesn’t disappoint.

Patrick turns to his wife and looks her in the eyes. “Well…Basically I get crazy in these situations. I feel helpless. I hear that I cannot make you happy no matter how hard I try. And I have tried. I have. This helpless feeling is always sitting here [he touches his stomach] these days, just waiting to hear how disappointed you are in us, in me. I can run a huge company, but I can’t hold on to you.” He looks down, then looks up and leans forward. “I don’t want to walk away from you,” he declares. “You have probably needed my comfort many times. And I like that—that you need my comfort. I just get waylaid by my fears. All I hear you saying is that you got a raw deal in me!” Anna is looking at him, her face open and soft.

Patrick continues, “You are the center of my life, you and the kids. I don’t want to keep getting caught in this dead end. I want so much for you to feel happy with me. But I need you to cut me a little slack here. Give me a chance to learn how to do this. Not assume that I just don’t care if I don’t always pick up on what you need. And I want you to see that I am trying. That there are lots of things I do for you. I guess I need some recognition. Need to know that you are not going anywhere, that we are going to stay together and work this out. To know that I am not such a bad husband after all…It is hard to feel this and tell you this. Maybe you don’t care.”

Patrick has become ultra-accessible here, actively helping his wife tune in to him. He is reaching out and asking for reassurance from Anna that his disclosures mean something to her. He is stating his needs clearly, letting Anna see inside him, and giving her a chance to respond.

But can she be there for him? I find myself thinking that to know how to reach for a precious one is the most basic skill in the dance of human connection. But we also have to know how to respond to another’s need, to reach back in return, so that there is mutual engagement.

“I do care,” Anna says slowly. “This is just so different. It’s a relief to know that you are not just irritated or indifferent. Not that I want you to be scared like this. I didn’t know I was that important to you! I just see you offering rational compromises that don’t take my feelings into account. But you are scared!”

“Yes, I am,” he responds.

I ask her how she feels, and she says, “I feel more connected to him. I hear that he wants to come closer. This feels better.”

They have made great progress, but they still have some distance to go. He is out on the floor, but Anna is hesitant to let go of her mistrust and begin a new dance. If their bond is to grow, she also has to risk and reach, sharing her fears and needs in a different way. My job is to be a guide in this new dance.

“So, Anna,” I say in our next session. “Are you feeling a bit more hopeful about your relationship?”

“Yes, I am,” she replies. “But now I find myself still hanging on to those old glasses, if you know what I mean. He came and found me after a little tiff we had at home a few days ago and I knew he was taking a risk and reaching out for me, but I found myself holding back somehow and repeating my old mantra of how cold and uncaring he is. I guess it’s still easier to just be mad than to open up to him.”

“You got to the place in this relationship where you hunkered down and opened up the gun ports at the first sign of danger. So I guess that is hard to give up?” I ask. She nods. “How were you feeling after the tiff?”

Anna grimaces. “The usual. Totally alone. Like that ‘here we are again’ feeling. Ready to reach for my gun or turn into an ice cube!” She looks at Patrick and gives a “What can you do” shrug. “But I am tired of being mad.”

“When Patrick reached for you, even though you were feeling tired and alone, it was hard to respond?”

“Yes. It’s hard to trust. To really believe that he is reaching and won’t just disappear on me.”

“Can you tell him?”

Anna turns to Patrick and says, “It’s hard to believe that it’s safe. I have felt so exposed with you. I get jitters in my stomach when I start to believe that you are here for me. I want that, but…it feels unsure. How do I know…” She is very still and silent for a few minutes, then resumes speaking. “How do I know that I won’t get hurt again, left again? It’s almost like I am scared to trust you now.”

Patrick nods and leans forward. “Yes. I can understand that. We missed each other so many times, and both of us hurt. And sometimes I can be preoccupied or not very clued in, but I am trying to be here for you. I would like you to try to believe that. It’s easier when you are not angry all the time.”

Anna laughs. “Well, now I am angry just some of the time…when that voice in my head tells me to be careful. I think I am scared to hope, to really let that longing for you come out. If I do that and you are not there…”

“That would be unbearable, yes?” I ask. “Like falling into space? Devastating?”

“Yeah,” Anna says, and turns to Patrick. “So I am afraid here. No—I am truly terrified. But I do long for you and I do need you to comfort and reassure me, give me some time to trust and to feel safe. I admire you for what you have done in these sessions. I want us to be close. Maybe I just need a little help.”

“You got it,” Patrick replies, beaming. “I will do my best. I am here.” Anna smiles and reaches for his hand. “Well, right now, you are pretty much perfect! I guess I have to learn to trust a little.”

He stands up and opens his arms and she moves into them. Anna has shared her fears rather than wrapping them in a bundle of rage, and she has found the courage to ask for what she needs.

After this session, I sit in my office and savor what has just happened. The words reattunement, repair, and reattachment go through my head. I feel happy. Connection cues joy, even when we are watching it happen in someone else. Our mammalian brain recognizes this as good, just the way we recognize the touch of the sun on our face. As a scientist and a researcher, I look at what just happened in my office and predict that by the end of our sessions Anna and Patrick will have a felt sense of connection, a safe-haven place, that offers the ultimate solution to emotional isolation and all the sorrows it brings.

At this point Anna and Patrick can do what securely attached dyads at age 3, 13, 36, and 66 can do. They can jointly create emotional synchrony. They are attuned to their own and each other’s emotions and can empathetically respond to the softer emotions and attachment calls of the other. They are creating a loving bond right before my eyes.

This kind of event is powerful enough to undo years of mistrust and painful isolation, perhaps because of the flood of positive emotions it unleashes or perhaps because of the primal survival significance of the interaction. Whatever the reason, once these events begin to happen, couples can not only take a new and more positive path, they can reshape their inevitable disconnects into deeper trust that allows them to fall in love over and over again.

These kinds of events seem to render future miscues and disconnections unpleasant rather than catastrophic; separation distress, when it occurs, is manageable and resolvable. Partners can then help each other constantly broaden their response repertoire rather than scare each other into rigid, defensive postures. Can these kinds of positive experiences reprogram the brain and create trust and empathy, even when they have never before existed in a couple’s life together or in either individual’s past? I think so.

Once couples know how to open up, send clear messages, and respond to each other on an attachment level, then they have a secure base that helps them do this in other areas of a love relationship where attachment fears and needs get triggered, such as sex and traumatic injuries.

Sexual Healing

At one point in therapy Anna and Patrick begin to address their sexual relationship. In this arena, roles have reversed from what they were at the beginning of their marriage; Patrick has become the pursuer who asks for more sex, and Anna is the one who retreats. Anna is now able to tell him, “I know I am kind of guarded with sex. And we have made some great changes, like more time for foreplay and more time after sex to hug, but I do still hold back. It’s kind of strange, but I think for me it’s a little like the feelings you have in our general relationship. You’ve said that you feel inadequate, and I guess I feel that way in sex. When you tell me your fantasies or say raunchy things when we make love, I feel sort of dismayed. I freeze up. I don’t know how to be this sexy, over the top, hot woman that you seem to want. I don’t want to yell my head off during orgasms—I am more of a quiet simmerer, I think. So lots of times I get distracted by a sense that I am just not hot enough for you.” She sighs, looks down, and her voice goes very soft. “And maybe I never will be—it’s just not me—so [she opens her hands in a gesture of helplessness] I want to avoid that feeling, I guess. So this has me holding back in lovemaking. But then you feel rejected.”

This disclosure is a very long way from the negative comments she used to make to Patrick about their sex life. Those mostly focused on the suggestion that he was simply an adolescent stuck in constant horniness. Needless to say, the comments did not invite Patrick to engage in an open, exploratory conversation with her. But now, after her vulnerable remarks, she goes on to ask Patrick for reassurance that he sees her as a satisfying sexual partner, and he finds this reassurance easy to give. He also tells her that he was making raunchy comments because he thought this was part of being “hot” and making sure your lover felt desired. He admits that, on his side, any hint of a lack of desire on her part pushes him into a quagmire of doubt about whether he is loved.

As these partners become more securely emotionally connected and extend their newfound sense of safety into conversations about sex, their lovemaking becomes less a test of desirability and more a happy and satisfying affirmation of their relationship. This kind of Hold Me Tight conversation provides a platform of emotional safety for explorations of their unique sexual dance.

Healing Traumatic Injuries

Hold Me Tight conversations also can be of enormous help in healing traumatic attachment injuries that result from single, shattering events (such as those discussed in the previous chapter). Hold Me Tight conversations, when focused on such injuries, promote forgiveness and the renewal of trust. A study I conducted with colleagues at my Ottawa Couple and Family Institute and at the University of Ottawa found that all distressed couples who came to us with a single attachment injury, such as an affair, could be helped in only twelve or thirteen EFT sessions with our experienced therapists. EFT increased their level of trust to the point of true reconciliation. These successful couples engaged in Hold Me Tight conversations that were centered around the injury itself and then, more generally, around their relationship needs. Partners became more open, responsive, and able to reach for each other. What’s more, three years later they and their relationships were doing just fine.

The forgiveness version of this transforming conversation begins after partners understand how these injuries have affected their bond and how they can contain their negative patterns, such as demand-withdraw. They are then safe and engaged enough to go back into the hurtful incident. Here are the steps in such a conversation:

Alice tells Ben, “I have hammered you pretty hard, and I see now that this has played a part in keeping all this hurt going in our relationship. That night when our daughter got so sick, I felt so alone, so frantic, and so deserted. I just could not believe that you were not by my side. I never felt able or clear enough to really tell you this, and when I tried but couldn’t get through, I just got exasperated. So I promised myself, ‘Never again. Don’t count on him to support you when you feel vulnerable. Don’t.’”

Ben tells Alice, “You are right. I know I need to tell you that. I should have been there. I was so caught up in winning that contract. I was busy proving that I was the great leader I always wanted to be, that I was a success at last. I didn’t understand how much you needed me. I minimized the whole thing. I just couldn’t turn away from the ‘success’ thing, so I ended up letting you down. I didn’t tune in. I was on the wrong channel.” This kind of acknowledgment of the impact we have had on our partner really opens the door for deeper sharing and real healing.

Alice murmurs, “You say that you ‘knew’ our baby would be okay, but you weren’t there looking at her. She looked so bad, so very bad. I believed she was going to die. It was like being hit by a truck. I couldn’t breathe when that specialist told me what they were going to do. I had to give permission for them to operate, and you weren’t there. It was like I didn’t have a husband. It was just me, all alone, watching her die. And when I told you what it was like, you argued with me and told me it wasn’t that bad. Then I was even more alone.”

Now Ben’s face mirrors his wife’s pain. He is able to connect with his spouse’s fear and hurt at his abandonment when she most needed him. He is engaged and shows her with the sadness on his face and in his voice that her pain hurts him. He expresses regret and remorse, and when he does it from this place of deep emotional engagement, it works. Ben whispers, “I let you down. I let us down. I am so sorry, sweetheart. I don’t want you to ever have those feelings. To be so overwhelmed. I did not understand how afraid you were and how serious it all looked. No wonder you have been so very angry with me. I want to help you heal this. I will do anything to gain your trust again.”

Alice asks for what she needs to heal. “I still get scared,” she says. “I watch our baby to make sure she is breathing right. I still dream about that night. In the dream, I call for you, and you don’t come. I need to cry about this, and I need you to hold me. I need to know you will come this time.” This time Ben responds. He holds his wife and tells her, “I will never let you down like this again. I want to reassure and comfort you. I will do whatever it takes for you to feel safe with me again. I will put us first.” This comforting, open kind of connection acts as an antidote to the pain and fear of the injury and lays a new foundation for building trust.

In Ben and Alice’s last therapy session, Ben tells me, “We have learned so much from this hard lesson. I never knew that closeness was something you made. I thought it just happened—or not. It feels good to know how much she needs me and that I can give her a haven that no one else can give. Now, that is what I call success!” They beam at each other.

In our lab, when we look at couples who successfully complete this process, what always stands out is, first, their willingness to explore deeper, softer emotions that lead to their discounted or unfulfilled attachment needs and, second, their willingness to risk turning back toward each other. As Ben told me, “It helps to know that there is a clear path through this kind of chasm; when you really understand the pain of it, it’s easier to respond and help your partner heal.”

The basic science of attachment gave us the secret to understanding these injuries and told us in a general sense what needed to happen to heal them. We could then build a model of the steps that can lead a couple from wounded despair to secure bonding. We now teach these steps to forgiveness, and the general Hold Me Tight conversation, as part of our relationship education program, Hold Me Tight: Conversations for Connection. The main insight here is that these wounds are abandonments that spark life-and-death survival scripts and attachment panic.

Our research into the key events that change distressed relationships into more secure bonds tells us that if we can understand the drama of attachment and how we deal with disconnection—and if we can learn to accept and call out our deepest attachment fears and needs, and if we can respond to these calls with attuned care—we can, with purpose and deliberation, grow our deepest bonds across a lifetime.

For many of us this is a startling revelation. We do not have to travel through this life alone, relying only on ourselves or the whims of mysterious love. These megawatt emotional conversations rebuild trust and lead us to new levels of intimate connection. To know, at last, how to grasp, shape, repair, and renew our most important adult relationship, the relationship that, if we understand it, can sustain and nurture us throughout our life—what can be more important than this?

Experiment 1

Sit quietly and imagine yourself in a conversation with a loved one whom you do not or did not always feel safe with. See if you can remember a time or specific incident when you felt disconnected and hurt in this relationship. Ask yourself what threat was present.

Was it the threat of imminent rejection—that is, learning that this person did not value you or the connection with you? Was it the threat of being abandoned or deserted—learning that this person could turn and walk away, leaving you bereft? Was it the threat of learning that this person judged you as unimportant or unacceptable? What, to you, was the most catastrophic thing this person said or did? See if you can pinpoint the exact moment that hurt the most.

Ask yourself what you needed at that point that would have turned the hurt and fear around. What did you long to hear or have that person do? Now, for a moment, imagine that person magically tuning in to you and doing just that. Give a name to what you would feel—for example, intense relief, deep comfort, dissipation of fear.

But suppose this magic didn’t quite happen and you had to help the other person figure out how to respond. Imagine what it would be like to tell this person about the threat you felt in that situation. and the message or action you needed to receive in that moment. See this person’s face, and see yourself sitting opposite him, and beginning to speak. If you can imagine yourself doing this and being able to send a clear message while keeping your emotional balance, that is great. You have just primed your attachment system and rehearsed your part of a Hold Me Tight conversation.

If you had a hard time with this last piece, see if you can determine what most got in the way of your giving a clear message about your needs and fears in the conversation. Here are some of the blocks that people identify:

If you have never seen or experienced a Hold Me Tight conversation, then this thought experiment is a beginning, a way to explore it as a possibility. If you do have a prototype for this conversation, then it is a chance for you to hone your sense of this exquisitely powerful interaction.

Experiment 2

Choose a small hurt inflicted by someone you depend on. Ask this person if you could just talk about the event. Say you want to see if this telling would be helpful to you. Say that it is fine if she cannot or does not wish to respond and that you are not trying to blame her or make her feel bad. If she agrees to listen, try to pinpoint your specific moment of hurt in very simple language while staying soft and open. Stay with your task and see if you can do it, whether she responds or not. Write down what this was like for you.