The injuring partner stays emotionally present and acknowledges the wounded partner’s pain and his/her part in it. Until injured partners see that this pain has been truly recognized, they will not be able to let it go. They will call again and again to their partner, preoccupied with protesting and demanding. This makes perfect sense if we

The overriding lesson is you have to take your partner’s hurt seriously and hang in and ask questions until the meaning of an incident becomes clear, even if to you the event seems trivial or the hurt exaggerated.

The first goal for partners is forgiveness. Just as with love, forgiveness has only recently become a topic of study by social scientists. Most scholars speak of forgiveness as a moral decision. Letting go of resentment and absolving a person’s bad conduct is the right and good thing to do. But this decision alone will not restore faith in the

To build and sustain a secure bond, we need to be able to tune in to our loved one as strongly as we did before. How do we do this? By deliberately creating moments of engagement and connection.

two crucial elements of de-escalation: first, that how a partner responds at a key moment of conflict and disconnection can be deeply painful and threatening to the other; and second, that a partner’s negative reactions can be desperate attempts to deal with attachment fears.

For distressed lovers, this is much harder to do. They are caught up in the emotional chaos at the surface of the relationship, in seeing each other as threats, as the enemy. To reconnect, lovers have to be able to de-escalate the conflict and actively create a basic emotional safety. They need to be able to work in concert to curtail their

We want and need our lovers to respond to our hurt. But they can’t do that if we don’t show it. To love well requires courage — and trust.

Emotions tell us what matters. They orient and direct us, like an internal compass.

We get set to move in a particular way, toward, away from, or against our lover. This readiness to act is wired into every emotion. Anger tells us to approach and fight. Shame tells us to withdraw and hide. Fear tells us to flee or freeze, or in real extremes to turn and attack back. Sadness primes us to grieve and let go.