Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

creating and strengthening this emotional bond

Contact with a loving partner literally acts as a buffer against shock, stress, and pain.

In 1944, Bowlby published the very first paper on family therapy, Forty-four Juvenile Thieves, in which he noted that “behind the mask of indifference is bottomless misery and behind apparent callousness, despair.” Bowlby’s young charges were frozen in the attitude “I will never be hurt again” and paralyzed in desperation and rage.

I saw that when more withdrawn partners were able to confess their fears of loss and isolation, they could then talk about their longings for caring and connection.

this was the scaffolding underneath these endless conflicts.

The demand-withdraw pattern is not just a bad habit, it reflects a deeper underlying reality: such couples are starving emotionally. They are losing the source of their emotional sustenance. They feel deprived. And they are desperate to regain that nurturance.

touching and smiling

Once a couple grasped that they were both victims of the dialogue and were able to show more of themselves, to risk sharing deeper emotions, then the conflicts calmed down and they felt a little closer.

This revelation “moved” their blaming partners into responding more tenderly,