Distressed partners may use different words but they are always asking the same basic questions, “Are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Will you come when I need you, when I call?”

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.

being open, attuned, and responsive to each other.

They turn the blame inward, on themselves.

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.

Sarah’s message is urgent but Tim doesn’t get it. He finds her “too emotional.” But that is the point. We are never more emotional than when our primary love relationship is threatened. Sarah desperately needs to reconnect with Tim. Tim is desperately afraid that he has lost that intimacy with Sarah — connection is vital to him as well. But his

When they felt secure with their lover, they could reach out and connect easily; when they felt insecure, they either became anxious, angry, and controlling, or they avoided contact altogether and stayed distant.

to thrive” for children separated from their parents and caught in debilitating grief.

Romantic love was all about attachment and emotional bonding. It was all about our wired-in need to have someone to depend on, a loved one who can offer reliable emotional connection and comfort.