The quality of our love relationships is also a big factor in how mentally and emotionally healthy we are. We have an epidemic of anxiety and depression in our most affluent societies. Conflict with and hostile criticism from loved ones increase our self-doubts and create a sense of helplessness, classic triggers for depression. We need validation from our loved ones. Researchers say that marital distress raises the risk for depression tenfold!
That’s the bad news — but there is good news, too.
Hundreds of studies now show that positive loving connections with others protect us from stress and help us cope better with life’s challenges and traumas. Israeli researchers report that couples with a secure emotional attachment are much more able to deal with dangers such as Scud missile attacks than other less-connected couples. They are less anxious and have fewer physical problems after attacks.
Simply holding the hand of a loving partner can affect us profoundly, literally calming jittery neurons in the brain. Psychologist Jim Coan of the University of Virginia told women patients having an MRI brain scan that when a little red light on the machine came on, they might receive a small electrical shock on their feet — or they might not. This information lit up the stress centers in patients’ brains. But when partners held their hands, the patients registered less stress. When they were shocked, they experienced less pain. This effect was noticeably stronger in the happiest relationships, the ones where partners scored high on measures of satisfaction and that the researchers called the Supercouples. Contact with a loving partner literally acts as a buffer against shock, stress, and pain.
The people we love, asserts Coan, are the hidden regulators of our bodily processes and our emotional lives. When love doesn’t work, we hurt. Indeed, “hurt feelings” is a precisely accurate phrase, according to psychologist Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California. Her brain imaging studies show that rejection and exclusion trigger the same circuits in the same part of the brain, the anterior cingulate, as physical pain. In fact, this part of the brain turns on anytime we are emotionally separated from those who are close to us. When I read this study, I remembered being shocked by my own physical experience of grief. After hearing that my mother had died, I felt battered, like I had literally been hit by a truck. And when we are close to, hold, or make love with our partners, we are flooded with the “cuddle hormones” oxytocin and vasopressin. These hormones seem to turn on “reward” centers in the brain, flooding us with calm and happiness chemicals like dopamine, and turning off stress hormones like cortisol.
We’ve come a long way in our understanding of love and its importance. In 1939, women ranked love fifth as a factor in choosing a mate. By the 1990s, it topped the list for both women and men. And college students now say that their key expectation from marriage is “emotional security.”
Love is not the icing on the cake of life. It is a basic primary need, like oxygen or water. Once we understand and accept this, we can more easily get to the heart of relationship problems.
Where Did Our Love Go? Losing Connection
“We are never so vulnerable as when we love.”
— Sigmund Freud
The basic issue is that Sally just doesn’t know anything about money,” declares Jay. “She is very emotional and she has a problem trusting me and just letting me manage it.” Sally explodes: “Yeah, right. As usual the problem is me. Like you really understand money! We just went out and bought that ridiculous car you wanted. The car we don’t need and can’t afford. You just do what you want. My take on things never counts with you anyway. In fact, I don’t count with you, period.”
Chris is a “cruel, rigid, and uncaring parent,” accuses Jane. “The kids need taking care of, you know. They need your attention, not just your rules!” Chris turns his head away. He speaks calmly about the need for discipline and charges Jane with not knowing how to set limits. They go back and forth arguing. Finally, Jane puts her face in her hands and moans, “I just don’t know who you are anymore. You’re like a stranger.” Again, Chris turns away.
Nat and Carrie sit in stubborn silence until Carrie cracks and sobs out how shocked and betrayed she feels about Nat’s affair. Nat, with an air of frustration, ticks off his reasons for the affair. “I’ve told you again and again why it happened. I’ve come clean. And jeez, it was two years ago! It’s in the past! Isn’t it about time you got over it and forgave me?” “You don’t know the meaning of clean,” shrieks Carrie. Then her voice falls to a whisper. “You don’t care about me, about my hurt. You just want everything back the way it was.” She starts to weep, he stares at the floor.
I ask each couple what they think the basic problem is in their relationship and what the solution might be. They dig a bit and offer up their ideas. Sally says Jay is too controlling; he has to be taught how to share power more equitably. Chris suggests that he and Jane have such different personalities that agreement on a parenting style is impossible. They could settle the issue by taking a parenting course from an “expert.” Nat is convinced that Carrie has a sex hang-up. Maybe they should see a sex therapist so that they can get back to being happy in the bedroom.
These couples are trying hard to make sense of their distress, but their formulations are missing the mark. Their explanations are just the tip of the iceberg, the superficial tangible crest of a big block of trouble, many therapists would agree. So what is the “real problem” that lies beneath?
If I ask therapists, many would say these couples are caught up in destructive power struggles or caustic fighting patterns, and that what they need to do is learn how to negotiate and improve their communication skills. But counselors, too, are missing the crux of the issue. They’ve just worked their way down the iceberg to the waterline.
We have to dive below to discover the basic problem: these couples have disconnected emotionally; they don’t feel emotionally safe with each other. What couples and therapists too often do not see is that most fights are really protests over emotional disconnection. Underneath all the distress, partners are asking each other: Can I count on you, depend on you? Are you there for me? Will you respond to me when I need, when I call? Do I matter to you? Am I valued and accepted by you? Do you need me, rely on me? The anger, the criticism, the demands, are really cries to their lovers, calls to stir their hearts, to draw their mates back in emotionally and reestablish a sense of safe connection.
A PRIMAL PANIC
Attachment theory teaches us that our loved one is our shelter in life. When that person is emotionally unavailable or unresponsive, we face being out in the cold, alone and helpless. We are assailed by emotions — anger, sadness, hurt, and above all, fear. This is not so surprising when we remember that fear is our built-in alarm system; it turns on when our survival is threatened. Losing connection with our loved one jeopardizes our sense of security. The alarm goes off in the brain’s amygdala, or Fear Central, as neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux of the Center for Neural Science at New York University has dubbed it. This almond-shaped area in the midbrain triggers an automatic response. We don’t think; we feel, we act.
We all experience some fear when we have disagreements or arguments with our partners. But for those of us with secure bonds, it is a momentary blip. The fear is quickly and easily tamped down as we realize that there is no real threat or that our partner will reassure us if we ask. For those of us with weaker or fraying bonds, however, the fear can be overwhelming. We are swamped by what neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp of Washington State University calls “primal panic.” Then we generally do one of two things: we either become demanding and clinging in an effort to draw comfort and reassurance from our partner, or we withdraw and detach in an attempt to soothe and protect ourselves. No matter the exact words, what we’re really saying in these reactions is: “Notice me. Be with me. I need you.” Or, “I won’t let you hurt me. I will chill out, try to stay in control.”
These strategies for dealing with the fear of losing connection are unconscious, and the
y work, at least in the beginning. But as distressed partners resort to them more and more, they set up vicious spirals of insecurity that only push them further and further apart. More and more interactions occur in which neither partner feels safe, both become defensive, and each is left assuming the very worst about each other and their relationship.
If we love our partners, why do we not just hear each other’s calls for attention and connection and respond with caring? Because much of the time we are not tuned in to our partners. We are distracted or caught up in our own agendas. We do not know how to speak the language of attachment, we do not give clear messages about what we need or how much we care. Often we speak tentatively because we feel ambivalent about our own needs. Or we send out calls for connection tinged with anger and frustration because we do not feel confident and safe in our relationships. We wind up demanding rather than requesting, which often leads to power struggles rather than embraces. Some of us try to minimize our natural longing to be emotionally close and focus instead on actions that give only limited expression to our need. The most common: focusing on sex. Disguised and distorted messages keep us from being exposed in all our naked longing, but they also make it harder for our lovers to respond.
THE DEMON DIALOGUES
The longer partners feel disconnected, the more negative their interactions become. Researchers have identified several such damaging patterns, and they go by various names. I call the three that I consider the most basic “Demon Dialogues.” They are Find the Bad Guy, the Protest Polka, and Freeze and Flee, and you’ll learn about them in detail in Conversation 1.
By far the most dominant of the trio is the Protest Polka. In this dialogue, one partner becomes critical and aggressive and the other defensive and distant. Psychologist John Gottman of the University of Washington in Seattle finds that couples who get stuck in this pattern in the first few years of marriage have more than an 80 percent chance of divorcing within four or five years.
Let’s take a look at one couple. Carol and Jim have a long-running quarrel over his being late to engagements. In a session in my office, Carol carps at Jim over his latest transgression: he didn’t show up on time for their scheduled movie night. “How come you are always late?” she challenges. “Doesn’t it matter to you that we have a date, that I am waiting, that you always let me down?” Jim reacts coolly: “I got held up. But if you are going to start off nagging again, maybe we should just go home and forget the date.” Carol retaliates by listing all the other times Jim has been late. Jim starts to dispute her “list,” then breaks off and retreats into stony silence.
In this never-ending dispute, Jim and Carol are caught up in the content of their fights. When was the last time Jim was late? Was it only last week or was it months ago? They careen down the two dead ends of “what really happened” — whose story is more “accurate” and who is most “at fault.” They are convinced that the problem has to be either his irresponsibility or her nagging.
In truth, though, it doesn’t matter what they’re fighting about. In another session in my office, Carol and Jim begin to bicker about Jim’s reluctance to talk about their relationship. “Talking about this stuff just gets us into fights,” Jim declares. “What’s the point of that? We go round and round. It just gets frustrating. And anyway, it’s all about my ��flaws’ in the end. I feel closer when we make love.” Carol shakes her head. “I don’t want sex when we are not even talking!”
What’s happened here? Carol and Jim’s attack-withdraw way of dealing with the “lateness” issue has spilled over into two more issues: “we don’t talk” and “we don’t have sex.” They’re caught in a terrible loop, their responses generating more negative responses and emotions in each other. The more Carol blames Jim, the more he withdraws. And the more he withdraws, the more frantic and cutting become her attacks.
Eventually, the what of any fight won’t matter at all. When couples reach this point, their entire relationship becomes marked by resentment, caution, and distance. They will see every difference, every disagreement, through a negative filter. They will listen to idle words and hear a threat. They will see an ambiguous action and assume the worst. They will be consumed by catastrophic fears and doubts, be constantly on guard and defensive. Even if they want to come close, they can’t. Jim’s experience is defined perfectly by the title of a Notorious Cherry Bombs song, “It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long.”
Partners sometimes can see glimpses of the Demon Dialogue they’re trapped in — Jim tells me he “knows” he will hear how he has disappointed Carol before she even speaks and so has put up a “wall” to keep from “catching fire” — but the pattern has become so automatic and so compelling that they cannot stop it. Most couples, however, aren’t aware of the pattern that has taken hold of their relationship.
Angry and frustrated, partners scrabble for explanation. They decide that their lover is callous or cruel. They turn the blame inward, on themselves. “Maybe there is something deeply wrong with me,” Carols tells me. “It’s just like my mom used to say, I am too difficult to love.” They conclude that no one is trustworthy and love is a lie.
The idea that these demand-distance spirals are all about attachment panic is still revolutionary to many psychologists and counselors. Most of the colleagues who come to me for training have been taught to see conflict itself and couples’ power struggles as the main problems in relationships. As a result they have focused on teaching couples negotiation and communication skills to contain the conflict. But this addresses the symptoms, not the disease. It’s telling people caught in a never-ending dance of frustration and distance to change the steps when what they have to do is change the music. “Stop telling me what to do,” orders Jim. Carol considers this for a nanosecond before angrily retorting, “When I do that, you do nothing and we are nowhere!”
We can come up with many techniques to address different aspects of couples’ distress, but until we understand the core principles that organize love relationships, we cannot really understand love’s problems or offer couples enduring help. 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.
Until we address the fundamental need for connection and the fear of losing it, the standard techniques, such as learning problem-solving or communication skills, examining childhood hurts, or taking time-outs, are misguided and ineffectual. Happy couples do not talk to each other in any more “skilled” or “insightful” ways than do unhappy couples, Gottman has shown. They do not always listen empathetically to each other or understand how their pasts might have set up problematic expectations. And in my office, I see very distressed couples who are amazingly articulate and show exquisite insight into their own behavior, but cannot talk to their partners in a coherent way when the emotional tsunami hits. My client Sally tells me, “I am pretty good at talking, you know. I have lots of friends. I’m assertive and I’m a good listener. But when we get into these terrible long silences, trying to remember the points from our marriage training weekend is like trying to read a ‘how to pull your parachute’ manual when you are in free fall.”
The standard remedies do not address yearnings for or threats to safe emotional connection. They do not tell couples how to reconnect or how to stay connected. The techniques they are taught may interrupt a fight, but at a terrible cost. They often further the distance between partners, reinforcing fears of being rejected and abandoned just when couples need to reaffirm their bond.
KEY MOMENTS OF ATTACHMENT AND DETACHMENT
The attachment view of love gives us a way of understanding toxic patterns. It guides us to the moments that break and make a relationship. Clients sometimes tell me, “Things were going so well. We had a great four days. It felt like we were friends. But then that one incident happened
and everything went to hell between us. I don’t understand.”
Dramatic exchanges between lovers evolve so fast and are so chaotic and heated that we don’t catch what’s actually happening and can’t see how we could react. But if we slow things down we see the turning points and our options. Attachment needs and the powerful emotions that accompany them often arise suddenly. They catapult the conversation from mundane matters to the issue of security and survival. “Johnny is watching too much TV” all at once mushrooms into “I just can’t deal with our son’s tantrums anymore. I am just a lousy mom. But you are not listening to me right now. I know, I know, you have to keep working, that is what is important here, isn’t it? Not my feelings. I am all alone here.”
If we are feeling basically safe and connected to our partner, this key moment is just like a brief cool breeze on a sunny day. If we are not so sure of our connection, it starts a negative spiral of insecurity that chills the relationship. Bowlby gave us a general guide to when our attachment alarm goes off. It happens, he said, when we feel suddenly uncertain or vulnerable in the world or when we perceive a negative shift in our sense of connection to a loved one, when we sense a threat or danger to the relationship. The threats we sense can come from the outside world and from our own inner cosmos. They can be true or imaginary. It’s our perception that counts, not the reality.
Peter, who has been married to Linda for six years, has been feeling less important to his lady of late. She has a new job and they make love less often. At a party, a friend comments that while Linda is radiant, Peter seems to be losing his hair. As Peter watches Linda converse attentively with a stunningly handsome man — a man with lots of hair — his stomach churns. Can Peter calm himself with the knowledge that he is precious to his wife and that she will turn to him and be there for him if he asks? Perhaps he remembers a moment when this happened and uses this image to soothe his unease.
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love Page 3