Hold Me Tight

My 9 highlights

• Stepping aside from our usual ways of protecting ourselves and acknowledging our deepest needs can be hard, even painful. The reason for taking the risk is simple. If we don’t learn to let our partner really see our attachment needs in an open, authentic way, the chances of getting these needs met are minuscule. We have to send the signal loud and clear for our partner to get the message.

• most fights are really protests over emotional disconnection.

• Kyoko turns to Charlie and takes a deep breath. “I want you to accept that I am more emotional than you and that this is okay. It is not a flaw in me. There is nothing wrong with me that I do not find comfort in reasons and shoulds. I want you to stay with me and come close, to show me you care when I don’t feel strong. I want you to touch me and hold me and tell me I matter to you. I just want you to be with me. That is all I need.”

• recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection.

• “Wait a minute. What is happening here? We are getting caught up in a silly fight and we are both getting hurt.” This

• 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.

• In a secure relationship, excitement comes not from trying to resurrect the novel moments of infatuated passion, but from the risk involved in staying open in the moment-to-moment, here-and-now experience of physical and emotional connection.

• If I appeal to you for emotional connection and you respond intellectually to a problem, rather than directly to me, on an attachment level I will experience that as “no response.” This is one of the reasons that the research on social support uniformly states that people want “indirect” support, that is, emotional confirmation and caring from their partners, rather than advice.

• the four behaviors that Bowlby and she believed were basic to attachment: that we monitor and maintain emotional and physical closeness with our beloved; that we reach out for this person when we are unsure, upset, or feeling down; that we miss this person when we are apart; and that we count on this person to be there for us when we go out into the world and explore.