Love relationships aren't meant to be joyrides; they are also restorative and balancing meeting places where negative emotions can be calmed and regulated.

Like the old adage, "Two hearts are better than one" and indeed they are.

In horror movies, the hero or heroine is always alone when the ghoul or monster first appears but finally triumphs over fear and fiend with the help of a buddy.

The reason that distress in a relationship so often plunges us into inner chaos is because our hearts and brains are set up to use our partners to help us find our balance in the midst of distress and fear.  If they instead become a source of distress, then we are doubly bereft and vulnerable.

One one man says to his wife, "You would do this to me, you of all people.  The one I count on.  I am so confused.  If I can't trust you, who can I trust?  I thought you had my back; you were my safe place' but now it seems like you are the enemy, and there is no safe anywhere."  The other side of the coin is that loving connection is the natural antidote to fear and pain.

Learning to love and be loved is, in effect, about learning to tune in to our emotions so that we know what we need from a partner and expressing those desires openly, in a way that evokes sympathy and support from him or her.  When this support helps us balance our emotions--staying in touch with but not being flooded by them--we can then tune in to and sensitively respond to our partner in return.

Nothing makes us stronger and happier than loving, stable, long term bonds with others.



Love Sense- Sue Johnson

Emotion is the great communicator for couples. 

It swirls within our bodies and flows out, whether we want it to or not, as signals to others.

It spurs our own behavior and conveys our deepest needs to others as well as their to us. 

As such, emotions are vital to our love relationships.  Our partners are central to our sense of safety. 

How can they shelter us, be our safe harbor, if they don't know what we are afraid of and what we yearn and hunger for? 

Emotion is the the music of the dance between lovers; it tells us where to put our feet, and tells our partner where we need them to put theirs. 

We broadcast emotion mainly through our facial expressions and tone of voice, and we apprehend and comprehend these signals instantaneously.  It take just one hundred milliseconds for our brain to register the smallest alteration in another person's face and just three hundred milliseconds more to feel in our own body what we see in that face--to monitor the change we see in each other.

Emotion is contagious; we literally "catch" each others sentiments and feel what the other person is feeling, and this is the basis of empathy.


Love Sense - Sue Johnson

At the very beginning of love there is infatuation and obsession. 

We tend to think that this is strictly the result of sexual desire.  But right from the beginning, there is also emotional yearning.  Indeed, passion is best defined as a combination of sexual connections and attachment longing.

A budding relationship is fraught with tension and anxiety.  We whisper to ourselves, "Does this person want me?  Am I going to be rejected?"

The longing and apprehension push us to take risks, to reach out and move closer. 

Our anxiety is soothed as we get positive responses from this person, and gradually he or she becomes what researcher John Bowlby called "irreplaceable." 

The process of feeling anxious and vulnerable and find that another can and will respond is the basic building block of love.


From, Love Sense ~ Sue Johnson

We've long assumed that as we mature, we outgrow the need for the intense closeness, nurturing, and comfort we had with our caregivers as children and that as adults, and that the romantic attachments we form are essentially sexual in nature.  This is a complete distortion of adult love.

Adult romantic love is an attachment bond, just like the one between mother and child.

Our need to depend on one precious other--to know that when we "call", he or she will be there for us--never dissolves.  In fact, it endures, as researcher John Bowlby puts it,
"From cradle to grave."

As adults, we simply transfer that need from our primary caregiver to our lover.  Romantic love is not the least bit illogical or random.
  
It is the continuation of an ordered and wise recipe for our survival.

Trust helps us over the rough places that crop up in every relationship.  Our bodies are designed to produce a cascade of chemicals that bond us tightly to our loved ones. 

Monogamy is not only possible, it is our natural state.

Emotional dependency is not immature or pathological; it is our greatest strength. Being the "best you can be" is really only possible when you are deeply connected to another.

Splendid isolation is for planets, not people.


Love Sense, Sue Johnson

Empathy is the basis of true compassion, since it makes you aware of the difficulties others face and their suffering.

Empathy supports relationships in other ways as well, such as by helping you understand another person's inner workings. 

Being comfortable with closeness supports empathy and compassion.

Nonetheless, humanity's evolutionary heritage (in which the greatest threats usually came from other people), combined with person real life experiences (especially childhood ones), can make an individual uncomfortable with closeness. 

Ways to increase comfort with closeness include focusing on your internal experience instead of on the other person, paying attention to awareness itself, using imagery, and being mindful of your inner world.

Buddha's Brain - Hanson

Researchers have accidentally stumbled on the solution to a mystery that philosophers have struggled with through the ages:  How do we know what is happening in the mind of another? 

The answer:  mirror neurons.  They put us inside the body of others, making us literally feel what they are feeling.  Mirror neurons explain why we shrink back in our seats with fear when the hero is abruptly attacked by Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street and why we soar with joy when young bicyclists life into the blue sky in E.T. The Extra Terrestial. 

These neurons are kicking in when we wince after a kid tumbles off a swing onto the ground and when we break into a smile watching a friend's eyes light up as we carrin in a huge birthday cake.

This ability to enter into another;s experience is especially pertinent in love relationships, in which responding in a sensitive way to a partner's needs is so central.  When we see our sweetie's mouth droop down or eyes well with tears, our brain mimics the experience for us. 

In a sense, we physiologically try on the feeling.  The line between us and our partner blurs, and we automatically without conscious reflection or deliberation, feel and know he or she is sad. 

This is invaluable in helping us tune in to a mate and in building intimacy, safety, and trust--the very bond of love.

Unhappiness or negativity is a disease on our planet.  What pollution is on the outer level is negativity on the inner. 

It is everywhere, not just in places where people don't have enough, but even more so where they have more than enough.

Is that surprising?  No. The affluent world is even more deeply identified with form, more lost in content, more trapped in ego.

People believe in themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness, that is to say, dependent on form.  They don't realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe.  It changes constantly.  They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn't have. 

And so they miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that is always already here, that lies beyond what is happening or not, happening beyond form. 

Taken from, A New Earth, Eckhard Tolle

What do people who are the most resilient to shame, who believe in their worthiness have in common?
Author Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, says,

"To be wholehearted, and engage with the world is from a sense of worthiness."

Dr. Brown goes on to define ten guideposts for wholehearted living:

1. Cultivate Authenticity: Letting go of what people think.

2. Cultivate self-compassion.  Letting go of perfectionism.

3.  Cultivate a resilient spirit.  Letting go of numbing and powerlessness.

4.  Cultivate Gratitude and joy.  Letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark.

5.  Cultivate intuition and trusting. Faith.  Letting go of the need for certainty.

6.  Cultivate creativity.  Letting go comparison.

7.  Cultivating play and rest.  Letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self          worth.

8.  Cultivating calm and stillness.  Letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle.

9.  Cultivating meaningful work.  Letting go of self doubt and "supposed to."

10.  Cultivating laughter, song, and dance.  Letting go of being cool and "always in control."


Brene Brown, Daring Greatly. 2012