Love Sense
Dr. Sue Johnson
60 · –
-
We seek out, monitor, and try to maintain emotional and physical connection with our loved ones. Throughout life, we rely on them to be emotionally accessible, responsive, and engaged with us. •We reach out for our loved ones particularly when we are uncertain, threatened, anxious, or upset. Contact with them gives us a sense of having a safe haven, where we will find comfort and emotional support; this sense of safety teaches us how to regulate our own emotions and how to connect with and trust others. •We miss our loved ones and become extremely upset when they are physically or emotionally remote; this separation anxiety can become intense and incapacitating. Isolation is inherently traumatizing for human beings. •We depend on our loved ones to support us emotionally and be a secure base as we venture into the world and learn and explore. The more we sense that we are effectively connected, the more autonomous and separate we can be.
-
Bowlby did not. He maintained that the need to be close to a few precious others, to attach, persists through life and is the force that shapes our adult love relationships. As he wrote: “All of us, from cradle to grave, are happiest when life is organized as a series of excursions, long or short, from the secure base provided by our attachment figure(s).”
-
When lovers felt secure, they could reach out and connect, easily helping each other find their emotional balance; but when they felt insecure, they became either anxious, angry, and demanding or withdrawn and distant.
-
To be human is to need others, and this is no flaw or weakness. And being friends, even with physical intimacy, is different from being lovers. The bond with a friend is not as tight. No matter how close, friends cannot offer the degree of caring, commitment, trust, and safety that true lovers do. They are not our irreplaceable others.
-
In psychology, reaction time in recognizing words is a commonly used measure of the accessibility of a person’s thoughts. The quicker the reaction time, the higher the accessibility. This study shows that if we’re primed with any kind of threat, we automatically and swiftly pull up the names of our loved ones—they are our safe haven
-
Other studies by Jeff’s team have also confirmed that, just as Bowlby predicted, secure and anxiously attached people tend to reach for those they love for comfort while avoidant people tend to withdraw. But then they discovered a wrinkle. That finding is true only when the threat comes from outside the relationship, as in the study above. When it comes from inside, the responses are different. Both secure and avoidant people can stay on topic and keep their emotions in check while discussing internal conflicts—say, the fact that one partner wants more sex than the other—although secure folks are still better at constructing solutions and acting warmly toward their partner. But in the face of internal conflict, anxious partners do not reach out; they go completely off the rails. They catastrophize, bring in irrelevant issues, and become angry and confrontational, even when their partner refrains from being reciprocally hostile. Anxious partners are generally uneasy about their lover’s commitment to begin with and thus are primed to view anything he or she says or does more negatively. Haunted by the specter of abandonment, they try to control their lover.
-
Avoidants cope by doing things to lessen contact with the rejecting partner, such as moving out of the area where they were together. They hunker down and turn inward, relying on themselves in these situations. They don’t talk to friends but try to distract themselves, pulling away from reminders of the relationship and suppressing their distress. More avoidant folks also tend to steer clear of new relationships for a while, whereas some anxious partners try to jump into new relationships immediately
-
In sum, we can see attachment theory and science as offering us an architecture of romantic love. Think of yourself as a house. On the first floor and reaching into the foundation are your basic needs for comfort, reassurance, connection, closeness, and care as well as your basic emotions, including joy, fear, sadness, and anger. These are wired in by thousands of years of evolution. On the second floor are your ways of coping with these needs and emotions, opening to and trusting them, cutting them off or defending against them, or becoming obsessed and being taken over by them. On the third floor are your attitudes and ways of thinking about relationships—what you can expect from others and what you are entitled to. At the tip-top is the piece your partner and other loved ones see—your actual behavior.
-
We have to do what securely attached dyads do naturally: we have to learn to turn toward each other and reveal our fears and longings. This is, admittedly, hard to do, particularly if we are ashamed or don’t have the words to express our needs. Words order emotions and thoughts, make them more tangible and workable
-
Emotion, we’ve discovered, is a sharp, smart force that organizes and elevates our lives. It is what transforms existence into experience. “I do not literally paint that table but the emotion it produces upon me,” observed Matisse. Emotion is what turns an object into a memento, an event into a happening, and a person into the love of your life
-
But in survival, false positives are always more valuable than false negatives
-
You’re better off heeding a warning emotion than ignoring it. As George Santayana pointed out, it is often “wisdom to believe the heart.”
-
Emotion is the music of the dance between lovers; it tells us where to put our feet, and tells our partners where we need them to put theirs.
-
However, most social scientists today agree that there are only six innate and universal emotions: fear, anger, happiness or joy, sadness, surprise, and shame (some theorists divide shame into disgust and guilt). Each one leads naturally to an action. In anger, we approach a challenge or a frustration; in surprise, we pay attention and explore; in fear, we freeze or flee. The fact that negative emotion predominates in this list speaks to the existential significance of emotion. In survival terms (as reporters know), bad news and negatives are more important. You’ve probably noticed that love isn’t on the basics list, and I’ll go into that a little later.
-
Writer Jeffrey Eugenides puts it beautifully: “Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in ‘sadness,’ ‘joy,’ or ‘regret’…It oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, ‘the happiness that attends disaster.’ Or: ‘the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.’”
-
Smothering emotion is bad not just for us but also for our love relationships. The effort is exhausting and distracts us from attending to emotional cues coming from our partner, curtailing our ability to respond. James Gross has shown, too, that the tension created by suppression is contagious: our partner picks up the strain, and becomes stressed as well.
-
And we found that securely attached people seem to be less afraid. Anxiously attached people’s fears center around not mattering to anyone anymore and leaving others. Avoidant people’s fears focus on the unknown nature of death
-
Andrew confesses to Amy during couple therapy. “I am always ready to run away. It is hard for me to let you in. I always assume the worst is happening. I guess I need lots of reassurance that you do want to be with me, and I need for you to be patient as I learn to trust.”
-
To reiterate this in a more general way: the way we regulate and process our emotions becomes our habitual way of signaling and engaging with others. It becomes our social script. The more narrow the focus of the script, the more limited are our ways of dancing with others.
-
This neural overlap explains why, as researchers have found, Tylenol can reduce hurt feelings and emotional support can lessen physical pain (including that of childbirth, cancer treatment, and heart surgery). Our need for connection with others has shaped our neural makeup and the structure of our emotional life.
-
In psychological terms, it sends us into “approach” behavior—but in a softer, more inquisitive way than does anger, which has a harder, more assertive quality. Negative emotions, such as anger and fear, narrow our focus, while positive emotion expands the range of our thoughts and creates the urge to play and experiment.
-
Positive emotions turn on our curiosity and desire to engage and explore. They set us up for openness and learning. Joy, for example, invigorates us.
-
Positive emotions remind us at such times that suffering and uncertainty are not the whole story in any human life. Positive emotions and beliefs fuel resilience and help us bounce back from adversity. They generate even more positive emotions in an upward spiral. This is surely part of the power of love. Love, at its best, brings a cornucopia of good things: joy and contentment, safety and trust, intense interest and involvement, curiosity and openness.
-
Leave a neuron alone and it dies; give it only an occasional call and it shrinks. This constant dialoging structures our brain. And the more often neurons talk to each other, the easier and stronger the connection becomes. Activation leads to architecture. “Fire together, wire together,” as the saying goes.
-
Emotional interaction advances brain development, and lack of it does the reverse—dendrites don’t branch out; the tendrils that relay signals are fewer and stunted, and messenger chemicals are in shorter supply
-
As psychologist Louis Cozolino of Pepperdine University observes, “Without stimulating interactions, neurons and people wither and die. In neurons, this process is called apoptosis, while in humans, it is called anaclitic depression.”
-
Researchers had 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 the young bicyclists lift into the blue sky in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
-
Mirror neurons have upended our assumptions about how we read each other. We used to think that Marie would stay in her head, reasoning out what Simon would do. But now we know that we comprehend each other’s intentions in less judicious fashion. In a flash, Simon felt what Marie felt, and Marie felt what Simon felt—and she got his intention. Such moments of connection are the lifeblood of love relationships.
-
Empathy is not limited to humans. Primatologist Frans de Waal, in his book The Age of Empathy, lays out a clear case that all species who have mirror neurons and a sense of self (that is, they can recognize themselves in a mirror)—including humans, dolphins, apes, and elephants—respond to each other’s pain and grieve when one of their number dies.
-
In other words, they show all the signs of emotional bonding and empathy. Rhesus monkeys, for example, refuse to pull a chain that gives them food if this act delivers an electric shock to their neighbor in the next cage. The monkeys starve themselves to avoid inflicting pain on another. Elephants walk miles to mourn at the grave of a herd member, and chimpanzees offer solace, hugging, holding, grooming, and calling to a stricken relative who has lost a fight with an older member of the troop.
-
Being flooded with negative emotions or constantly working to numb ourselves inevitably distracts us from being emotionally present with others, from tuning in to others’ feelings and needs. We have to have some measure of calm and security within ourselves before we can be sensitive to and caringly respond to others.
-
However, when a dance goes wrong, it is almost never due to just one person’s brain patterns, emotional style, habits, or expectations. The other person’s responsiveness or lack of it always plays a part.
-
Experiment
-
Those of us who are avoidant, that is, uncomfortable with emotional closeness and dependence on others, are more likely to have what I term “sealed-off sex.” The focus here is on one’s own sensations. Sex is self-centered and self-affirming, a performance aimed at achieving climax and confirming one’s own sexual skill. Technique is prized; openness and vulnerability shunned. There is little foreplay, such as kissing or tender touching. And no cuddling afterward—once the Big Bang occurs, there’s nothing left. Partners’ feelings are deemed insignificant and are easily dismissed.
-
Sealed-off sex is one-dimensional and leaves both partners dissociated. It undermines emotional bonds. It is also, in the end, less satisfying. Research indicates that it actually reduces arousal and results in less frequent orgasms. In a dance without connection or the ability to tune in to the emotional music, boredom and emptiness follow every step.
-
More anxiously attached people, by contrast, tend to have “solace sex,” that is, to use sex as proof of how much they are loved. There is emotional engagement, but the chief feeling is anxiety.
-
Sexual satisfaction for both the anxiously attached and the avoidant is constricted: the anxious partner is preoccupied with being loved, and the avoidant partner is determined to stay detached
-
Safety fosters a willingness to experiment, take risks, and be fully immersed in the sexual encounter. Sex becomes more spontaneous, passionate, and joyful.
-
As Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will wind up somewhere else.”
-
The truth is that we stray and have affairs not because we are all naturally inclined to have multiple mates but because our bond with our partner is either inherently weak or has deteriorated so far that we are unbearably lonely
-
For secure partners, however, rigorous studies and surveys show that the thrill can last indefinitely. This excitement is not the explosive lust of first infatuation but a deeper exhilaration that rises from knowing someone profoundly
-
Psychiatrist Rosemary Basson of the University of British Columbia has posited a new model of female sexuality to replace the old linear genital model. It’s a feedback loop and includes such factors as relationship satisfaction, emotional intimacy, and previous sexual activity, all of which influence sexual response. “Women often begin sexual experiences feeling sexually neutral,” she observes, “and move into desire and arousal as a result of sexual cues from their partner. Their sexuality is often responsive rather then agentic. It is a reaction to a partner’s sexual interest.”
-
She likes me to talk to her. I hate to be corny, but sharing my feelings seems to turn her on. Amazing. I used to keep asking her, ‘Do you want to mess around?’ I didn’t get what a turn-off that was for her. I wanted her to show all this passion right off the bat. Now I understand that she wants to be held and whispered to and then for me to come on to her slowly. It works!” His wife, Jill, mutters, “Of course,” and smiles. Jill offers that she does not always need an orgasm to feel satisfied with a sexual encounter
-
We know that active surrender is prevalent in women’s sexual fantasies. Females do need to be somewhat still and cooperative for successful coitus to occur. So submission in women and assertiveness in men are important cues for mating
-
In one study, Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny, neuroscientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida, found that overeating by rats resulted in dopamine deficits in the their brains and further compulsive eating.
-
On a scale of to 10, where is not true at all, 5 is moderately true, and is completely true, rate the importance of these factors in your sex life: I want to get close to and feel connected to my lover. I want the turn-on, the thrill, and the pleasure of touch and sex. I want the tension release, and sex helps me to let go of stress. I want to feel special to my partner and cared for by him or her. I want to show my love and have my partner feel special and cared for. I want to feel good about myself and know that I am potent as a sexual person.
-
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, has found that, indeed, any kind of threat automatically turns on the attachment system, calling up our need for comfort and making others who are potential sources of this comfort more attractive
-
Anxiety and threat automatically call up the need for comfort and prime us to find security in another. If someone is there at a vulnerable moment, we begin to bond, and every risk we face together thereafter strengthens the sense of connection.
-
It wasn’t that long ago that marriage was considered an alliance aimed at fortifying defenses, preserving wealth, and achieving financial security. Now marriage is seen primarily as an emotional venture, a commitment to the creation of a very particular kind of bond. In fact, in the United States, “emotional support” and “friendship” have replaced the rearing of a family as the central motive for marriage, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, in Washington, DC.
-
He found that the most important factor in predicting a marriage’s collapse was not the amount of conflict present but rather the couple’s lack of emotional responsiveness, a classic sign of insecure attachment.
-
I feel more distant from him just when I need to feel really close.
-
The researchers discovered that self-esteem was higher and depression and anxiety lower in the handicapped people who had an emotionally responsive mate. Having a spouse who was willing to listen to their worries and made them feel loved made more of a difference to their mental well-being than did help with buttoning shirts, tying shoelaces, and the like.
-
Three are cognitive: verbal facility, mathematical skill, and visual-spatial ability. Women win the first hands down—they use more words and express themselves better than do men. Men do better when it comes to working with numbers and calculations and being able to mentally manipulate two- and three-dimensional figures, but these abilities appear largely linked to expectations. If you tell women that tests of these skills are “gender neutral,” they tend to perform as well as men.
-
Ickes concludes that men and women have the same basic ability. Differences only emerge when people are explicitly told that they are expected to act in a certain way because of their sex; then they try harder. Men who are told that women find nontraditional, empathetic males more desirable immediately improve their performance in this kind of task.
-
But there is another level of withdrawal that is absolutely deadly in love relationships. This is when a partner turns to stone—still, silent, and completely inaccessible. This is a total negation of the bond. There is no engagement. It is one of the rules of attachment that any response is better than none. I must have heard the cry “I fight to get a reaction, any reaction” a thousand times. When we stonewall, the most extreme version of dismissal and nonresponsiveness, we mostly do so in order to cut off our emotions; we freeze and retreat into numbness. But when one dancer completely leaves the floor, the dance is no more. This catapults the remaining dancer into the terror of insignificance and abandonment.
-
Psychologists refer to this as a process of escalating negative appraisal, where every response is seen in the worst possible light
-
First, unless a straying partner is extremely avoidant in terms of attachment (remember that avoidants are more open to one-night stands in general), most affairs are not primarily about sex; they are about the hunger for connection and not knowing how to satisfy this hunger with one’s partner. Most times, an affair is an indication of a more profound problem. If you are dancing close and in tune with your partner, there is no place for a third dancer to enter. Often, the bond has begun to erode or failed to firm into a secure connection; frequently there have been preceding cycles of criticizing and distancing. But the partners have been unsure what that meant, let alone what to do about it. So they have been accepting the relationship as it is and accommodating to the lack of connection. Then suddenly the “My partner has turned to someone else and is having an affair” bomb detonates, and the relationship becomes obviously and overwhelmingly distressed.
-
The loosening begins with small moments of missed connection and a growing sense of deprivation.
-
Partners create a story of the relationship that fits their own personal unhappiness and centers around the faults of the other
-
Successful couples tend to openly acknowledge moments of distance and their impact. They share their emotions and make clear statements about feeling hurt or regretting that they caused hurt. They frequently use humor and also touch while talking.