The Hold Me Tight Workbook - Dr. Sue Johnson

Copyright © 2022 by Susan M.
Johnson
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CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
INTRODUCTION Your Love Can Make Sense Again

BEFORE THE CONVERSATIONS Our Emotional Responses and the Language
of Attachment
CONVERSATION #1 Recognizing the Demon Dialogues
CONVERSATION #2 Finding the Raw Spots
CONVERSATION #3 Revisiting a Rocky Moment
CONVERSATION #4 Hold Me Tight — Engaging and Connecting
CONVERSATION #5 Forgiving Injuries
CONVERSATION #6 Bonding Through Sex and Touch
CONVERSATION #7 Keeping Your Love Alive
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RESOURCES
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INTRODUCTION
Your Love Can Make Sense Again
Across human history, the consensus has generally been that romantic
love is, and always will be, a mystery — something by its very nature
unknowable. Perhaps because love seems so baffling and unruly, our culture
appears to be losing all faith in the viability of stable romantic partnerships.
Skepticism and pessimism regarding long-term love have always been with
us. But now I think we can agree that those feelings have been compounded
by a new kind of stress — one we’ve never known before now — the stress
of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, a world in a state of flux.
The time of lockdown and recovery has affected relationships of all
kinds. For some couples, it was a time of coming together, regrouping, and
reconnection. For others, close confinement, uncertainty, and managing
virtual work and school put a strain on already fragile bonds.
As a clinical psychologist, couples therapist, and relationship researcher,
I have grown increasingly alarmed and frustrated by where we are and
where we seem to be going. I attend conferences that are led by “gurus”
who preach new and shiny ideas about how we work through and resolve
issues in coupledom — yet none are rooted in science and biology. For the
past forty-plus years, I’ve been in search of empirical evidence regarding
the way we form attachments, what makes us feel secure, and how to bridge
the gap of couples’ varying attachment needs and fears. I have always
believed that love is exquisitely logical and understandable, adaptive and
functional. Even better, it is malleable, reparable, and durable. This belief in
the science of love was what inspired me to create Emotionally Focused
Therapy — EFT — which is at the center of my 2008 book, Hold Me Tight:
Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.
I realize that for couples in distressed love relationships, science is the
last thing on their minds. It is not the path they think to take to return to
their healthy state of secure attachment and bonding with one another. But
to echo a popular recent catchphrase, we need to believe the science.
Consider the brain scan study done with psychologist Jim Coan from the
University of Virginia: Women patients having an fMRI brain scan were
told that when a little red light in the machine came on, they might receive a
small electric shock — or they might not. As they anticipated this potential
shock, their partners were prompted to hold their hands and speak words of
compassion and love to them. Coan found that encouraging words and
touch from a loved one completely changed how their brain responded to
the threat of shock — and to the shock itself. Patients registered less stress
and felt less pain.
Based on what this experiment and hundreds of other studies like it
show, being bonded with a loved one acts as a buffer to pain and distress.
So it is precisely this time in our history when romantic love should be
more important than ever. The aftermath of the pandemic has led to an
epidemic of loneliness, anxiety, and depression. Today, adult partnerships
are often the only real human ties we can count on in our virtual and
frenetically multitasking world. Moreover, we seem, in so many ways, to be
working actively against our desire for love and commitment. Our society
exalts emotional independence, and we’re constantly exhorted to love
ourselves first and foremost. It’s a growing trend that worries me, and in the
past few years, I’ve felt the call to offer couples an additional resource that
can help them rediscover one another and strengthen their bond.
I also have become even more firm in my belief in EFT’s universality,
and how the research on its effectiveness proves that we are more alike than
different. Over the decades, I’ve seen firsthand how EFT has helped
couples, no matter their race, ethnicity, faith, sexual orientation, gender
identity, or political affiliation. I’ve heard from couples all around the
world, from a tapestry of experiences and worldviews: from Muslim
couples in Egypt to Evangelicals in the Southern U.S.; white, Black,
cisgender, and queer. Whatever our differences, it’s clear that every human
being is wired for connection — we all share common needs to be seen,
valued, and supported by others. Now more than ever, that’s a truth we need
to be reminded of.
WHY A WORKBOOK? WHY NOW?

Context, practice, process. These are the ways we learn, teach, grow, and
expand ourselves. Without these things, we just hear words, lectures are just
moments of preachiness, and facts without stories are fast forgotten. In
Hold Me Tight and my subsequent book Love Sense, I offered my lifetime
of research, principles, and findings, along with case studies of dozens of
couples who have benefited from EFT in their relationships. I combined and
analyzed the clinical studies, laboratory experiments, and applied therapies
of my own and of other scientists who have proven that love is our basic
survival code — an essential task of our mammalian brain that compels us
to read and respond to others. But just as a physical therapist would need to
touch and prod your aching body to find out the source of your pain, EFT
can only heal a distressed couple when their relationship can be touched
and manipulated, tested and experienced. This workbook is based on my
book Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, which has
been translated into twenty-four languages and has sold more than one
million copies. I also developed the Hold Me Tight® Relationship
Education Program based on the book, which has also been translated into a
variety of languages and is facilitated in many countries across countless
cultures. Having been adapted for specific groups such as Christian couples,
families with teens and with adult children, and couples facing cardiac
disease, the program is also now available in an online format. This
workbook takes the Hold Me Tight® theories and shows you how to apply
them to your specific relationship, to use on an everyday basis. You provide
the context and I’ll lead you through the practice and process.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM EFT AND THIS WORKBOOK

Love relationships are not bargains; they are emotional bonds based on our
innate need for safe and emotional connection. You can’t bargain for
compassion, for connection. These are not intellectual reactions; they are
emotional responses. Emotionally Focused Therapy teaches couples to
recognize their emotional rhythms and patterns in the dance of romantic
love. Before we enter romantic relationships, this biological need for
emotional attachment was satisfied (appropriately or not) by our parents.
EFT is based on the notion that the attachment bond happens between
adults, too. This was a breakthrough when it came to understanding
partners’ roles in their love relationships, and subsequently, their roles in
the breakdown of the trust that is meant to bond them.
So forget what other therapies say to do, such as learning how to argue
better, analyzing your childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or
experimenting with new sexual positions. Instead, recognize and admit that
you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the
same way that a child is dependent on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and
protection. Partners need to pinpoint and share their vulnerabilities and
needs in positive ways that lead to bonding moments. This is especially true
given that your partner will trigger these vulnerabilities — we are all so
fearful of rejection and abandonment. A successful couple must learn how
to deal with these sensitivities in ways that build trust and intimacy.
EFT and the exercises in this workbook focus on creating and
strengthening the emotional bond between partners by identifying and
transforming the key moments that foster a loving adult relationship: being
open, attuned, and responsive to one another.
This workbook is for all couples — all partners seeking a lifetime of
love in a partnership of their design. It is for people from all walks of life,
of all lifestyles, because everyone on this planet has the same longing for
connection.
Through exercises and discussions based on the seven conversations
featured in Hold Me Tight, you will capture the defining moments in your
love relationship and learn how to shape these moments to create a secure
and lasting bond. Hold Me Tight is not required reading to be able to use
this workbook. If you have read the book, you will find this additional
material fortifying and the exercises novel. If you are diving right into the
workbook without having read the book, rest assured that the exercises are
supported by some foundational material and will be self-explanatory and
fulfilling to complete.
THE GOALS AS YOU MOVE THROUGH THIS WORKBOOK ARE TO:

• Better understand romantic love — the pivotal moves and moments
that define a relationship and can either lead to the mountaintop or
take you down the rabbit hole.
• Better understand your partner’s and your own emotional responses
and needs.
• Be able to describe and control negative interactions and spirals that
create pain and distance.
• Be able to shape positive moments of reaching and responding that
create a secure bond.
While the success of EFT is enjoyed by couples practicing it together,

it’s important to understand attachment on an individual personal level,
which is why you’ll find some exercises designed to be done alone, some
introspective, others meditative. You’ll find true or false and fill-in-the-
blank worksheets, journal prompts, checklists, and sample dialogues to help
bring your EFT experience to life. Relax with it and have fun. There are no
right or wrong answers.
SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO USE

THIS WORKBOOK
You can choose to engage in the conversations in different ways. For
example, you may want to do one conversation per day, one per week, or
designate a weekend when you will be able to break from the day-to-day
and commit to your introspection and to one another. I don’t recommend
cramming. One per week will give you an opportunity to get acquainted
with the goals of each conversation and the methods within them, and to
check in with yourself and one another without feeling pressured to move
on. You may even feel that you need to spend some more time on a
particular conversation.
The conversations are designed to be done in succession, so I do not
recommend jumping around. However, you may want to alter the sequence
or skip a conversation if you both do not think it’s relevant to your
relationship.
The preferred way to do the work is to do it together and share answers
with one another. There may be times, however, when you wish to do some
exercise by yourself. That is okay, too. As stated already, some exercises are
purposely solo projects. You may want to photocopy or scan any pages that
you want to do by yourself and place them in a binder for safekeeping.
For couples who are comfortable sharing, you may want to fill in the
exercises using different colored pencils or alternate who answers first. You
will find a rhythm that works for you. This should not be a tense
experience. Consider it a journey of discovering yourself (perhaps for the
first time) and rediscovering your relationship.
I know it can be hard to begin the work of love and loving. But what I know
is this: The work is well worth it. Our need for others to come close when
we call — to offer us safe haven — is absolute, but not absolutely given. We
must work at it, and you have already begun by simply picking up this
workbook and discussing together the role it can play in your relationship.
It may not lead to a perfect love (because there is no such thing), but it will
lead to a more present love — one that is secure, deep, and lasting.
BEFORE THE CONVERSATIONS
Our Emotional Responses and the

Language of Attachment
Love may be the most used and the most potent word in every language
spoken around the world. It is the pinnacle of evolution, the most
compelling survival mechanism of the human species. Not because it
induces us to mate and reproduce, but because love drives us to bond
emotionally with a precious few others who offer us refuge from the storms
of life. Love is our bulwark, designed to provide emotional protection so we
can cope with the ups and downs of existence.
This is the drive to emotionally attach — to find someone to whom we
can say, “Hold me tight.” Emotional connection, a felt sense of closeness, is
biologically coded as a safety cue in our genes, brains, and bodies. It is as
basic to life, health, and happiness as the drives for food, shelter, or sex. We
need emotional attachments with a few irreplaceable others to be physically
and mentally healthy — to survive. Secure connection to a loved one is
empowering. It anchors us in feelings of safety and security. Science from
all fields tells us very clearly that we are not only social animals, but
animals who need a special kind of close connection with others. It’s not
just whether or not we have close relationships in our lives — the quality of
these relationships matters, too. Negative relationships undermine our
health. When we are disconnected emotionally from our partners, we don’t
feel emotionally safe. In a secure bond, we are accessible and responsive.
Secure attachment and bonding make us feel safe, while insecure
attachment makes us afraid. Just as connection and protection act as signals
that tell us we are safe, isolation and emotional separation from our partners
are danger cues.
We all experience fear when we have disagreements or arguments with
our partner. 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, the fear can be overwhelming. We are swamped
by what neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp calls primal panic. Then we generally
do one of two things: We either become demanding and clingy 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 those 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.”
The exercises in this section will help you discover not just your level of
fear of losing trust and attachment, that safe and emotional connection we
are wired to seek, but also the manner in which you act out in the face of
what you feel is threatening your bond. This is an important step to undergo
before the conversations begin, because before you can communicate
effectively with your partner and your partner with you, it is necessary to
find clarity within oneself regarding your own attachment language in the
form of your needs, patterns, and behaviors. Only then can accountability
come into play, a key driver to hearing and answering with compassion one
another’s calls for attention and connection. When you know how to speak
the language of attachment, you can give clear messages about what you
need and how much you care.
DEMAND AND WITHDRAW: IDENTIFYING YOUR 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 surprising when we remember that fear
is our built-in alarm system; the bells go off when our survival is
threatened. Losing connection with our loved one jeopardizes our sense of
security, triggering the amygdala, the part of the brain that senses fear. We
don’t think; we feel, we act. At this point, two responses typically occur:
We demand or we withdraw.
The strategies for dealing with the fear of losing connection are
unconscious, and they might 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 one another and
their relationship. It’s a dance, a delicate one, in which we step together in
sync or step on one another’s toes in a choreography of panic and fear. How
we each emotionally respond — demand, withdraw, or any combination of
the two — indicates to us how beautiful (or not) our dance is.
Before we can name the dance you are in together, see if you can
identify your individual steps using this introspective journal exercise.
LET’S GET INTROSPECTIVE: Journal Exercise
Our fears are wired into our brains. Everyone has them. Can you
pinpoint or identify your fears? Listen to the feelings you have, and
find, at the core, any fear or anxiety that involves being rejected or
abandoned by your partner. To help you get in touch with your internal
experience, here are a few of the common feelings or qualities of
demanders and withdrawers. Check off the ones you resonate with.
DEMANDERS OFTEN FEEL:
Frightened of their aloneness; scared they’re not wanted

Afraid of being abandoned
Frightened of their feelings of hurt
Scared of being invisible
WITHDRAWERS OFTEN FEEL:

Frightened of rejection
Scared of their experience of disappointing their partner —
coming up short
Afraid of failure
Overwhelmed
Numbed or frozen with fear
Afraid of being judged or criticized
Reflect on what scares you most.
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
CHECKPOINT: What Your Words Might Mean
Demanders say:
I’m dying here. I am shut down. My feelings don’t matter. It’s
lonelier than living alone. By myself. Dismissed. I get no
response. I’m hammering on their door. I yell to get a response
— any response. We’re roommates. I don’t matter to them.
Withdrawers say:
I never get it right — can’t please. I give up, space out. Best to
avoid a fight — try to keep things calm. I’m failing here.
Paralyzed. No point. Go behind my wall. I try to fix it — but it
doesn’t work. I numb out.
A.R.E.: ACCESSIBILITY, RESPONSIVENESS, AND

ENGAGEMENT
The key question in our love relationships is, “Are you there for me?” This
translates to, “Do I matter to you? Can I reach you? Are you accessible,
emotionally available to me? Can I rely on you to respond when I need
you? Will you engage with me, give me your attention?”
“Are you there for me?” is the A.R.E. question. This key question is
buried, hidden just under the surface in most recurring arguments about
pragmatic issues such as chores, personality differences, sex, children, and
money. If partners feel safe and loved, they can deal with differences and
problems together. If not, then relationship issues and fears get channeled
into endless disagreements.
QUESTIONNAIRE: How A.R.E. You?

Does your partner’s perception of how accessible, responsive,
and emotionally engaged you are, fit with your view of yourself
and how safe your relationship is? Read each statement and
circle T for true or F for false. You can complete the
questionnaire individually, then either reflect on the answers on
your own, or discuss your answers together.
From your viewpoint, is your partner available to you?

1. I can get my partner’s attention easily. T F
2. My partner is easy to connect with emotionally. T F
3. My partner shows me that I come first with them. T F
4. I am not feeling lonely or shut out in this relationship. T F
5. I can share my deepest feelings with my partner. They T F
will listen.
From your viewpoint, is your partner responsive to you?

1. If I need connection and comfort, they will be there for T F
me.
2. My partner responds to signals that I need them to T F
come close.
3. I find I can lean on my partner when I am anxious or T F
unsure.
4. Even when we fight or disagree, I know that I am T F
important to my partner and we will find a way to come
together.
5. If I need reassurance about how important I am to my T F
partner, I can get it.
Are you positively emotionally engaged with one another?

1. I feel comfortable being close to and trusting my T F
partner.
2. I can confide in my partner about almost anything. T F
3. I feel confident, even when we are apart, that we’re T F
connected to one another.
4. I know that my partner cares about my joys, hurts, and T F
fears.
5. I feel safe enough to take emotional risks with my T F
partner.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR PRIMAL PANIC RESPONSE

See if you can plot out the steps in the usual negative dance that you find
yourself caught in with your partner. When you suddenly find that you do
not feel safely connected to your partner, what do you usually do? See if
you can find descriptors in the lists below that fit for you. Check off as
many as you resonate with. Share this with your partner.
WHEN I DON’T FEEL SAFELY CONNECTED TO YOU, I OFTEN DEMAND BY:
Complaining
Becoming critical
Blaming or pointing out your mistakes
Yelling
Telling you how to improve
Becoming angry — blowing up
Insisting on making my point even if I get pushy
Expressing frustration in an angry way
Expressing disapproval
Defining you as being the problem
Pursuing — insisting that you pay attention
Telling you how to change
Making threats
Prodding
I MOVE AWAY FROM YOU (WITHDRAW) BY:
Trying to zone out

Staying calm and reasoning with you
Shutting you out
Stopping the conversation by leaving or turning to a task
Not listening and numbing out
Changing the subject
Defending myself and showing you that you are wrong
Finding an exit — just trying to get away
Staying in my head and just not responding
Going into my shell like a turtle
Protecting myself by distancing
Refusing to talk and leaving
Giving up
Our actions have more impact on our partners than we think. How do you
think your partner sees you in these moments? For instance, if you often get
angry and demanding, you might think your partner would describe you as
scary? Or, if you are continually telling them that they are inadequate as a
partner and a person, pushing them away, rejecting them and the
relationship, then you might be seen by your partner as abandoning them, as
not needing them, as being easily able to shut them out as if they don’t
matter, leaving them painfully alone.

Consider what attracted you to your partner and what you like about
them.
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
My partner might see me as:
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
See if you can agree on your main response. Do you mainly demand
or withdraw?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
Do you and your partner have different or similar primal panic

responses? It’s important to identify yours and then compare to your
partner’s, as this helps identify the kind of dance you are in.
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
We will further explore and dissect this in the next chapter with exercises
that are all about the three different types of dances that couples take part
in, depending on their primal panic responses. But first, let’s map your
individual moves using the following worksheet.
WORKSHEET: Mapping Your Moves
Fill in the cue that starts up the music of disconnection. Try to

avoid making general or abstract statements that could be
disguises for blaming. Examples could include when one
partner says to another, “Well, you are just being difficult, as
usual,” or “There you go getting emotional again.” Try to be
concrete and specific, as big sweeping general comments are
overwhelming and trigger alarms in a person’s fight-or-flight
response. Once we are in alarm mode, our ability to listen and
respond to information diminishes. So instead of saying a
partner is “difficult,” one could say, “Right now you seem so far
away — you’re not listening to me.”
Example responses include:

… you say you are too tired for sex and we have not made
love for a few weeks.
… we fight about my child-rearing or parenting style.
… we don’t seem to speak for days.
Partner 1:
When _ ____________________________________________
____________________________________________, I do
not feel safely connected to you.
Partner 2:
When _____________________________________________
___________________________________________, I do not
feel safely connected to you.
Partner 1:
1. For the following statement, choose a verb, e.g.,
complain, nag, zone out, ignore you, run, move away.
I tend to _______________________________________.
I move this way to try to cope with difficult feelings and find a
way to change our dance.
2. State the hope that pulls you into the dance, e.g., We will
avoid more conflict, or I will persuade you to respond
more to me.
I do it in the hope that ______________________________

____________________________________.
3. Identify a feeling. The usual ones people identify at this
point are frustrated, angry, numb, empty, or confused.
As this pattern keeps going, I feel _____________________
________________________________________________
___.
4. Summarize the most catastrophic conclusion you can

imagine, e.g., You do not care about us, I am not
important to you, or I can never please you.
What I then say to myself about our relationship is
________________________________________________
________________________________________.
5. Choose a phrase that best describes the action of your

partner, e.g., shut down, push me to respond.
My understanding of the circular dance that makes it harder
and harder for us to safely connect is that when I move in
the way I described above, you seem to then
________________________________________________
________________________________________.
6. Insert verbs that describe your and your partner’s

moves in the dance, e.g., The more I hide out, the more
you harp on me to be heard.
The more I ____________________________________,
the more you ____________________________________.
We are then both trapped in pain and isolation.
Partner 2:
1. For the following statement, choose a verb, e.g.,
complain, nag, zone out, ignore you, run, move away.
I tend to _______________________________________.
I move this way to try to cope with difficult feelings and find a
way to change our dance.
2. State the hope that pulls you into the dance, e.g., We will
avoid more conflict, or I will persuade you to respond
more to me.
I do it in the hope that ______________________________
________________________________________________
_______.
3. Identify a feeling. The usual ones people identify at this
point are frustrated, angry, numb, empty, or confused.
As this pattern keeps going, I feel _____________________

________________________________________________
___.
4. Summarize the most catastrophic conclusion you can
imagine, e.g., You do not care about us, I am not
important to you, or I can never please you.
What I then say to myself about our relationship is
________________________________________________
________________________________________.
5. Choose a phrase that best describes the action of your
partner, e.g., shut down, push me to respond.
My understanding of the circular dance that makes it harder

and harder for us to safely connect is that when I move in
the way I described above, you seem to then
________________________________________________
________________________________________.
6. Insert verbs that describe your and your partner’s
moves in the dance, e.g., The more I hide out, the more
you harp on me to be heard.
The more I ____________________________________,
the more you __________________________________.
We are then both trapped in pain and isolation.
Once you can identify these negative cycles and recognize that they trap
you both, give a name to the kind of dance you are in. I’ve had couples call
their dance the Spiral, the Tornado, and the Black Hole. Whatever you call
it, this is your Demon Dialogue.
Our Demon Dialogue

While it’s encouraged for couples to name their own Demon Dialogue, I
have identified three over the last several decades that you can explore in
the next chapter.
Hold These Tight

• Emotional responsiveness is the key to love.
• Fear is at the heart of our panic responses.
• The demand–withdraw pattern happens when our connection is out of
step.
• A safe, loving, lasting relationship is entirely possible if we learn to
dance together.
CONVERSATION #1
Recognizing the Demon Dialogues
You have just explored your attachment needs and panic responses, and
those of your partner. When we do not understand love and our attachment
needs, we remain blind to the impact that our primal panic responses have
on our partner and vice versa. If we cannot reach and connect, we try
secondary strategies. We either try to turn off our attachment feelings and
needs and withdraw (we turn away from our partner), or we turn up our
feelings and demand or criticize our partner (we turn against them to gain a
sense of control). Through countless sessions with couples, I have seen how
this out-of-step dance plays out during intense conversations. You might
recall from Hold Me Tight that the demand–withdraw dance typically
results in three different dialogues, which I call Demon Dialogues.
DEMON DIALOGUE 1: FIND THE BAD GUY

Let’s face it: Most of us are good at blaming. “It’s not my fault; the other
one is the bad guy.” This dialogue could easily be called It’s Not Me, It’s
You. Here we concentrate on each step and how “you just stepped on me,”
instead of assessing the whole dance. Mark each of the following
statements as Agree or Disagree to determine whether Find the Bad Guy is
your Demon Dialogue.
1. I find myself expecting negativity and blame, even Agree Disagree
watching for it and reacting to it faster when I think I
see it coming.
2. I cannot relax with my partner, and certainly cannot Agree Disagree
connect with or confide in them.
3. I can’t stop thinking it is my partner who is mostly to Agree Disagree
blame.
4. I have a laundry list of past complaints that I use Agree Disagree
when I feel my partner is criticizing me.
5. I don’t feel satisfied unless I get a jab in to exert Agree Disagree
power, letting my partner know I can’t be hurt.
6. I want to force my partner to hear me, and I’ll go to Agree Disagree
great lengths to keep on a subject, no matter what.
7. I want my partner to take me into account. Agree Disagree
CHECKPOINT
Find the Bad Guy fights tend to…

… define the other person/relationship in absolutes, using
words like “always” and “never,” along with labels that blame,
e.g., “You are always so unreasonable — so immature.”
… include anger and rage as the dominant emotions.
… see both partners trapped in “attack-attack” mode.
The dance goes like this:

The more you attack…
… the more dangerous you appear.
… the more I watch my back.
… the harder I hit back.
… and then, the more you attack in return.
The dance goes on.

When a couple’s pattern is attack-attack, each one sets out to win at all
costs. These questions and reflections can help you think about how
you and your partner move in this dialogue when both of you get
caught in fight-to-win mode.
Reflect on the last incident between you and your partner. Maybe
you were late home from work and forgot to call, or your child acted
in the least expected way, which upset you, or maybe one of you left a
mess or broke a sentimental item. How did you accuse your partner?
What did you use to win the fight and prove your innocence? What are
your usual comebacks when you feel cornered?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
Sketch out the circle of hostile criticism and labeling that trapped you
both. How did each of you begin to define the other? How did each of
you wind up and enrage the other? Was there a winner? (Probably
not.)
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
What happened after your Find the Bad Guy fight? For instance, “We
iced one another out for two days. One partner took a dive into
hopelessness and depression, and we both felt so alone and hopeless.”
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
How did you feel about yourself, your partner, the connection between
you?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
Were you able to go back and talk about the fight and console one
another? If not, how did you deal with the loss of safety between you?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
Next time you find yourselves in fight-to-win mode, engage in the
following corrective dialogue:
“We are starting to label one another to prove the other one is the
bad guy. We are just going to get hurt more if we get stuck in this
dance. Let’s not get caught in an attack-attack dance with one another.
Maybe we can talk about what happened without it being anyone’s
fault.”
DEMON DIALOGUE 2: THE PROTEST POLKA

This is the most common and ensnaring dance in relationships. The Protest
Polka creates a loop, each move calling forth and reinforcing the next. One
partner reaches out, albeit in a negative way (demand), and the other steps
back (withdraw), and the pattern repeats. The dance goes on forever
because the emotions and needs behind the dance are the most powerful on
this planet. Attachment relationships are the only ties on Earth where any
response is better than none. When we get no emotional response from a
loved one, we are wired to protest. The Protest Polka is all about trying to
get a response that connects and reassures.
CHECKPOINT
The Protest Polka is:
The dominant, most often occurring dance of distress.
Deadly to love relationships.
All about attachment — both partners are protesting
disconnection.
Ambiguous messages, such as, “Well, maybe I don’t want to be
here, so…” or “Perhaps I am just not enough for you, so
then…” or “I should just give up and…”
An endless dance, driven by a primal survival code of
attachment, and fueled by high-octane emotions.

The more disconnected/dismissed I feel…
… the more I complain.
… the more I demand.
… the more I get critical.
… the more I pursue you.
The more dangerous I appear…

… the more you move away.
… the more you defend.
… the more you shut down and shut me out.
Do you agree with any or all of the following statements that

characterize those who demand when their secure bond feels
threatened? Put a check mark next to the ones that feel familiar.
I have a broken heart. I could weep forever. Sometimes I feel

like I’m dying in this relationship.
These days my partner is always busy, somewhere else. Even
when at home, they’re on the computer or watching TV. We
seem to live on separate planets. I am shut out.
Sometimes I think that I am lonelier in this relationship than I
was when I lived by myself. It seemed easier to be by myself
than to live like this — together but separate.
I needed my partner so much during that time and they were just
so distant. My feelings didn’t seem to matter. My partner just
dismissed them.
We are roommates. We never seem to be close anymore.
I get mad, sure I do. My partner just doesn’t seem to care, so I
sometimes lash out. I’m just trying to get a response, any
response.
I am just not sure I matter to my partner. It’s like I’m not being
seen. I don’t know how to reach them.
If I didn’t push and push, we would never be close. It would
never happen.
Do you agree with any of the following statements that characterize

those who withdraw when their secure bond feels threatened? Put a
check mark next to the ones that feel familiar.
I can never get it right with my partner, so I just give up. It all
seems hopeless.
I feel numb. Don’t know how I feel. So I just freeze up and
space out.
I get that I am flawed somehow. I am a failure as a partner.
Somehow that truth just paralyzes me.
I shut down and wait for my partner to calm down. I try to keep
everything calm, not rock the boat. That is my way of taking
care of the relationship. Don’t rock the boat.
I go into my shell where it’s safe. I go behind my wall. I try to
shut the door on all my partner’s angry comments. I am the
prisoner and my partner’s the judge.
I feel like nothing in this relationship. Inadequate. So I run to
my computer, job, or hobbies. At work, I am somebody. I don’t
think I am anything special to my partner at all.
I don’t matter to my partner. I am way down on the list. I come
somewhere after the kids, the house, and friends. Hell, even the
dog comes before me! I just help pay the bills. So I end up
feeling empty. You never know if the love will be there.
I don’t feel that I need anyone the way my partner does. I am
just not as needy. I was always taught that it’s weak to let
yourself need someone like that, childish. So I try to handle
things on my own. I just walk away.
I don’t know what my partner is talking about. We are fine. This
is what marriage is all about. You just become friends. I am not
sure I know what is meant by close, anyway.
I try to solve the problem in concrete ways. Try to fix it. I deal
with it in my head. It doesn’t work. My partner doesn’t want
that. I don’t know what my partner wants.
WORKSHEET: Feeling Out the Feedback Loop
If you feel comfortable, see if you can pin down each person’s
moves in the Protest Polka. Can you see the feedback loop?
Describe it very simply by filling in the blanks in the following
sentences. For example:
Partner 1: The more I question where you’ve been, the more

you are snarky and cold and then the more I accuse you,
and round and round we go.
Partner 2: The more I reply with sarcasm, the more you yell
and then the more I walk away, and round and round we go.
Now you try it:
Partner 1: The more I ________________________________,
the more you ________________________________
and then the more I ________________________________,
Partner 2: The more I ________________________________,
the more you ________________________________
and then the more I ________________________________,
CHECKPOINT: Mantras Make a Difference
The Protest Polka becomes a vicious cycle that spirals couples

to an almost certain breaking point. Research has shown that
couples who do not learn to recognize this pattern and change
the music typically do not stay together past their fifth year.
Breaking the cycle requires five things — things I’ve learned from
watching partners work together over the years. There are vows
you can make to yourself (and one another) in the form of
mantras when you see the Demon Dialogue taking hold.
1. You have to see it. The whole enchilada. You have to see
the how of the dance between you and your partner.
Mantra: We will not focus on specific steps, especially the

other person’s. There is no more, “You just attacked me.” We
will step back and see the entire picture.
2. You must both grasp how the moves of each partner pull
the other into the dance. Each of you is trapped in the
dance and unwittingly helps to trap the other.
Mantra: I will take note of how you are responding to my
attack or withdrawal. I will stop to notice the ripple effects that
my actions and behavior have on you.
3. The Protest Polka is all about attachment distress. It
cannot be stopped with logical problem-solving or formal
communication. You have to know the nature of the
dance if you are to change the key elements and return
to safe connection.
Mantra: We will learn to recognize calls for connection and
how desperation turns into “I push, I poke, anything for a
response.” We will remember these patterns are universal
because our needs and fears, and our responses to
perceived loss and separation, are universal.
4. You need to understand the nature of love, and tune in to
these moments of disconnection and the protest and
distress that are the key part of the Protest Polka.
Mantra: We can learn to see the Protest Polka as the enemy,
not our partner.
5. You must begin to stand together and call the enemy by

name, so you can slow down the music.
Mantra: We can step to the side and create enough safety to
talk about attachment emotions and needs.
DEMON DIALOGUE 3: FREEZE AND FLEE

Sometimes, when a couple comes to see me, I do not hear the hostility of
Find the Bad Guy or the frantic beat of the Protest Polka. I hear a deadly
silence. If we think of a relationship as a dance, then here both partners are
sitting it out! It looks like there is nothing at stake; no one seems to be
invested in the dance. Except that there is a palpable tension in the air and
pain is clear on the couple’s faces. Emotion theorists tell us that we can try
to suppress our emotions but it just doesn’t work. In Freeze and Flee, both
partners are shut down into frozen defense and denial. Each is in self-
protection mode, trying to act as if they do not feel and do not need one
another.
CHECKPOINT
Freeze and Flee is all about:

Mutual withdrawal. Frozen defense and denial. Neither partner
is risking reaching out to the other.
Hopelessness. No sex, no touch. Partners are strangers to one
another. Often the aftermath of chronic Protest Polka.
Icy emptiness. Prelude to detachment.

The more I hold back and shut down my feelings, the more
careful and distant you become.
The extreme distancing of Freeze and Flee is a response to the loss of

connection and the sense of helplessness about how to restore it. The real
problem with the Freeze and Flee pattern is the hopelessness that colors it.
Both partners decide that their difficulty lies in themselves, in their innate
flaws. Shame takes over and people decide there must be something wrong
with them or that they are just unlovable. The natural response to this is to
hide, to conceal one’s unlovable self.
Many couples I’ve worked with who are stuck in the Freeze and Flee
pattern deny their needs for emotional closeness and withdraw when they
each feel disconnected. Our history with loved ones shapes our present
relationships. In moments of disconnection when we cannot safely engage
with our lover, we naturally turn to the way of coping that we adopted as a
child, the way of coping that allowed us to hold on to our parents, at least in
some minimal way. When we feel the hot emotions that warn us our
connection is in trouble, as you explored in the first chapter of this
workbook, we automatically try to shut them down and flee into reason and
distracting activities. In this dance of distance, avoiding these emotions
becomes an end in itself.
QUESTIONNAIRE: Do I Freeze and Flee?
Circle Often, Sometimes, or Never for each of the following

statements:
My avoidance just happens without Often Sometimes Never
me choosing the response; it’s
automatic, I don’t even think about
it.
I look back and believe my Often Sometimes Never
upbringing was cold and distant.
I don’t want to feel rejection, so I Often Sometimes Never
build up a wall, not only in my
relationship but in many areas of
my life where I feel vulnerable.
I make a hobby out of beating Often Sometimes Never
myself up, secretly ashamed of the
failure I am in my relationships.
I seek out attention from anybody Often Sometimes Never
who is not my partner, including my
children and pets.
I think my partner deserves much Often Sometimes Never
better than I can offer.
Does the Freeze and Flee pattern seem familiar to you? If so, where
did you learn to ignore and discount your need for emotional
connection? Who taught you to do this? When do you feel most alone?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
Can you dare to share your answers to these questions with your
partner? Can you share the one cue that sparks the distancing dance? It
can be as simple as a turn of the head at a particular moment or not
being looked at when you are speaking.
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
Can you identify exactly how you push your partner away from you or
make it dangerous for them to come closer?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
What do you tell yourself once you have emotionally withdrawn to
justify separation and to discourage yourself from reaching out to your
partner? Sometimes these pronouncements signal what you think love
is and how you think you ought to act in love relationships, often
formed by what you might have learned as a child from your parents
or even cues from a particular culture. For example, some are taught
rules like, “If you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything at
all,” or, “Men just cannot be responsive or intimate.” Can you share
these with your partner?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
On the next page, make a list of all the things this dance has taken away
from you as a couple. Maybe you are losing your faith that you can count
on this relationship; perhaps your sense of being special to one another has
diminished, or your ability to play and have fun. Perhaps you’re not getting
those special hugs anymore. We usually have glimpses of emotional
closeness when we first become infatuated with a person and are willing to
take any risk to be with them. We can remember these moments, just as we
remember our hopes and longings. Reflect on how this negative dance may
have eroded these things.
Our List of Things Lost

Hold These Tight
FIND THE BAD GUY
Purpose: Self-protection
∘ Attack-attack pattern
∘ Both partners are accusing and blaming.
PROTEST POLKA
Purpose: To get a response that connects and reassures
∘ One partner is demanding, actively protesting the disconnection; the
other is withdrawing, quietly protesting the implied criticism.
∘ Each partner is missing the other’s signals.
FREEZE AND FLEE

Purpose: Frozen self-defense, and denial
∘ Frequently evolves from the Protest Polka, after the pursuing, critical
(demanding) partner gives up trying to get their partner’s attention
and goes silent.
∘ No emotional connection.
CONVERSATION #2
Finding the Raw Spots
We all have raw spots. I define them as a hypersensitivity, formed by

moments in a person’s past or current relationships when an attachment
need has been repeatedly neglected, ignored, or dismissed, resulting in
feeling what I call the 2 Ds — emotionally deprived or deserted. The 2 Ds
are universal raw spots for lovers.
These sensitivities frequently arise from wounded relationships with
significant people in our past, especially parents, who give us our basic
template for loving relationships, siblings and other members of our
families, and, of course, past and present lovers. For example, when my
husband’s eyelids began drooping while I was speaking to him, I hit the
ceiling, enraged. He was tired and drowsy, but it sent me back to days when
an ex-partner would fall instantly asleep every time I tried to start a serious
conversation. Dozing off was a not-so-subtle form of withdrawing,
disconnecting from the relationship. This experience made me
hypervigilant — sudden sleepiness signals emotional abandonment (my raw
spot) for me.
We do not choose to have these vulnerabilities. Our brains respond to
signals from our partner in terms of safety and danger because connection
with special others is so key to our survival; the instinct to survive explains
why these fears are like a low-grade punch in the gut. Being vulnerable
comes with the territory in love relationships. The choice is in how we deal
with these vulnerabilities.
If you find yourself continually stuck in a Demon Dialogue with your
partner, you can bet it is being sparked by attempts to deal with the pain of a
raw spot, or more likely, raw spots in both of you. Unfortunately, your raw
spots almost inevitably rub against one another’s. Chafe one in your partner
and their reaction might often irritate one in you.
The more securely attached a couple is, the more they can be open about
these vulnerabilities and help one another with them. They learn to soothe
one another in their sore places. Each time they do so, the relationship
becomes safer and trust deepens. If they cannot do this, then when these
raw spots are touched, partners are more likely to get angry or shut down
and get caught in the Demon Dialogues. These interactions then make raw
spots more and more painful, and keep the Demon Dialogues going
indefinitely.
CHECK ANY OF THE FOLLOWING UNIVERSAL RAW SPOTS THAT SEEM FAMILIAR TO
YOU:
Feeling deprived of comforting contact

Feeling a lack of attention and safe connection
Feeling deserted when your partner does not respond to your need for
closeness
Feeling rejected when you get messages that you are disappointing
and not wanted
Raw spots can surface because of past wounds, even in generally happy
relationships. Raw spots mark our vulnerable places — places where we
have been wounded before. They represent the fears that are easily
triggered. When a raw spot is rubbed, it sends a danger signal and fear
immediately overwhelms and floods us. Raw spots can occur during big
transitions or crises — for instance, when becoming a parent, becoming ill,
or losing a job. Maybe when you were younger and you asked for
reassurance of your mother’s love, she said you were “being silly.” It’s
more than likely that to be called silly now that you’re an adult causes you
to spiral into the same insecure feeling you had as a child. Raw spots can
also develop when a partner seems chronically indifferent, producing an
overwhelming sense of hurt that then infuses even small issues. The failure
of our loved one to respond scrapes our emotional skin raw.
SURFACE VERSUS SOFTER FEELINGS: CONTROLLING

THE NARRATIVE
Emotion is fast. It moves us in a nanosecond. We have to slow down to
even recognize the softer feelings such as hurt or fear underneath our
reactions of anger or defensiveness or withdrawal. When a raw spot is hit,
you suddenly find yourself off-balance and disorganized. Your emotions
shift in a dramatic way that often seems to make no sense (especially to
your partner). Your responses to your partner shift and the relationship
dance changes.
When this happens, we are responding to an attachment cue about the
level of safety in the relationship with our partner. Our body responds with
alarm, our mind begins to sort through all the negative possibilities (usually
catastrophic thinking) about what this cue means for us and for our
relationship. We move (often aggressively) toward or away from our
partner. We are usually only aware of our secondary reaction to the
irritation — defensively numbing out and shutting down (withdrawal) or
lashing out in anger (demand). Beneath these surface feelings are the more
telling ones, the softer feelings. Once we learn to identify these, we can
more appropriately and calmly communicate them to our partner, fostering
understanding and trust.
There are two signs that tell you when your — or your partner’s — raw
spot has been hit. First, there is a sudden radical shift in the emotional tone
of the conversation. You and your lover were joking just a moment ago, but
now one of you is upset or enraged, or conversely, aloof or chilly. You are
thrown off-balance. It’s as if the game changed and no one told you. The
hurt partner is sending out new signals and the other tries to make sense of
the change.
Second, the reaction to a perceived offense often seems way out of
proportion. A plan can be thrown off course or a distraction takes a
partner’s attention away from the other, and it seems like the issue becomes
a mountainous catastrophe.
Most of us are afraid that if we reveal our raw spots, others will be able
to control us, hurt us anytime they wish, or despise us for being vulnerable.
The trouble is that our partner cannot respond to our hurts and fears if we
can never speak them. To reveal our softest feelings takes courage. Here we
will practice identifying these softer feelings, learning to share our
vulnerabilities and raw spots and present them in a way that your partner
can internalize and address them in the future.
CHECKPOINT
When a raw spot is hit…

… there is a radical shift in emotional tone.
… the response may seem way out of proportion — even to you!
… you might feel off-balance — instant shift into survival mode
— you step into a spiral.
… there is often no map — you feel out of control — your feelings
get scary or cue shame.
Making sense of raw spots and handling them well is key to

breaking the power of the Demon Dialogues at moments of
disconnection.
WORKSHEET: Recognizing When a Raw Spot Is Rubbed
Think of a moment when your raw spot was rubbed. Did you
get defensive when your partner asked whether you made a
withdrawal from the bank, or insult your partner after your
request for something fell on deaf ears? Or, like me, were your
partner’s drooping eyes seen as a signal for their disinterest
and disregard? What happened to your body? You might have
felt spacey, detached, hot, breathless, tight in the chest, small,
empty, shaky, tearful, or cold.
One client said, “I just get all agitated. I react like a cat
thrown in a tub of water. What my partner sees is me being
mad. But deep down that agitated feeling is more like shaky,
scared.”
What did your brain decide about the meaning of all this?
What did you say to yourself when this happened? Did you
make it a catastrophe?
Another client put it this way: “In my head I said to myself,
‘she’s judging me.’”
Partner 1:
Now consider the cue that triggered you, your initial
response, and whether it was actually the true emotion you
were feeling.
In my head I said to myself, ____________________________
__________________________________________________
_____.
What did you do then? How did you move into action? Did
you yell, accuse, or walk out of the room? You can say, “I
yelled and shouted,” “I left the house,” or “I threw the
paper towel roll at them.” Now include your action:
I _________________________________________________
_______________________________________.
Tie all these elements together by filling in the blanks below:

In this incident, the trigger made me feel ______________.
On the surface, I probably showed ____________________.
But deep down, I just felt ____________________.
(Pick one of the basic negative emotions, e.g., sadness, anger,

shame, fear.)
What I longed for was ______________________________.
The main message I got about our bond, about me, or my love
was ______________________________.
Partner 2:
Now consider the cue that triggered you, your initial
response, and whether it was actually the true emotion you
were feeling.
In my head I said to myself, ____________________________
__________________________________________________
__________.
What did you do then? How did you move into action? Did
you yell, accuse, or walk out of the room? You can say, “I
yelled and shouted,” “I left the house,” or “I threw the
paper towel roll at them.” Now include your action:
I _________________________________________________
_______________________________________.
Tie all these elements together by filling in the blanks below:
In this incident, the trigger made me feel ______________.

On the surface, I probably showed
_______________________.
But deep down, I just felt
______________________________.
(Pick one of the basic negative emotions, e.g., sadness, anger,
shame, fear.)
What I longed for was ______________________________.
The main message I got about our bond, about me, or my love
was ______________________________.
Because our fears and attachment patterns stem from past

relationships, you may find you are not ready or able to articulate your
raw spots. For this exercise, take some time individually to reflect and
revisit some of the ways in which your raw spots developed. Perhaps
go for a walk in nature to avoid distractions and be gentle with
yourself. Record your memories and feelings about a raw spot below.
You might need several days as you open doors to people and places
you might have long closed, or at least that you thought you’d closed
but that have come back knocking to disturb your current relationship.
Consider the following and note your responses as you learn to

identify and articulate your raw spot.
Your history: Did your raw spot arise in your relationship with your
parents, your siblings, in another romantic relationship, or even in
your relationships with your peers as you grew up? Or is it a
sensitivity that was born in your current relationship?
Your partner: Do you think your partner sees this vulnerability in
you? Or do they just see the reactive surface feeling or the action
response?
Flip the script: Can you guess one of your partner’s raw spots? Do
you know exactly what you do to irritate them?
We want and need our lovers to respond to our hurt, but they can’t do
that if we don’t express it. Are you preventing your lover from getting
close? You will never create a strong, secure connection if you do not allow
your lover to know you fully, or if your lover is unwilling to know you. The
following list of statements can help you see if you are exhibiting actions
that keep your lover at arm’s length, preventing your raw spots from being
agitated.
MARK EACH OF THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS AS TRUE OR FALSE:
1. I find that I hold on to anger, because that is an emotion I T F

feel is more easily expressed.
2. I am afraid to cry because if I start, I may not stop. T F
3. If I share my raw spot or my soft feelings, then it might give T F
my partner ammunition against me or expose me in some
way my partner may exploit.
4. Feeling hurt is a waste of time. It doesn’t get anyone T F
anywhere.
5. Feeling hurt will keep me in a low place of continuous hurt, T F
and I don’t have time for that.
6. I am afraid my partner might find me unattractive if I show T F
frailty.
7. When my partner shows signs of distress, I often feel T F
overwhelmed and ignore them instead of responding to
them.
WORKSHEET: Finding the Raw Spots
Individually, write your responses to the following

questions to find your raw spots.
Partner 1:
Identify a specific moment during a fight or time of
distance when you suddenly felt more vulnerable or on
guard.
What is the most negative thought that went through your

head? What is the worst, most catastrophic thought you
had about your partner, yourself, and your relationship
when you remember that moment? (For example, They just
didn’t care. I was just never going to make it right. We were
going to fight and split up.)
Pick the word that best describes the softer feeling (deeper
emotion) that came up for you in that moment (e.g.,
scared, inadequate, failing, ashamed, isolated). A word
that comes to mind for you will often be some kind of fear
about yourself or your partner and how they feel about
you. It may be some kind of anguish or hurt.
In that moment of disconnection, deep down I felt __________

__________________________________________________
______________.
During this past incident, did you show you felt this way?
If not, what feeling did you show? (Most often when we
feel unsafe, we show anger, frustration, or no feeling at
all.)
What did you learn from responding to these questions?
Partner 2:
Identify a specific moment during a fight or time of
distance when you suddenly felt more vulnerable or on
guard.
What is the most negative thought that went through your
head? What is the worst, most catastrophic thought you
had about your partner, yourself, and your relationship
when you remember that moment? (For example, They just
didn’t care. I was just never going to make it right. We were
going to fight and split up.)
Pick the word that best describes the softer feeling (deeper
emotion) that came up for you in that moment (e.g.,
scared, inadequate, failing, ashamed, isolated). A word
that comes to mind for you will often be some kind of fear
about yourself or your partner and how they feel about
you. It may be some kind of anguish or hurt.
In that moment of disconnection, deep down I felt __________

__________________________________________________
__________.
During this past incident, did you show you felt this way?
If not, what feeling did you show? (Most often when we
feel unsafe, we show anger, frustration, or no feeling at
all.)
What did you learn from responding to these questions?
Fill in the blanks below and share with one another.
Partner 1:
When we get stuck in our Demon Dialogue I often show you
______________ but underneath I feel ______________. It
feels ______________ to tell you this right now. If you wanted
to help me with this feeling you could ____________________
__________________________________________________
__________________.
Partner 2:
When we get stuck in our Demon Dialogue I often show you
______________ but underneath I feel ______________. It
feels ______________ to tell you this right now. If you wanted
to help me with this feeling you could ____________________
__________________________________________________
__________________.
WORKSHEET: Identifying the Feelings Beneath the Surface
When we feel vulnerable, often the way we act or the things we

say are not what is at the heart of the matter. Catastrophizing,
reacting with hypersensitivity, or having a knee-jerk reaction is
what is presented on the surface, known as surface feelings.
But underneath is real fear, so identifying our softer feelings —
those that are lying beneath the surface of our actions and
words, our responses and reaction — can help us communicate
our fears much more effectively to one another. An individual
might have a surface feeling of hostility, for instance, but
underneath can feel ignored (softer feeling); another can be
overly accommodating on the surface but feel resentful deep
down (softer feeling). In many cases, the surface feeling is
saying one thing but means another.
Can you both pinpoint a recurring moment when an alarm
sounds for you? What is the surface feeling or behavior you
tend to exhibit? What is the softer feeling that comes up for
you?
Circle your softer feelings below.

In moments of disconnection, deep down I feel:
Lonely Dismissed
Unimportant Helpless
Scared Hurt
Hopeless Intimidated
Panicked Rejected
Inadequate Sad
Failing Ashamed
Lost Confused
Isolated Let down
Humiliated Small/Insignificant
Overwhelmed Unwanted
Vulnerable Worried/Shaky
Partner 1:
In these moments, my most vulnerable feeling is ___________
__________________________________________________
___________________________ and my worst (catastrophic)
thought is (e.g. You will want to break up, you will cheat on me,
you will find me unattractive.)
Partner 2:
In these moments, my most vulnerable feeling is ___________
__________________________________________________
___________________________ and my worst (catastrophic)
thought is ______________. (e.g. You will want to break up,
you will cheat on me, you will find me unattractive.)
If this exercise is too hard for you, then try sharing with your
partner your uncertainty about this kind of confiding.
Can you think of a time when you shared a sense of
vulnerability or a hurt feeling with your partner and they
responded in a way that helped you feel close? What did
your lover do that really made a difference? Perhaps you
were hugged or called a special name.
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
Can you agree on a typical recent interaction where you

both felt disconnected and ended up stuck for a while in a
Demon Dialogue? In this situation, who turned up the
emotional heat or tried to turn it down by exhibiting
surface behaviors to avoid strong emotions? Come up
with a phrase to describe how you usually deal with your
partner (e.g., get icy, get into battle mode, run and hide).
Partner 1:
My phrase: ______________________________________
Partner 2:
My phrase: ______________________________________
If you habitually react in this way, it is probably because it

seemed like the only viable option for you in past
relationships. How did this way of dealing with emotion
work to keep the most important relationships in your life
intact? For example, did your approach help to get a loved
one’s attention or make them less obviously rejecting or
unresponsive?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
In the recent interaction with your partner, did you stay

with surface, reactive feelings or were you eventually able
to explore and share deeper, softer feelings? Rate the
following statements on a scale of one to five, where one
indicates that you strongly disagree and five indicates that
you strongly agree. Share your answers with your partner.
Partner 1:
Disagree/Agree (circle a number)
1 2 3 4 I want to talk about my more vulnerable emotions
5 right now.
1 2 3 4 I have fearful thoughts about sharing these emotions.
5
1 2 3 4 It was a relief to pinpoint your emotion and open with
5 it.
Partner 2:
Disagree/Agree (circle a number)
1 2 3 4 I want to talk about my more vulnerable emotions

5 right now.
1 2 3 4 I have fearful thoughts about sharing these emotions.
5
1 2 3 4 It was a relief to pinpoint your emotion and open with
5 it.
When you think of this interaction where you got stuck as

a couple, can you each identify the cue that had you lose
your emotional balance and spin into raw insecurity? For
instance, one person forgot about a planned event,
causing the other to slam the door and attend the event
alone.
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
Share with your partner your catastrophic thinking.
When I think of sharing my softest feelings with you here, it is

hard to do. I worry the following will happen:
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
Ask your partner how they feel when you share this way.
How do they help you feel safe enough to share? What
impact do you both feel this kind of sharing has on the
relationship?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
Can you create, together, a new version of that difficult

interaction you began this exercise with? Can you each, in
turn, describe the surface way you moved in that dance
but using your softer feelings? For example, “I moved in
my dance by shutting down and avoiding and I felt
uncomfortable and on edge, like I wanted to get away,” or
“I felt ticked off and dismissed.”
Partner 1:
I moved in my dance by ______________________________,
____________________________________________ and I
felt ______________________________
____________________________________________.
Partner 2:
I moved in my dance by ______________________________,
____________________________________________ and I
felt ______________________________
____________________________________________.
Now we can go a little deeper. Try to add the specific
attachment cue that sparked the powerful emotions you
circled in the list of softer feelings here. Perhaps it was
something you thought you heard in your partner’s voice
or that you didn’t receive a card for your birthday. Then
add the feelings that you circled.
Partner 1:
When I heard/saw _________________________ [attachment
cue], I just felt _________________________ [softer feeling].
Partner 2:
When I heard/saw _________________________ [attachment
cue], I just felt _________________________ [softer feeling].
Try to stay with simple, concrete language. Big,
ambiguous words or labels scramble this conversation. If
you get stuck, just share that with one another, try to go
back to the last place that was clear, and start again.
Now we can put all these elements together.
Partner 1:
When we get stuck in our cycle and I ______________ [use an
action word, e.g., push], I feel ______________ [surface
feeling]. The emotional trigger for my sense of disconnection is
when I see/sense/hear ______________ [attachment cue]. On
a deeper level, I am feeling ____________________________
__________________ [softer feeling]. It is
__________________________ [e.g. hard/easy,
pleasurable/scary, strange/comfortable] to tell you this. If you
want to help me with this feeling, then right now you could
_________________________ [e.g. hold me, engage with me,
tell me you love me].
Partner 2:
When we get stuck in our cycle and I ______________ [use an
action word, e.g., push], I feel ______________ [surface
feeling]. The emotional trigger for my sense of disconnection is
when I see/sense/hear ______________ [attachment cue]. On
a deeper level, I am feeling ____________________________
__________________ [softer feeling]. It is
_____________________ [e.g. hard/easy, pleasurable/scary,
strange/comfortable] to tell you this. If you want to help me with
this feeling, then right now you could _____________________
[e.g. hold me, engage with me, tell me you love me].
What did each of you just learn about the other person’s
raw spots? Share your answers with one another. See if
you can validate one another for the risks you’ve both
taken by being open and honest.
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
In any interaction, even if both of you are paying attention, you cannot
be tuned in all the time. Signals get missed, and there will be moments
when attachment vulnerability takes center stage. The secret is to recognize
and deal with raw spots in ways that don’t get you into negative patterns. In
the next chapter, you will learn more about how to work with these
attachment feelings to de-escalate the destructive patterns we fall into.
Hold These Tight
• In love, sharing even negative emotions is more useful than emotional

absence.
• We have surface emotions that are usually our first reactions, but
beneath are the softer feelings that indicate the vulnerabilities or raw
spots that have been exposed.
• It is hard to tune in to raw spots because our surface emotions distract
us and our partners from what we are really afraid of.
• Making sense of raw spots and handling them well is key to breaking
the power of Demon Dialogues at moments of disconnection.
CONVERSATION #3
Revisiting a Rocky Moment
All couples argue. Some couples can cut short a fight and change direction
because on most days, their relationship is a safe haven of loving
responsiveness. People who feel secure with their partner find it easier to do
this. They can stand back and reflect on the process between them, and they
can also own their part in that process. For distressed lovers, this is much
harder to do. They are caught up in the emotional chaos at the surface of the
relationship, in seeing one another as threats, as the enemy.
To reconnect, lovers have to be able to de-escalate the conflict and
actively create a basic emotional safety. They need to be able to work in
concert to curtail their negative dialogues and defuse their fundamental
insecurities. They may not be as close as they crave to be, but they can stop
stepping on one another’s toes. They can have their differences and not
careen helplessly into Demon Dialogues. They can rub one another’s raw
spots and not slide into anxious demands or numbing withdrawal. They can
deal better with the disorienting ambiguity that their loved one, who is the
solution to fear, can also suddenly become a source of fear. In short, they
can hold on to their emotional balance a lot more often and a lot more
easily. This creates a platform for repairing rifts in their relationship and
creating a truly loving connection.
CHECKPOINT: Revisiting a Rocky Moment
The focus is:

• Recalling Demon Dialogue patterns
• Remembering Raw Spots
• Repairing rifts
• Rising above the negative cycle
• Reframing the cycle so your partner is not the enemy
DE-ESCALATING DISCONNECTION
We can all recall a drama we encountered with our partners. There is always
a pivotal point where the Demon Dialogue sets in and the conversation
turns contentious, taking on a life of its own. Up to now, we’ve discussed
and determined why and how this happens, which means we now have the
tools to create a new kind of dance. Here are the steps that can set you on
the path to greater harmony, when you’re in the thick of it.
Step 1: Seeing and Stopping the Dance. This involves moving from,
“You are attacking and hurting me,” or “No, you are shutting me out
and dismissing me,” to “We are trapped here.”
Step 2: Claiming Your Own Moves. You have learned to do this in
previous chapters, in both Before the Conversations and
Conversation #1: Recognizing the Demon Dialogues. It helps when
partners can agree upon names to describe these moves.
Step 3: Claiming Your Own Feelings. You have learned to do this in
Conversation #2: Finding the Raw Spots. It is best to start with
surface reactive feelings and then to admit to the deeper, softer
feelings. We can be angry on the surface and hurt and vulnerable on a
deeper level. It’s important to remember that these tsunami emotions
are just a part of love. We all struggle with them, but we can start
owning them.
Step 4: Owning How You Shape Your Partner’s Feelings. We have
enormous impact on our partners. It is still hard for most of us to
really grasp this, especially if we are used to hearing only surface
signals from our loved one. For most of us, it is a relief that we do
impact our partner, but then this is also a responsibility. Our partner
does have to help us here. We cannot rely on guesswork.
Step 5: Asking About Our Partner’s Deeper Emotions. You have
begun to listen to and hopefully explore your own and your partner’s
deeper emotions in Conversation #2. In that chapter, you hopefully
became more comfortable with this process of vulnerability. It helps
to have the framework that tells us what the emotional landscape of
love is like and names the normal fears and longings that all of us
have.
Step 6: Sharing Your Deeper Emotions. You became more familiar
with acknowledging and naming the emotions you have discovered
through Demon Dialogues and raw spots, and now you can validate
them through revisiting a Rocky Moment. Each time we do this, we
become more comfortable and our emotions become clearer and so,
less overwhelming.
Step 7: Standing Together. This is the endgame. You can now come
back to common ground even after emotion earthquakes have
occurred. When you can do it, it is so powerful that it offers you a
platform of safety, a secure base in your relationship from which to
launch into a positive Hold Me Tight conversation, which is coming
up in the next chapter. You can help one another find an exit from
Demon Dialogues and feel safe.
Revisit a previous Rocky Moment when you became stuck in your

own Demon Dialogue. Use the steps above and write a story of how
you could have contained the momentum of your negative cycle and
created a base of safety instead.
SELF-CARE DURING ROCKY MOMENTS
It is during this Conversation #3 when I usually check in with how each
partner is feeling about the process thus far. It is also around this time when
couples have enough of the Hold Me Tight experience under their belts that
they can begin to assess how they are feeling toward one another, and
especially with themselves. I typically take their temperature at this point,
asking whether they feel hopeful, fruitless, or satisfied with their progress.
It is with no ego, but just science to back me, that I can proudly say most of
the check-ins are positive. That is the magic of EFT — the science- and
research-proven approach to couples therapy. But it can’t ever hurt to check
in with yourself!
The following worksheet is designed for both of you to reflect on the
work done so far, assess how you’re feeling, and share your reflections with
one another. Even if your answers might not seem as encouraging as you’d
like, make this an opportunity to discuss them with your partner and revisit
them every so often. None of this work is futile, even if that feels like your
mindset right now; it can be utilized and referred to as you are both
conducting important research about your needs, fears, and the bond you
have together.
WORKSHEET: Taking the Temperature of Your Hold Me Tight

Journey
Partner 1:
How are you feeling? (For example, did you wake up
feeling a sense of foreboding? Do you feel refreshed? Are
you excited about something or eager to do something or
see someone?)
If you are feeling down or happy, what is making you feel
that way? (You might say, “I am feeling happy because I
woke up realizing I was holding my partner for the first
time in a long while.”)
What is not working for you? (For example, “The pace of

my workload is not ideal.”)
What is working for you? (You might say, “Asking for

help,” or, “Date night with my significant other.”)
What are you proud of? (For example, “I defused an
argument this week,” or, “Being together felt light and very
natural.”)
What’s occupying your mental real estate these days?

(You might say, “An impending overnight visit by a
relative,” “A deadline at work,” or, “My partner’s birthday
present.”)
Do you feel like you’re in a rut? If so, why?

Is there one way you can have fun today or this week? (For
example, going for a massage, coloring with your child, or
reaching out to an old friend for an old-fashioned phone
call.)
Can you learn from a mistake or faux pas you made this
week? What is the lesson? How can you be grateful for the
mistake and make the lesson enhance your life? (For
example, maybe you made a joke that offended someone
or didn’t validate your partner’s stress by actively listening
to an account about an incident.)
What inspires you? (Is it a sunset, your pet, reading about

a contemporary hero?)
What can you forgive yourself for? (You might tell yourself
that it’s okay that you made an offending joke; you didn’t
mean any harm and you now know better.)
What can you thank yourself for? (Maybe you volunteered

today, or made your partner happy by saying something
loving and unsolicited.)
Are you following anyone on social media who makes you

feel insecure, inadequate, and generally terrible about
yourself or your relationship and family?
What is becoming tiresome? What can you do about that?
(For example, maybe you are tired of your evening ritual or
a certain toxic friend. Can you create a new ritual or set
better boundaries with those who exude negativity?)
Partner 2:
How are you feeling? (For example, did you wake up
feeling a sense of foreboding? Do you feel refreshed? Are
you excited about something or eager to do something or
see someone?)
If you are feeling down or happy, what is making you feel
that way? (You might say, “I am feeling happy because I
woke up realizing I was holding my partner for the first
time in a long while.”)
What is not working for you? (For example, “The pace of

my workload is not ideal.”)
What is working for you? (You might say, “Asking for

help,” or, “Date night with my significant other.”)
What are you proud of? (For example, “I defused an
argument this week,” or, “Being together felt light and very
natural.”)
What’s occupying your mental real estate these days?

(You might say, “An impending overnight visit by a
relative,” “A deadline at work,” or, “My partner’s birthday
present.”)
Do you feel like you’re in a rut? If so, why?

Is there one way you can have fun today or this week? (For
example, going for a massage, coloring with your child, or
reaching out to an old friend for an old-fashioned phone
call.)
Can you learn from a mistake or faux pas you made this
week? What is the lesson? How can you be grateful for the
mistake and make the lesson enhance your life? (For
example, maybe you made a joke that offended someone
or didn’t validate your partner’s stress by actively listening
to an account about an incident.)
What inspires you? (Is it a sunset, your pet, reading about
a contemporary hero?)
What can you forgive yourself for? (You might tell yourself
that it’s okay that you made an offending joke; you didn’t
mean any harm and you now know better.)
What can you thank yourself for? (Maybe you volunteered

today, or made your partner happy by saying something
loving and unsolicited.)
Are you following anyone on social media who makes you
feel insecure, inadequate, and generally terrible about
yourself or your relationship and family?
What is becoming tiresome? What can you do about that?

(For example, maybe you are tired of your evening ritual or
a certain toxic friend. Can you create a new ritual or set
better boundaries with those who exude negativity?)
EFT is an ongoing process. It’s not something to read about or do in a

workbook and then toss aside. It is here for you, not just now or during
inevitable rocky moments, but as a booster to your future relationship — the
one you have carved out together through doing this critical work. These
questions are the beginning of a self-care journey that will only benefit your
partner and all your relationships in the long run.
Hold These Tight
• Revisiting Rocky Moments incorporates identifying Demon

Dialogues and Raw Spots.
• The essence of repair is to be able to slow down and change the level
of conversation.
• Partners rise above negative cycles and see the pattern and how it
victimizes them.
• Both partners are more and more able to see how they both get stuck
in the dance of disconnection and how this dance is their common
enemy.
CONVERSATION #4
Hold Me Tight — Engaging and

Connecting
Deep romantic gazes, slow dancing in perfect synchrony, losing time in

one another’s embraces. These are not the behaviors merely reserved for
new lovers in a Nicholas Sparks novel. Moments of intoxicating
connection, intense responsiveness, and unflinching engagement can be and
should be vital throughout the lifetime of a relationship. Indeed, they are the
hallmarks of happy, secure couples.
When we are falling in love, almost all of us are naturally and
spontaneously tuned in to our partners. We are hyperaware of one another
and exquisitely sensitive to our partner’s every action and word, every
expression of feeling. But with time, many of us become less attentive,
more complacent, and even jaded with our partners. Our emotional
antennas get jammed, or maybe our partner’s signals get weaker. Where
there was once attunement, disharmony takes over.
To build and sustain a secure bond, we need to be able to tune back in to
our loved one as strongly as we did before. How do we do this? By
deliberately creating moments of engagement and connection, of mutual
understanding and safety. In the Hold Me Tight conversation, you can build
on the sense of safety that you and your partner have already started to
create as a result of the previous three conversations. So far in the journey,
you have been taught how to halt or contain negative patterns of interacting
with your partner, as well as mark and name at least one of the deeper
feelings that come up in negative cycles and moments of disconnection.
Effectively seeking connection and responding supportively is hard without
a basic platform of safety. But as I mentioned in Hold Me Tight if
Conversations #1, #2, and #3 are like going for a walk in the park together,
Conversation #4 is like dancing the tango.
Here you’ll learn how to generate positive patterns of reaching for and
responding to your loved one. This is a conversation that helps reinforce the
benefits of vulnerability. As both partners learn to share and respond more
compassionately, they create more positive feelings toward one another,
which naturally encourages a cycle of more open communication and even
more deeply attuned responses to one another’s fears and needs. In effect,
you’ll be learning how to speak one another’s language of attachment.
Understanding and communicating fears and needs are at the root of
Conversation #4, which has two questions to consider. The first question —
What Am I Most Afraid Of? — requires further exploring and elaborating on
the deeper feelings you touched on with the previous conversations. In
those dialogues, you were taking the elevator down into your emotions. To
discover your attachment priorities, you must now — through asking
yourself, “What am I most afraid of?” — go all the way to the basement.
The second question — What Do I Need Most from You? — is the crucial
encounter in Emotionally Focused Therapy. It involves being able to openly
and coherently speak your needs in a way that invites your partner into a
new dialogue marked by accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement,
or an A.R.E. conversation, which we discussed in the first chapter.
Generally, this kind of A.R.E. interaction is the basis of effective
dependency: the dependency that offers a secure base with a loved one.
Both questions challenge couples to confront the elements of their
conversations, which can reveal:
• What each person is afraid of.

• What each person longs for from a partner.
• How easy it is for each person to speak their fears.
• How easy it is for each person to ask for what they need from their
partner.
The ability to engage in this conversation is based on the safety that you
both have created in the first three conversations. The Hold Me Tight
conversation and the two questions within it are immensely rewarding for
couples and offer an antidote to Demon Dialogues and moments of
deprivation and desertion. In this conversation, the more withdrawn partner
moves closer, moving from a powerless position and closing the gap of
distance between them. This partner becomes engaged.
The more blaming partner, therefore, moves away from a controlling
position. This partner enters a softer emotional state, reaching for closeness
in a positive way. Withdrawers re-engage, while blamers soften.
The reason that these kinds of interactions are so positive is probably
that they turn on the cuddle hormone oxytocin. This hormone produces a
sense of calm contentment and facilitates bonding. It also increases our
tendency to trust another person. Oxytocin is a key factor in the chemistry
of love. It is part of the bliss of orgasm and of breastfeeding a baby.
When we can tune in to and respond to a loved one in an A.R.E. manner,
we can intuit one another’s intentions and realities, and dance as one. This
means that we must learn to do two things: disclose our feelings, as well as
attend to our partner’s disclosures. The idea is that once a disclosing partner
feels attended to in a safe and loving way, the deeper both partners can
move into their feelings and communicate them more clearly. EFT
researchers have found that when couples can do this, they can solve
problems and bridge differences together as a team. This is not only
because they feel safer, but also because problems are no longer barometers
of love and belonging; they are just problems.
PUT A CHECK BESIDE ANY OF THE HABITS THAT FEEL FAMILIAR:
Finding a chore not done and moving into, “You didn’t do… You just
don’t listen and you don’t care about me at all.”
Finding a difference of opinion and making it a relational issue, as in,
“You don’t want to build the shelves the way I asked so you just
dismiss me and my wishes. If you cared about me…”
Taking a momentary mismatch in intimacy and making it into a
verdict, as in, “You fell asleep after we agreed to make love on
Saturday night, so this means our agreements mean nothing and we
are losing all our sexiness.”
CHECKPOINT: Terms of Endearment
The word attend comes from the Latin ad tendere, which means
to reach toward. We want to reach toward one another, and the
Hold Me Tight conversation helps partners do just that.
QUESTION 1: WHAT AM I MOST AFRAID OF?

This part of the conversation is aimed at gaining greater emotional clarity. It
is during this conversation that partners become able to declare their core
attachment fears, which naturally leads to a recognition of their primary
attachment needs, addressed in Question 2: What Do I Most Need From
You? How can you take the insights you’ve already gained about your
needs, fears, and behaviors and go deeper to the basement of your deepest
vulnerability? What this looks like is going from “I feel scared when you
walk away from me,” to “I’m sad because it seems we cannot connect
anymore.” The first statement, while certainly valid and honest, doesn’t
specifically communicate the fear. The second focuses on what being
walked away from represents — the fear of not connecting.
Even after expressing their feelings throughout the first three
conversations, partners are always amazed at the potential to hit the elevator
button and go even farther down. Fear and vulnerability are not the same
thing. Getting to the vulnerability that makes us afraid is the key to this
conversation. To do this, I teach my couples how to use handles. Handles
are descriptive images, words, and phrases that open the door to your
innermost feelings and vulnerabilities: your emotional reality.
HOLD ME TIGHT HANDLES
Handles aren’t just for long-haul truck drivers with their CB radios.
Therapists use handles for several reasons. First, handles create momentum.
They are useful when resuming a conversation from a prior session.
Usually, you’ll hear a therapist say something like, “Last week you were
feeling trapped.” The word “trapped” is the handle that acts as an anchor for
both therapist and patient. Recently I spoke with a patient who blurted out,
“I feel like I’m walking through fire.” This image evokes so many
sensations, which themselves are anchors that keep us in touch with our
fears, not only as they manifest emotionally, but through the physical
sensations they produce.
And speaking of anchoring, handles help anchor us to our deeper fears.
They not only remind us of something that might have triggered a fear but
keep us rooted in our vulnerability. Learning to use handles and to call upon
them when we might feel we are at a loss for words can help facilitate
effective language and better serve the listening partner because the feelings
are clear. Because of the imagery often used in handles, our bodies naturally
react to those images. Partners can learn to look for signs of stress and fear
through recognizing the change in their partner’s body language when
vulnerability takes over. This is how we learn to read our partners and
prepare to respond with compassion instead of being led by our own fears.
The following are handles that might help you as you learn to use
language that exposes your vulnerability.
INSTEAD OF SAYING TRY THE HANDLE

I don’t feel in control. I’m freaking out.
I don’t know what to do. I feel overwhelmed.
I feel all alone. My heart is shattered.
I can’t sleep or shut my thoughts down. I feel anxious.
I don’t want to be here. I want to flee.
I can’t take the pressure. It feels like walking through fire.
I am confused beyond belief. It feels like my head is exploding.
I feel sad and unmotivated. I feel like a slug in mud.
WORKSHEET: What’s Your Handle?
Now it’s your turn. Can you turn your feelings into a more
vulnerable handle? Remember your handle doesn’t have to be
an action; it can be an image or a phrase. The idea is to have
your handle be something you remember and can call upon to
anchor you when you are slipping into a Demon Dialogue.
Check in with your body. Do you notice any changes that you
can identify as signals to how you are feeling? For instance,
when you share your handle, do you notice your leg shaking or
foot wagging? Do you begin playing with your hair or picking at
your fingernails? The next time you notice one of these
physical changes, you can ask yourself, “Is this my handle
talking?”
Partner 1:
My feelings ________________________________________
________________________________________________
My handle _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
My body language ___________________________________

__________________________________________________
___
Partner 2:
My feelings ________________________________________
________________________________________________
My handle _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
My body language ___________________________________

__________________________________________________
___
When you feel like you can name and be specific about your
main fear, see if you can imagine saying this to your partner
before you actually do. Then see if you can share this in a
simple short form with your partner. If this is hard, then just go
slow. You can let it trickle out or ask your partner to go first.
Sharing handles is like shorthand for understanding one
another. It doesn’t have to feel burdensome. Learning this new
language can feel like a relief.
QUESTION 2: WHAT DO I NEED MOST FROM YOU?

Going deeper by using handles helps us move into and lay out the emotions
that are at the center of our longing for safe connection. When a partner
begins to communicate their needs, they become the disclosing partner.
Having a partner suddenly disclose vulnerabilities can be hard for the
listening partner to hear or to trust. I have heard partners dismiss their
lover’s new steps toward them with everything from, “That’s ridiculous” to
some version of “So let’s see you prove it.” Then they spin back into their
Demon Dialogue.
The truth is, no one takes the risk of being rebuffed by disclosing unless
the other person really matters to them. And sometimes disclosing partners
have to be willing to hang in there and keep repeating their message until
their loved one gets used to seeing them in a new way. Couples stuck in a
Demon Dialogue can also get moving again by repeating Conversations #1,
#2, and #3.
What follows is a sample script of how partners take turns disclosing
and responding in a way that reinforces mutual responsiveness and
engagement, the two facets of attending.
WORKSHEET: Practicing Identifying Handles
See if you can identify the handles each partner uses in this
sample dialogue between Micah and Taylor. Circle words that
resonate and those that help go deeper.
Micah: When you came home late, I told you I was upset,
and you said, “Now don’t get all crazy on me,” and that if my
outbursts didn’t stop, you might need to leave. That threat was
the bottom line for me. I cannot always stay calm and logical.
Taylor: Sorry.
Micah: I feel very sad we cannot seem to come together
anymore.
Taylor: But you shouldn’t be because we are working on our
relationship. What was the worst moment, the worst feeling for
you? [You might recognize this question from Conversation #3:
Revisiting a Rocky Moment.]
Micah: [Sits, thinking.]
Taylor: I only say you are crazy because I get scared of the
bad feelings between us.
Micah: The worst moments were when you hung up on me,
and later when you said you would leave. I was so
“unreasonable,” you said.
Taylor: I don’t know how to make this better. What should I
do?
Micah: I just want to know if you care that you hurt my
feelings. If I get scared or upset with you, you just turn off, like
you’re hanging up on me. You don’t comfort me. And you don’t
make love to me or hold me, either. Just when I need you, you
go off in your disapproval. You turn away and discard me. I am
not the person you want.
Taylor: [Sits quietly.]
Micah: It kills me when you pass over me, turn to your rules.
I have never been more alone. Taylor, you are not there for me,
with me. So I panic. Do you hear me?
Taylor: [Reaching for Micah’s hands.] Yes, yes, yes. This is
sad to hear. I’m sad.
Taylor is sad. Taylor’s emotional presence is as tangible as
the chair Taylor sits on. Micah has revealed a deep pain, the
primal code of loss and panic that sounds when our loved one
is not there for us, and they have heard one another. Both
partners have connected with their own emotional realities and
opened up to one another.
Vulnerability is painful to experience. It’s even more difficult to

articulate. Sharing fears with our partner takes trust and understanding.
I often begin by asking couples to think of a secure attachment figure
from their past: a parent, a lover, a close friend.
Then I ask, “If you were to share with this person your deepest
vulnerability, the fear that you can’t seem to let escape from your
mouth, what would it be?” Answers might be “I’m afraid I’ll be
alone,” “I can’t seem to forgive myself,” or “I’m afraid that will
happen to me again.”
Then I ask, “What kind of response would you expect from this
secure attachment figure?”
For this journal exercise, on your own, focus on a past secure
relationship; again, this could be a parent or a close friend. Imagine
that person is in front of you. How would you describe your
vulnerability now? For instance, are you less scared and more clear
about it? Or still unclear and fuzzy? Do you feel so strange you can
hardly do it, even in your imagination? Remember your handle if you
are having difficulty putting this into words.
PARTNER 1:
Now, consider a past relationship where you did not feel securely
connected. Maybe you had a best friend in high school who excluded
you from social activities, making you feel abandoned or outcast, not
enough or less than enough. What was it you really needed from this
person? Acceptance? Reassurance? Non-judgment? Write to this
person now, in two sentences or less, what you needed. Take note of
your body’s movement, posture, or internal sensations, like tingling,
heat, or butterflies in the stomach.
Moving on to your relationship with your current partner, think about
what you most need in order to feel secure and loved. Write it here.
The Worksheet following this exercise will help you to begin this
conversation with your partner.
PARTNER 2:
Now, consider a past relationship where you did not feel securely
connected. Maybe you had a best friend in high school who excluded
you from social activities, making you feel abandoned or outcast, not
enough, or less than enough. What was it you really needed from this
person? Acceptance? Reassurance? Non-judgment? Write to this
person now, in two sentences or less, what you needed. Take note of
your body’s movement, posture, or internal sensations, like tingling,
heat, or butterflies in the stomach.
Moving on to your relationship with your current partner, think about
what you most need in order to feel secure and loved. Write it here.
The Worksheet following this exercise will help you to begin this
conversation with your partner.
WORKSHEET: Fill in the Blanks
Most everyone on the planet has been overwhelmed at one

time or another by their vulnerabilities. Finding words to
articulate them is a useful exercise, as once you have those
words, you can communicate them in your Hold Me Tight
conversation, helping your partner contextualize and anticipate
your handles in your own dialogues and in your interactions
with others. Having completed the preceding Worksheet and
Journal Exercise, try to put into sentences the needs you have
based on the things that you now recognize you are afraid of.
Fill in the blanks in these sample sentences to help you get
started. The first sentence is filled in for you as a guide:
I need to feel that I am special to you so I sense that I am
the number one priority in your life.
Partner 1:
I need to feel ______________________________________,
as a partner and a lover, and that ______________ is
important to you.
I need to feel that I can ______________________________

so I sense that _________________________________.
I need to feel I can ask you to ________________________ so
I _________________________________.
I need to feel ______________________________________
so I _________________________________.
Partner 2:
I need to feel ______________________________________,
as a partner and a lover, and that ______________ is
important to you.
I need to feel that I can ______________________________

so I sense that _________________________________.
I need to feel I can ask you to ________________________ so
I _________________________________.
I need to feel ______________________________________
so I _________________________________.
If this is too hard to do, take a smaller step and talk about
how difficult it is to explicitly formulate and state your needs.
Tell your partner if there is some way they can help you with
this. For instance, one might say, “You could tell me that you
want to hear my needs and touch me so I feel safe.” This
dialogue contains the key emotional drama of our lives, so
sometimes we need to take smaller steps to gain and offer
clarity.
Hold These Tight
• The Hold Me Tight conversation is a positive bonding event.

• This conversation offers an antidote to moments of disengagement
and negative cycles, and enables you to face the world together as a
team.
• Each time you can create moments of emotional connection, the bond
between you grows stronger.
CONVERSATION #5
Forgiving Injuries
Whoever first made the claim, “We hurt the ones we love the most,” must
have definitely been in a long-term relationship. When I ask a room full of
couples whether they have been on the giving or receiving end of hurt,
disconnect, blame, or resentment with their partners, every hand goes up.
It’s impossible to be in an intimate long-term relationship without incident.
Forming an attachment requires vulnerability, so it’s absolutely normal that
fear will rear its ugly head; it’s how we respond and react that makes the
difference between losing one another to our fear or using these incidents as
opportunities for deeper connection.
Throughout the last four conversations, vulnerability, past hurts, and
insecurities have been released and replaced with compassion,
understanding, and attunement. Bad behavior has been exposed, raw spots
have come to the surface, and needs have been expressed. It is inevitable
that through one or several of these conversations, partners will bring up an
event (as in Conversation #3: Revisiting a Rocky Moment), sometimes an
apparently minor one, and it’s as if all the oxygen has been sucked out of
the room. All at once, the warm hope garnered over time is exchanged for a
chilly despair. How can one small incident have this kind of overwhelming
power to set us back? Clearly, it’s not a minor incident. To one partner at
least, it is a grievous event.
Over decades of research and therapy, I’ve discovered that certain
incidents do more than just touch our raw spots or hurt our feelings. They
injure us so deeply that they overturn our world. They are relationship
traumas. A trauma is defined as a wound that plunges us into fear and
helplessness, which challenges all our assumptions of predictability and
control. Indeed, there is no greater trauma than to be wounded by the very
people we count on to support and protect us.
In couples with an insecure bond, many transgressions can pose a threat
to the future stability and trust of the couple. However, not all
transgressions are equal to traumatic events. Traumatic wounds are
especially severe, according to Judith Herman, professor of psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School, because they involve a “violation of human
connection.” Throughout the last four conversations, you might have come
face-to-face with a relationship trauma. You might find that bringing up
something that may have happened three years ago remains very much alive
as a raw spot, nixing any possibility of feeling safe enough to reach for your
partner. More likely, depending on your primal panic mode, a past trauma
will cause you to either lash out or retreat.
When a partner regresses into a primal panic based on a past traumatic
event in the relationship, it is as if an alarm sounds, and that person has an
overwhelming urge to retreat further so as to not explore the pain or fear. I
call this the Never Again moment: They never again want to feel the way
they felt in that original moment.
Lack of an emotionally supportive response by a loved one at a moment
of threat can affect a whole relationship; it can eclipse hundreds of smaller
positive events, and in one swipe demolish the security of a love
relationship. The power of such incidents lies in the searing negative
answer they offer to the eternal questions “Are you there for me when I am
most in need?” and “Do you care about my pain?”
There isn’t much room for compromise or an ambiguous answer when
we feel this kind of urgent need for our loved one’s support. The test is pass
or fail. These moments can shatter all our positive assumptions about love
itself and our loved one’s dependability, beginning the fall into relationship
distress or further fraying an already fragile bond. Until these incidents are
confronted and resolved, true accessibility and emotional engagement are
out of the question.
Partners often try to handle relationship traumas (also called injuries) by
ignoring or burying them. That is a big mistake. Everyday hurts are easily
dismissed and raw spots can fade if we stop rubbing them in Demon
Dialogues, but unresolved traumas do not heal. The helplessness and fear
they engender are almost indelible; they set off our survival instincts.
Injured feelings break out at some point when attachment needs come to the
fore. Often what we think has been forgotten has not been forgiven, and
many times, the opposite is true. The only way out of these attachment
injuries is to confront them and heal them together.
FORGIVENESS: THE FIRST GOAL FOR PARTNERS

Most scholars speak of forgiveness as a moral decision. Letting go of
resentment and absolving a person’s bad conduct is the right and good thing
to do. But this decision alone will not restore trust and faith in the injuring
person and the relationship. What partners need is a special type of healing
conversation that fosters, not just forgiveness, but the willingness to trust
again. Renewed trust is the ultimate goal. Relationship injuries, when not
addressed, can compound and make it more difficult over time to renew
trust. The overarching lesson is to take a partner’s hurt seriously and hang
in and ask questions until the meaning of an incident becomes clear, even if
the event seems trivial or the hurt exaggerated.
CHECKPOINT: What Forgiveness Isn’t
Forgiveness has been the subject of research, debate, and

confusion about its usefulness, meaning, and its role in our
relationships. Many people mistake forgiveness as a free pass
or an acceptance of the wrongdoing. Neither is the case. To put
it in perspective, here are the misinterpretations that often
prevent us from wanting to engage in the act of forgiveness.
Once we realize what forgiveness is not, we can see what it is
and why so many people — from scientists to philosophers to
therapists — believe in its power to heal.
Forgiveness Is Forgiveness Is…

Not…
… for the other … for the sake of the person forgiving.
person’s sake.
… forgoing … speaking your feelings and making the
accountability. other know how they made you feel.
… saying “It’s … freeing oneself from expending energy of
okay.” a grudge or deep resentment and
malevolent feelings, like revenge.
… being a … feeling anger and empowering oneself to
doormat or a learn to let anger go.
pushover.
… pretending … a lesson on how you’d like to be treated
what happened by others.
didn’t happen.
… easy. … accepting that life is hard and bad things
happen.
… forgetting. … making peace with life.
WORKSHEET: Has Trust Diminished?
For this exercise, it is important to be honest and transparent

about whether you are afraid to share your relationship injury
because you don’t trust your partner to receive it calmly (injured
partner), or if you are a partner who is not sending signals of
trust that show your partner you are open and compassionate
enough to listen (injuring partner). For each statement, circle
Often, Sometimes, or Never.
Injured partner:
I need time to muster the courage Often Sometimes Never
to speak about a past injury.
I mention I want to talk and then I Often Sometimes Never
change my mind.
I assume my partner will belittle, Often Sometimes Never
rage, accuse, or tell me it’s all in
my head.
When I share, I feel like my partner Often Sometimes Never
is making a case against me and
my feelings.
After I share, I feel worse and more Often Sometimes Never
alone than before I shared.
I believe our private conversations Often Sometimes Never
are not kept private by my partner.
I feel physically ill, nervous, or Often Sometimes Never
jittery when I try to speak my mind.
I feel like I repeat myself over and Often Sometimes Never
over and my partner doesn’t hear
me.
When it comes to sharing, I think, Often Sometimes Never
“What’s the point?”
Injuring partner:
My partner makes mountains out of Often Sometimes Never
molehills.
My partner makes it seem like Often Sometimes Never
everything is my fault.
My partner doesn’t listen to me Often Sometimes Never
when I try to explain the issue.
I feel like I hear the same Often Sometimes Never
complaints over and over again.
I feel guilty or to blame when my Often Sometimes Never
partner shares with me.
I don’t feel like I should apologize. Often Sometimes Never
Regarding my partner sharing an Often Sometimes Never
incident, I feel like my partner is
playing games with me.
When it comes to listening, I think, Often Sometimes Never
“What’s the point?”
Share with your partner the statements that you believe most
fit, then share how and when you each get stuck in this
thought.
There may be a trust issue when it comes to sharing your experience of

receiving injuries. The injured partner might feel unsupported or recall
times when their sharing wasn’t received in a way that felt comforting or
heard. The injuring party sometimes feels too much shame and guilt to
remain open, and may respond by rejecting their partner’s feelings, making
them feel unimportant. Being honest with one another and sharing the
answers to the trust worksheet in the previous section can put you on even
ground, since the feelings you have are shared by each of you but are just
manifesting differently. Can you start again? Can you muster the courage to
be vulnerable, to share a trauma? Can you listen quietly and carefully,
hearing the hidden messages of the injured partner? These are choices and
making them is one part of the forgiveness cycle. In my book, Hold Me
Tight, a couple named Ted and Vera demonstrate the power of forgiveness
and the six-step process to achieving it.
SIX STEPS TO FORGIVENESS:
1. The hurt partner needs to speak about the pain as openly and simply
as possible.
2. The injuring partner stays emotionally present and acknowledges the
wounded partner’s pain and their role in it.
3. Together, partners start revising their script and stop the cycle of
Never Again.
4. The injuring partner now takes ownership of how they inflicted this
injury on their partner and expresses regret and remorse.
5. A Hold Me Tight conversation takes place, centering on the
attachment injury.
6. The couple now creates a new story that captures the injuring event
— how it happened, eroded trust and connection, and shaped
Demon Dialogues.
Injuries may be forgiven, but they never disappear. Instead, in the best
outcomes, they become integrated into couples’ attachment stories as
demonstrations of renewal and connection.
The first step in healing an attachment injury is to recognize and

articulate it. Think of an incident in the past when you were hurt by
someone important to you, but not your current partner. The trauma
may be one that is quite significant, or less so. Was it a remark, a
specific action, or a lack of action on the part of the other? What
alarming conclusion did you come to about this important person in
your life? For example, did you decide this person didn’t care, that you
weren’t important and might be abandoned?
PARTNER 1:
Now ask yourself, what were you longing for when you were
wounded? If this is hard to articulate, see if you can figure out what
you think would have been the ideal response. What protective moves
did you find yourself taking? For example, did you change the subject
and walk out of the room? Or did you become aggressive and demand
an explanation?
Now, ask yourself, “Did I feel deprived of support? Did my pain or
fear get dismissed? Did I feel deserted? Did I feel devalued? Did I
suddenly see this person as a source of danger, as taking advantage of
me, or as betraying me?”
PARTNER 2:
Now ask yourself, what were you longing for when you were
wounded? If this is hard to articulate, see if you can figure out what
you think would have been the ideal response. What protective moves
did you find yourself taking? For example, did you change the subject
and walk out of the room? Or did you become aggressive and demand
an explanation?
Now, ask yourself, “Did I feel deprived of support? Did my pain or

fear get dismissed? Did I feel deserted? Did I feel devalued? Did I
suddenly see this person as a source of danger, as taking advantage of
me, or as betraying me?”
Once you have a sense of this past hurt, try to share what you’ve
written with your partner.
SORRY — THE HARDEST WORD

Do you have a problem with apologies? Giving them? Accepting them?
Both? Researchers say that’s because we are predisposed to find reasons
and excuses to not say sorry, because saying sorry makes us feel like
underlings to the person we are apologizing to. To our survival wiring,
apologizing just feels too threatening and dangerous, so we avoid it. Just
like our biological predispositions for attachment, however, we can learn to
overcome these intense fight-or-flight impulses. We can use our signals to
help us act in more productive, communicative, compassionate ways that
lead to connection.
Reflect on how easy or difficult it is for you to apologize, even in small
things. Below are examples of token apologies, which can sometimes work
for very small hurts, but in the case of the kind of relationship traumas and
hurts we are talking about, can often increase the wounded person’s pain.
Can you remember a time when you voiced your regrets in any of the
following ways?
PUT A CHECK MARK NEXT TO ANY YOU RECOGNIZE AND TRY TO REFRAIN FROM
DEFAULTING TO THEM FOR YOUR HOLD ME TIGHT CONVERSATION.
The four-second where-is-the-exit apology: “Yes, well, sorry ’bout

that. What shall we have for dinner?”
The minimizing responsibility apology: “Well, maybe I did that,
but…”
The forced apology: “I guess I am supposed to say…”
The instrumental apology: “Nothing is going to work till I say this,
so…”
WORKSHEET: True or False Apologies
Can you think of a time when you hurt a loved one? A time
when they might have felt deprived of your support or comfort,
even deserted by you? A time where you might even have
seemed dangerous or rejecting to them? Can you imagine
sincerely acknowledging this to them? What might you say?
What might be hard for you in acknowledging the injury?
Partners often use the following simple statements when they
talk about having hurt a loved one. Circle T or F to indicate
whether the sentiment is true or false for you.
I pulled away. I let you down. T F

I didn’t see your pain and how you needed me. I was too T F
angry, preoccupied, lost. I just shut down.
I didn’t know what to do. I got all caught up in feeling T F
stupid and worrying about doing the wrong thing.
I didn’t think you’d believe that I was sorry. T F
I couldn’t face how hurt you were because it made me T F
feel ashamed that I could do that to you.
I was afraid of the outcome of my apologizing. What if T F
you didn’t accept it?
Recognizing the feelings you have about apologizing and the

underlying fear you have about acknowledging your actions
can help you further articulate them with your partner and use
them as handles to ground you in your feelings. For a refresher
on handles, see Conversation #4.
CHECKPOINT: Key Messages in Powerful Apologies
Your hurt is legitimate, understandable.

Your hurt impacts me. I care about it; it matters.
I feel sorrow, regret, even shame — I own that I hurt you.
I am here now.
It’s time to turn to dealing with a specific injury in your current

relationship. You can do this on your own or while your partner listens
and tries to understand. If this sharing seems difficult, start with a
relatively small recent hurt. Then, if you wish, you can repeat the
exercise with a more significant hurt. Try to make it as specific as
possible. Big, vague hurts are difficult to address. Perhaps you went
through a difficult period when there were lots of hurt feelings. Was
there one moment when that hurt crystallized? What was the trigger
for the pain? What was the primary feeling? What decision did you
make about the relationship, and what move did you make to protect
yourself?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
See if you can now tell your partner what you hoped for in that hurtful
incident, and how it felt to not get that response. You might also share what
it feels like right now to take the risk and express what you longed for. As
you do this, try to avoid indicting your partner for causing you pain. That
will only sabotage the conversation. As the listening partner, try to hear
your partner’s vulnerability and share what this evokes in you. Usually,
when we really listen to someone we love who is expressing a need for us,
we respond with caring.
If you are the partner who has hurt your lover, see if you can help your
partner understand why you responded the way you did at the moment of
injury. Think of this as a step in making your actions more predictable to
your partner.
As the partner who did the hurting, can you now recognize your
partner’s experience, how you inflicted pain, and can you (the big A word!)
apologize? This is hard to do. It takes courage to admit that we are
disappointed in our own behavior; it is humbling to confess that we have
been insensitive or uncaring. Perhaps we can only apologize when we allow
ourselves to be moved by our loved ones’ hurts and fears. If we can do this
with sincerity, we are giving our loved ones a great gift.
As the injured partner, can you accept the apology? If you can, it puts
the two of you on a new footing. Trust can begin to grow again. You can
comfortably seek reassurance when echoes of this injury occur in the future,
knowing that your partner will try to respond sensitively. And the
apologizing partner can now offer the love that went astray in the original
event.
Finally, sum up this conversation with your partner in a short story about
the painful event, the impact it had on your relationship, and how you both
recovered and intend to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Our Short Story

Hold These Tight
• We will hurt those we love — it’s how we deal with this that matters.
• Only one kind of apology works: one based on acknowledgment,
sincerity, and accountability, with an effort to not repeat the behavior.
• Understanding attachment traumas and knowing that you can find and
offer forgiveness if you need to gives you incredible power to create a
resilient, lasting bond.
CONVERSATION #6
Bonding Through Sex and Touch
We’ve been conditioned by our culture and a myriad of relationship gurus

to regard passion as more of a passing sensation, rather than a durable force.
We are told that the sexual fires that burned so brightly at the start of love
inevitably burn down, just as our relationship, once filled with excitement,
inexorably turns into prosaic friendship.
But the fact is that secure bonding and fully satisfying sexuality go hand
in hand; they cue off and enhance one another. Emotional connection
creates great sex, and great sex creates deeper emotional connection. When
partners are emotionally accessible, responsive, and engaged, sex becomes
intimate play, a safe adventure. Secure partners feel free and confident to
surrender to sensation in one another’s arms, explore and fulfill their sexual
needs, and share their deepest joys, longings, and vulnerabilities. Then,
lovemaking is truly making love.
Why is sex such a huge issue for dissatisfied partners? Because typically
it’s the first thing affected when a relationship falters. It’s not the true
problem, though. What’s really happening is that a couple is losing
connection; the partners don’t feel emotionally safe with one another. That
in turn leads to slackening desire and less satisfying sex, which leads to less
sex and more hurt feelings, which leads to still looser emotional connection,
and around it goes. In short, no safe bond, no sex; no sex, no bond.
The safety of our emotional connection defines our relationship in bed as
well as out. Depending on how comfortable we are with closeness and how
safe we feel with our loved one, we will have different goals in bed. I call
these three kinds of sex Sealed-Off Sex, Solace Sex, and Synchrony Sex.
SEALED-OFF SEX
In Sealed-Off Sex, the goal is to reduce sexual tension, achieve orgasm, and
feel good about our sexual prowess. It happens with those who have never
learned to trust and don’t want to open up, or who are feeling unsafe with
their partners. The focus is on sensation and performance. Bonding with the
other person is secondary. This kind of impersonal sex can be toxic in a
love relationship. The partner feels used and objectified rather than valued
as a person.
SOLACE SEX
Solace Sex occurs when we are seeking reassurance that we are valued and
desired; the sex act is just a tagalong. The goal is to alleviate our attachment
fears. There is more emotional involvement than in Sealed-Off Sex, but the
main emotion directing the sexual dance is anxiety.
Solace Sex often happens when partners are battling Demon Dialogues,
and regular, safe, comforting touch — the most basic bonding connection
— is missing.
When partners tell me that they cannot be considerate of one another
with everyday acts of caring, I worry. When they tell me that they are not
making love, I am concerned. But when they tell me that they don’t touch, I
know they are really in trouble.
SYNCHRONY SEX
Synchrony Sex is when emotional openness and responsiveness, and tender
touch and erotic exploration, all come together. This is the way sex is
supposed to be. This is the sex that fulfills, satisfies, and connects. When
partners have a secure emotional connection, physical intimacy can retain
all of this initial ardor and creativity, and then some. Lovers can be tender
and playful one moment, fiery and erotic another. Emotional safety shapes
physical synchrony, and physical synchrony shapes emotional safety.
Responsiveness outside the bedroom carries over into it. Connected
partners can reveal their sexual vulnerabilities and desires without fear of
being rejected. Secure, loving partners can relax, let go, and immerse
themselves in the pleasure of lovemaking. They can talk openly, without
getting embarrassed or offended, about what turns them off or on.
Secure partners can soothe and comfort one another and pull together to
overcome unavoidable problems that are never shown in the movies but are
part of everybody’s life. My experiences have shown me that people can
connect and reconnect, falling in love again and again, and that eroticism is
essentially play and the ability to let go and surrender to sensation. For this,
we need emotional safety.
When experts suggest that only brand-new relationships can offer
exciting sex, I think of an older, long-married couple that I know and how
they dance the Argentine tango. They are completely present and engaged
with one another. Their moves are achingly deliberate, totally playful, and
stunningly erotic. They are so attuned and responsive to one another that
even though the dance is fluid, improvised, and in the moment, they never
miss a beat or a turn, nor step on each other’s toes. They move as one, with
grace and flair.
CHECKPOINT: Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
The best recipe for good sex is a secure relationship where a

couple can connect through A.R.E. conversations and tender
touch. Even sex therapists concur that the essential building
block of a healthy sexual relationship is non-demand pleasuring.
For this reason, I often suggest to couples that they abstain from
making love for a few weeks. With intercourse forbidden, neither
partner gets anxious or disappointed, and they can both
concentrate, instead, on exploring all the sensations of touching.
Getting used to asking for tender touch deepens a couples’
bond, and knowing one another’s bodies more intimately, what
moves and pleases them, becomes a precious part of a couple’s
only for you, only with you connection.
RESOLVING SEXUAL PROBLEMS
Desire naturally waxes and wanes — with events, the seasons, our health
— for a thousand reasons. These fluctuations, however, hit a nerve in most
of us and, unless we can talk about them openly, can easily spark or
heighten relationship problems. Many partners can tolerate infrequent
intercourse, but they cannot tolerate feeling that their partners do not desire
them.
Alone or with your partner, read and respond to the following

questions.
In bed with your partner, do you generally feel emotionally safe and
connected? What helps you feel this way? When you do not feel this
way, how could your partner help you?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
What is your usual sexual style — Sealed-Off Sex, Solace Sex, or
Synchrony Sex? In any relationship all three will probably occur
sometimes. But if you habitually move into Sealed-Off Sex or Solace
Sex, then this tells you something about your sense of safety in your
relationship.
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
What are your four most important expectations in bed? Think

carefully about your answers. Sometimes they are not what we think
of first. Partners have told me that their most important expectation
after sex was to be held tenderly and caressed gently, but they’d never
expressed that desire to their lover.
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
Do you feel that you do enough touching and holding in your

relationship? A single stroke can express connection, comfort, and
desire. When would you like to be touched and held more?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
WORKSHEET: Exploring Your Desires
If you were to write a “Brief Guide for My Lover,” what would

you put in it? Your guide might include answers to the following
questions.
What helps you begin to be open to sex, both emotionally
and physically?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
What turns you on the most before and during

lovemaking?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
How long do you expect pleasuring or foreplay and

intercourse to last?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
What is your preferred position?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
Do you enjoy fast or slow lovemaking?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
What is the most stirring way for your lover to move you
and stimulate the deepest engagement in lovemaking?
Can you ask for this?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
What makes sex most satisfying for you? (This may not be
orgasm or even intercourse.)
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
When do you feel most unsure or uncomfortable during
sex?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
When do you feel closest to your partner?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
If you can talk about the above with your partner, great. If not,
then maybe you can begin a conversation about how hard it is
to share this kind of information.
When sex isn’t working for you physically, what is it that you want to
be able to do as a couple? What do you do when sex isn’t working for
you emotionally? How can your partner help you here? Create a movie
scenario of what this would look like on the silver screen, describing
the perfect scene. Of course, there’s no such thing as perfect, but it
gets the conversation going! The scene begins:
If I were perfect in bed, I would ___________________________,
_________________________________________ and then you
would feel more _____________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
See if you can share some of your responses. Then tell one another one
way in which the other is already sexually perfect for you in bed and
out of bed.
WORKSHEET: Exploring Your Desire as a Couple

Can you each think of a time in your relationship when sex
was really satisfying? Write a description of this event in
as much detail as possible. Share your stories and tell one
another what you have learned from listening to these
stories.
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
Think of all the ways sex can show up in your relationship. Can
it be simply fun, a way of getting close, a straight physical
release, a comforting way to deal with stress or upset, a route
into romance and escape from the world, an erotic adventure, a
place of tender connection, a burst of passion? Do you feel
safe experiencing all of these with your lover? What might be a
risk that you would like to take in bed?
Can you tell one another the risk and explain how you
might respond if things went badly or if things went well?
Partner 1:
The risk I would take in bed: ___________________________
How I would respond to you if things went badly/well:

Partner 2:
The risk I would take in bed: ___________________________
How I would respond to you if things went badly/well:
CHECKPOINT: Forget Perfection
There are no “perfect” lovers. Given this fact, how would you like
to be and see yourself as a lover? Can you share this with your
partner?
How do you each deal with the inevitable times when you want to
make love and your partner is not in the mood or is too tired or not
aroused? What do you say? This is a sensitive moment for most of us.
We teeter on the brink of rejection and hurt. What would have to
happen for this kind of sensitive moment to occur and for you to still
feel loved and safely connected? How can your partner make this
happen?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
Hold These Tight
• Safe emotional connection fosters great sex. Great sex creates deeper
emotional connection.
• Sex is intimate play and a safe adventure.
• Touch and chemistry link sex and attachment.
CONVERSATION #7
Keeping Your Love Alive
Conversation #7 is built on the understanding that love is a continual

process of seeking and losing emotional connection, and reaching out to
find it again. The bond of love is a living thing. If we don’t attend to it, it
naturally begins to wither. In a world that is moving ever faster and requires
us to juggle more and more tasks, it is a challenge to be present in the
moment and tend to our own and our partner’s need for connection. This
final conversation asks you to be deliberate and mindful about your love.
Moments of deep attachment are powerful enough to hold lovers together
year after year. I think of our research showing that couples hold on to the
satisfaction and happiness they create in EFT sessions, even through highly
stressful events.
A.R.E. conversations are the language of love. They shore up the safe
haven that is your relationship and nurture your ability to be flexible, to
explore, and to keep your love alive and growing. Conversation #7 is a road
map for taking your love into the future. The steps entail:
• Recapping and reflecting on the danger points in your relationship

where you slide into insecurity and get stuck in Demon Dialogues.
This will allow you to figure out detours and shortcuts that lead you
back into safe connection.
• Celebrating the positive moments, big and small. This involves, first,
reflecting on the moments in your daily lives that foster openness and
responsiveness and reinforce your understanding of the positive
impact you have on one another, and second, articulating the turning
points in your recent relationship history when your love intensified.
• Planning rituals around the moments of separation and reunion in
your daily lives in recognition of your bond, support, and
responsiveness. These rituals are a way of holding your relationship
safe in a distracting and chaotic world.
• Helping one another identify the attachment issues in recurring
differences and arguments, and deciding together how to defuse these
issues to deliberately create emotional safety and trust. This will
allow you to resolve problems without letting hot attachment issues
get in the way. I call this the Safety First Strategy: One partner can
bring up a problem in softer, less aggressive ways, and the other
partner can stay emotionally engaged in the discussion, even if they
don’t agree with the view that is being presented.
• Creating a Resilient Relationship Story that describes how the two of
you have built and are continuing to build a loving bond. It tells how
you get stuck in conflict and distance, and how you have learned to
repair rifts, reconnect, and forgive hurts. It is a story about falling in
love again and again.
• Creating a Future Love Story that outlines what you want your bond
to look like five or ten years down the road, and how you would like
your partner’s help in making the vision a reality.
Why is it that we tend to focus on the negative things and fail to give
credence to the wins, even the smallest ones, in our lives? You have
probably witnessed this phenomenon in your own life. Maybe you
harp on the negative email that came from a colleague, completely
forgetting the congratulations you received in yesterday’s meeting.
Your child missing curfew took the air out of the good news about
making the dean’s list. You feel like a failure for walking most of the
5K instead of celebrating the fact that you got up and did the race at
all! The same happens in our relationships — we misfocus our
attention from the positive and loving ways we treat one another onto
the latest snafu. We don’t tell our partners the specific small ways that
they touch us with a spontaneous word or gesture and create a sense of
belonging. These A.R.E. moments are opportunities to positively
reinforce behaviors that connect us and keep us securely attached. This
exercise is about celebrating small moments of connection.
See if you can come up with ways to acknowledge and express that
you notice the turning points when love suddenly comes into sharper
focus. Can you name a key moment in your last rift when your partner
made a physical gesture that signaled compassion, even during a
Demon Dialogue? For instance, reaching for your hand, handing you a
tissue, offering you a glass of water?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
During a Demon Dialogue, did your partner speak words of empathy
that showed you that you were being actively listened to and heard?
For instance, using phrases like “I think I understand,” or, “You must
feel unimportant when I don’t call you from my overnight work trips,”
or, “I can see how that would offend you.”
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
Can you name some actions or words your partner typically exhibits or
says that you think you should validate? Something they do or say that
is inherently part of their nature that anchors you in their love? Think
about the behaviors that occur habitually, even when stuck in a Demon
Dialogue or a darker period, that you could remember to celebrate in
order to spark a moment of connection. For instance, does your partner
do chores around the house that you take for granted? Is it your
partner’s way to always have a hot meal ready or make sure the tires
are filled with air before a trip, even if you are both angry?
PARTNER 1:
PARTNER 2:
WORKSHEET: Creating Rituals
Rituals are an important part of belonging. They are repeated,

intentional ceremonies that recognize a special time or
connection. Rituals engage us, emotionally and physically, so
that we become riveted to the present moment in a positive
way. We habitually kiss children or other loved ones goodbye
and hold and greet them when they return. Why not take the
time to formally recognize your relationship with your lover in
the small gestures that convey the message, “You matter to
me.” Can you help one another design your own bonding
rituals, especially recognizing moments of meeting and
separation or key times of belonging?
Fill in the blanks to remember the things you used to do to
commemorate comings and goings, especially in the early
stages of your courtship or relationship.
On our first few dates, I remember that you made me feel
important when you greeted me by (e.g., looking genuinely
excited to see me, making me laugh upon saying hello, telling
me you liked something I was wearing)
Partner 1: _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Partner 2: _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
When I came home from work, you used to acknowledge me
by (e.g. walking to the front door to open it for me, coming in
from another room to see me, or yelling from the backyard,
“Hello, I’ll be right in.”)
Partner 1: _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Partner 2: _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Before you left our bed, you used to (e.g., kiss me on the
cheek, whisper “goodbye,” hold me)
Partner 1: _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Partner 2: _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
When you left for trips, you always (e.g., left me a short note
telling me you’d miss me, called me throughout the day while
you were gone, told me you hated to leave me)
Partner 1: _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Partner 2: _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Now that you have remembered that you did have loving
rituals, see if you can agree on some of the suggestions below
to create or reinstate connective moments together. An idea
that one couple shared with me is lighting a candle before bed
to signify “connect time,” or “heart-to-heart time.” This is the
time of the evening that they knew they could hold one another
and share their softer places — especially sharing the times
they felt close or the times they lost their connection. Another
couple, after dinner, especially on Fridays, spends at least forty
minutes sharing their week, including the ups and downs, all
while consciously attempting to support and validate one
another and to explore deep emotions.
Each partner can put a check mark next to the suggestions

below that they might like. Two check marks indicate
agreement. Or use them as inspiration to create your own
rituals together.
Regularly and deliberately holding, hugging, and kissing on
waking, going to sleep, leaving home, and returning.
Writing letters and leaving short notes for one another,
especially when one person is going away or when a couple
has come together after a spat or a time of distance.
Participating in spiritual or other rituals together, such as
meeting for special family meals, planting the first spring
flowers in a family garden, praying or attending religious
events.
Creating a personal sharing ritual that is a time just for
sharing things and connecting, not for problem-solving or
pragmatic discussions.
Arranging a special time just to be together (e.g., having
breakfast in bed without the kids, shifting schedules to eat
breakfast together every day, going for a walk or exercise
together).
Maintaining a regular date night, even if only once a month.
Once a year, taking a class together, learning something
new, or doing a project together.
Attending to your partner’s daily struggles and victories and
validating them on a regular basis (e.g. small comments like,
“That was hard for you to do, but you went for it,” or, “You
worked so hard on that project, no one could have tried
harder”).
Taking opportunities to publicly recognize your partner and
your relationship. (e.g., a ceremony, such as a renewal of
vows, or it can be a simple thank-you to your partner in front
of friends for making a wonderful supper or helping you
reach a personal goal).
Our shared ideas for rituals of separation and reunion:
Separation:
Reunion:
CHECKPOINT: Safety First
Sorting out attachment issues from everyday recurring problems

so that the latter can be easily tackled together is a key part of
keeping love strong. Couples who practice EFT become skilled
at solving the day-to-day problems that plague their relationship.
They learn to become cooperative, open, and flexible. This is
because mundane problems are now just that. They are no
longer the screen on which partners’ attachment fears and
unmet needs are projected.
Are you aware of the practical problems that play recurring
roles in your relationship? Can you identify how they might
threaten your newfound commitment to one another? Do you
notice if one of these issues still triggers a fear? I encourage
couples, as part of their planning for the future, to take an
ongoing frustration, such as wanting your partner to be a more
involved parent or to be included in your partner’s social
gatherings, and to have an A.R.E. conversation around the
issue, sharing the attachment needs and fears that this topic
brings up.
WORKSHEET: Creating a Resilient Relationship Story
We use stories to make sense of our lives. And we use them as

models to guide us in the future. We shape stories and then
stories shape us. Once partners feel safe with one another,
they can create a clear story of their relationship and figure out
how to recover from disconnections and make their bond
stronger. This not only sums up their past in a way that makes
sense, it gives them a blueprint for the future.
Your Resilient Relationship Story should recap how you both
have been stuck in insecurity and then found ways to move out
of those mires together. In the process of writing your story, you
will both reflect on your relationship. It is not uncommon for
couples who haven’t begun their EFT journey yet to have two
very different versions of the relationship, as if they have been
living in a different marriage. Now you will be able to create a
clear, logical story of how your problems evolved and how you
have reclaimed your marriage.
Before you write your story, use the following prompts to
help you articulate the various elements.
Three adjectives or images that describe your relationship

when it was stalled with insecurity and negative spirals.
(e.g., dead-ended, exhausting, a minefield.)
Two different verbs that capture how both of you moved in

your negative dance and how you were able to change the
pattern. (e.g., I pushed, you turned away, then, but we
learned to talk about how scared we were and reached out
for one another.)
One key moment when you saw one another differently,

felt new emotions, and were able to reach for one another.
(e.g., I remember that Saturday afternoon when I had
walked out. I came back into the room and you were
weeping. The look on your face really got to me. I just felt
sad and I needed your help. We had to help one another
get there.)
Three adjectives, emotions, or images that express your
relationship right now. (e.g., playful, contented, delighted,
blessed, hand in hand)
One thing you are doing to keep your connection with one
another open and growing. (e.g., cuddling before we fall
asleep, kissing when we wake up)
Now write your story. Don’t forget to give it a fantastic title!

CHECKPOINT: Holding On to Positive Changes
When you move into new ways of connecting with your partner,
it is useful to take the new emotions, perceptions, and
responses and integrate them into a narrative that captures all
these changes. Your Resilient Relationship Story gives you a
coherent way of reflecting on your relationship drama, a drama
that is always unfolding no matter how clear your focus.
Revisiting your story makes it easier to hold on to the positive
changes you’ve made and gives you a model of your
relationship as a safe haven that you build together and can
rebuild again.
WORKSHEET: Create a Future Love Story

I now ask partners to make up their Future Love Story. The
more of a safe haven we have with our loved one, the more
assured, assertive, and adventurous we can be. When our
loved one is by our side, we tend to have more faith in
ourselves and can dream in a new, expansive way. In this story,
partners relate their vision of their future relationship. They then
ask one another for support and discuss how they can make it
a reality together. Consider the following questions to get you
started.
What are your personal dreams for the next year? For the
next five years?
Partner 1: One year _________________________________

__________________________________________________
_____
Five years _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Partner 2: One year _________________________________
__________________________________________________
_____
Five years _________________________________________
_______________________________________________
How do you envision your relationship in the future? (e.g.,

improve our sex life, or maintain certain rituals we’ve
created.)
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
When you are very old, what would you like to be your
legacy? For example, what would you like to be able to tell
your grandchildren about your relationship? Or what
photos or other artifacts do you hope your good friends
will hold on to? What do these artifacts represent or
show?
Partner 1:
Partner 2:
Now write your story. Have fun giving it a title!

Hold These Tight
• Reviewing, ritual-making, and story-writing are ways of encouraging
couples to continuously pay attention to their relationships.
• Having a strong and lasting love helps partners thrive emotionally and
intellectually. We don’t need to be rich or smart or funny; we just
have to be there, in all senses of the word.
• Love can do more than last — it can flower again and again.
Discover Your Next Great Read
Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite
authors.
Tap here to learn more.

Congratulations! You’ve just taken a huge step on your journey as a
couple. Please visit drsuejohnson.com to find videos, articles, and online
courses to further explore how EFT can enhance your relationship. I also
invite you to subscribe to my monthly newsletter or visit me on social
media.
May you continue to hold one another tight, for a lifetime of love!
DrSueJohnson
@Dr_SueJohnson
DoctorSueJohnson
RESOURCES
BOOKS:
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic
Relationships Created for Connection
ONLINE COURSE:
Hold Me Tight® Online — www.holdmetightonline.com
For more information on all of Dr. Sue Johnson’s materials, please visit
drsuejohnson.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DR. SUE JOHNSON, a recipient of the Order of Canada, is an internationally

recognized leader in the field of couple interventions. A clinical
psychologist, Distinguished Research Professor at Alliant International
University in San Diego, and professor emeritas with the University of
Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Johnson is the primary developer of Emotionally
Focused Therapy (EFT) and as the Director of the International Centre for
Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT), has trained
thousands of therapists in North America and around the world. She is the
author of numerous articles and books, including Hold Me Tight, Love
Sense, and Created for Connection.
DrSueJohnson
@Dr_SueJohnson
DoctorSueJohnson
drsuejohnson.com
ALSO BY DR. SUE JOHNSON
Hold Me Tight:
Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
Love Sense:
The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships
Created for Connection:
The “Hold Me Tight” Guide for Christian Couples (with Kenneth

Sanderfer)
Also available from Dr. Sue Johnson
“The best couples’ therapist in the world”
— John Gottman, PhD, bestselling author
Hold Me Tight
More than 1 million copies sold
“This fabulous book will be of great benefit to couples trying to find

their way to better communication and deeper, more fulfilling ways
of being with each other. Bravo!”
— Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., author of The Whole Brain Child
Love Sense
“There is much in Love Sense that any couple who has ever felt out
of tune will relate to, and good advice for building harmony for the
long haul.”
— The Wall Street Journal
Created for Connection
A groundbreaking and remarkably successful program for creating

stronger, more secure relationships not only between partners, but
between us and God.

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INTRODUCTION Your Love Can Make Sense Again

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY DR. SUE JOHNSON

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM DR. SUE JOHNSON

Tap here to learn more.

Your Love Can Make Sense Again

WHY A WORKBOOK? WHY NOW?

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM EFT AND THIS WORKBOOK

THE GOALS AS YOU MOVE THROUGH THIS WORKBOOK ARE TO:

While the success of EFT is enjoyed by couples practicing it together,

SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO USE

Our Emotional Responses and the

DEMAND AND WITHDRAW: IDENTIFYING YOUR PRIMAL

LET’S GET INTROSPECTIVE: Journal Exercise

DEMANDERS OFTEN FEEL:

Frightened of their aloneness; scared they’re not wanted

WITHDRAWERS OFTEN FEEL:

Reflect on what scares you most.

A.R.E.: ACCESSIBILITY, RESPONSIVENESS, AND

QUESTIONNAIRE: How A.R.E. You?

From your viewpoint, is your partner available to you?

From your viewpoint, is your partner responsive to you?

Are you positively emotionally engaged with one another?

UNDERSTANDING YOUR PRIMAL PANIC RESPONSE

WHEN I DON’T FEEL SAFELY CONNECTED TO YOU, I OFTEN DEMAND BY:

I MOVE AWAY FROM YOU (WITHDRAW) BY:

Trying to zone out

LET’S GET INTROSPECTIVE: Journal Exercise

My partner might see me as:

Do you and your partner have different or similar primal panic

WORKSHEET: Mapping Your Moves

Fill in the cue that starts up the music of disconnection. Try to

Example responses include:

I do it in the hope that _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

4. Summarize the most catastrophic conclusion you can

What I then say to myself about our relationship is

5. Choose a phrase that best describes the action of your

6. Insert verbs that describe your and your partner’s

As this pattern keeps going, I feel _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

My understanding of the circular dance that makes it harder

Our Demon Dialogue

Hold These Tight

Recognizing the Demon Dialogues

DEMON DIALOGUE 1: FIND THE BAD GUY

Find the Bad Guy fights tend to…

The dance goes like this:

LET’S GET INTROSPECTIVE: Journal Exercise

DEMON DIALOGUE 2: THE PROTEST POLKA

The dance goes like this:

The more dangerous I appear…

LET’S GET INTROSPECTIVE: Journal Exercise

Do you agree with any or all of the following statements that

I have a broken heart. I could weep forever. Sometimes I feel

Do you agree with any of the following statements that characterize

I do it in the hope that ______________________________

As this pattern keeps going, I feel _____________________

In that moment of disconnection, deep down I felt __________

In that moment of disconnection, deep down I felt __________