Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship

by Stan Tatkin, Harville Hendrix (Foreword by)

Overview

"What the heck is my partner thinking?" is a common refrain in romantic relationships, and with good reason. Every person is wired for love differently, with different habits, needs, and reactions to conflict. The good news is that most people's minds work in predictable ways and respond well to security, attachment, and rituals, making it possible to actually neurologically prime the brain for greater love and fewer conflicts.

Wired for Love is a complete insider’s guide to understanding your partner’s brain and enjoying a romantic relationship built on love and trust. Synthesizing research findings on how and why love lasts drawn from neuroscience, attachment theory, and emotion regulation, this book presents ten guiding principles that can improve any relationship.

Strengthen your relationship by:

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Creating and maintaining a safe “couple bubble”

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Using morning and evening rituals to stay connected

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Learning to fight so that nobody loses

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Becoming the expert on what makes your partner feel loved

By learning to use simple gestures and words, readers can learn to put out emotional fires and help their partners feel more safe and secure. The no-fault view of conflict in this book encourages readers to move past a "warring brain" mentality and toward a more cooperative "loving brain" understanding of the relationship. This book is essential reading for couples and others interested in understanding the complex dynamics at work behind love and trust in intimate relationships.

While there’s no doubt that love is an inexact science, if you can discover how you and your partner are wired differently, you can overcome your differences to create a lasting intimate connection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608820580
Publisher:	New Harbinger Publications
Publication date:	01/02/2012
Series:	Unassigned Series
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	11,525
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Stan Tatkin, PsyD, is a clinician, researcher, teacher, and developer of the psychobiological approach to couple therapy. He teaches and supervises family medicine residents at Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills and lives with his wife and daughter in Calabasas, CA.

Foreword writer Harville Hendrix, PhD, is a clinical pastoral counselor, cocreator of imago relationship therapy, and author of Getting the Love You Want.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Foreword ix

Introduction: Wired for Love 1

Chapter 1 The Couple Bubble: How You Can Keep Each Other Safe and Secure 7

Chapter 2 The Warring/Loving Brain: How You Can Keep the Love Alive 23

Chapter 3 Know Your Partner: How Does He or She Really Work? 45

Chapter 4 Becoming Experts on One Another: How to Please and Soothe Your Partner 71

Chapter 5 Launchings and Landings: How to Use Morning and Bedtime Rituals 89

Chapter 6 The Go-To People: How to Remain Available to One Another 103

Chapter 7 Protecting the Couple Bubble: How to Include Outsiders 119

Chapter 8 Fighting Well: How to Win by Letting Your Partner Win, Too 139

Chapter 9 Love Is Up Close: How to Rekindle Love Through Eye Contact 157

Chapter 10 Live a Happier, Healthier Life: How Your Partnership CanHealYou 169

Postscript 177

References 179

Editorial Reviews

“This book is grounded in the latest brain science, as well as being wonderfully friendly, encouraging, and practical. It shows readers how to stay out of dead-end conflicts and instead light up the neural circuits of empathy, skillful communication, and love. A marvelous resource.”

—Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Buddha's Brain

“I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it that I can use as a therapist. Stan Tatkin is a great innovator. This book is a must for every couples’ therapist’s library.”

—John Gottman, author of The Science of Trust

“If you feel lost, confused or alone in your relationship, get this book right now. You will finally make sense out of chaos and pain. This is your map to go from frustration and insecurity to realize the potential of why you initially got together. Stan Tatkin’s insightful book will teach you to work as a team to make your relationship journey safe, engaging, and deeply satisfying.”

—Peter Pearson, PhD, couples therapy specialist and cofounder of The Couples Institute in Menlo Park, CA

“Stan Tatkin shows how our couple relationships would look if we took seriously what attachment theory and neuroscience research has taught us.”

—Dan Wile, author of After the Honeymoon

“Wired for Love challenges partners to experience their relationship in a totally new way. Partners will learn how to engage positively as a couple to help each other feel safe and secure by following the relationship exercises suggested in this exciting new book. In clear, concise language, Tatkin describes the ways that partners can understand and become experts on one another. He suggests building a “couple bubble” wherein each partner is the most important person in the other’s life, the one individual on whom the partner can always count.”

—Marion F. Solomon, director of clinical training at Lifespan Learning Institute and author of Narcissism and Intimacy, Lean on Me, and other books

“Read this book to discover a multitude of new ways to enliven your relationship and end needless conflicts. Stan Tatkin is one of the most innovative thinkers in the couples relationship world today. It's impossible to read this book without learning new patterns to enhance your love.”

—Ellyn Bader, PhD, cocreator of the developmental model of couples therapy, codirector of The Couples Institute in Menlo Park, CA, and author of Tell Me No Lies and In Quest of the Mythical Mate

“Reading Stan Tatkin’s book makes you want to be in therapy with him. With intense and fearless clarity, he takes you into the trenches of the combative human brain and shows you how to make love, not war.”

—Esther Perel, LMFT, author of Mating in Captivity

From the Publisher