Quotes from Sue Johnson

If we love our partners, why do we not just hear each other's calls for attention and connection and respond with caring? Because much of the time we are not tuned in to our partners. We are distracted or caught up in our own agendas. We do not know how to speak the language of attachment, we do not give clear messages about what we need or how much we care. Often we speak tentatively because we feel ambivalent about our own needs. Or

When we feel safely linked to our partners, we more easily roll with the hurts they inevitably inflict, and we are less likely to be aggressively hostile when we get mad at them.

The results of EFT, as measured in a multitude of studies, have been astoundingly positive—better, in fact, than the outcomes of any other therapy that has been offered.

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

Sociologist James House of the University of Michigan declares that emotional isolation is a more dangerous health risk than smoking or high blood pressure, and we now warn everyone about these two! Perhaps these findings reflect the time-honored saying "Suffering is a given; suffering alone is intolerable.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself Beloved on the Earth." —Raymond Carver

Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University makes the point that, "In life, the challenge is not so much to figure out how best to play the game; the challenge is to figure out what game you are playing.

the quality of positive support—reassurance that a partner is loved and esteemed and is capable of taking control of his or her life—is the most crucial factor in the health of any relationship.

Ultimately, these remedies are ineffectual because they don't address the source of relationship distress: the fear that emotional connection—the font of all comfort and respite—is vanishing.

If you know your loved one is there and will come when you call, you are more confident of your worth, your value. And the world is less intimidating when you have another to count on and know that you are not alone.

The emotions do not deserve being put into opposition with "intelligence." The emotions are themselves a higher order of intelligence. —O. Hobart Mowrer

As Yogi Berra said, "If you don't know where you're going, you will wind up somewhere else.

Emotional Responsiveness— The Key to a Lifetime of Love A person's "heart withers if it does not answer another heart." —Pearl S. Buck Tim

what happens when trauma survivors stay emotionally shut down? Trauma's echoes cannot dissipate. The continuing reverberations gradually erode connection and trust with loved ones. Partners need to recognize that avoiding emotion sets their relationship up for descent

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

Her thoughts immediately brought to mind a line by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "I shall but love thee better after death." Some pains are sweet.

In a group of studies Mikulincer showed that when we feel safely connected to others we understand ourselves better and like ourselves more.

The more we can reach out to our partners, the more separate and independent we can be.

But we are now starting to realize that traumatic stress is almost as common as depression. More than 12 percent of U.S. women in a recent large survey reported having significant post-traumatic stress at some point in their lives.

If you have a responsive love partner, you have a secure base in the chaos. If you are emotionally alone, you are in free fall. Having someone you can rely on for connection and support makes healing from trauma easier.

God loved you before you were born, and God will love you after you die. In Scripture, God says, 'I have loved you with an everlasting love.' This is the fundamental truth of your identity. This is who you are, whether you feel it or not. You belong to God from eternity to eternity. Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, 'I love you too.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide; When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, Oh, abide with me.

My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery—always buzzing, humming, soaring, roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for? —Virginia Woolf

Love is simply short-lived, disguised sexual infatuation, Freud's basic instinct dressed up.