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

How I wish I had a resource like this years ago when I was struggling with my marriage. I've read a number of relationship tune-up books throughout the years, and each helped somewhat. It was very encouraging to see those same familiar authors (Hendrix, Gottman, Perel, etc.) offering praise for Dr. Tatkins work at the get go. And the fact that he's put so much good information into a book that is less than 200 pages is a testament to his organized approach, which was friendly, playful, and effective.

The explanations and exercises in the book proved to me for the first time that it's not just about doing positive things for your partner, and "thinking" about the relationship, but rather there are automatic responses that mess with a relationship no matter how much "thinking" we do. What a relief to know that problems can come from our biological wiring as well as our attachment history, and they can be easily managed once you know what to look for!

While it was a relief to learn how these neurological autopilots can be tamed, it makes me sad to realize I mostly didn't know what my brain was doing when in past relationships in an effort to feel safe, which now seems tragic. Like I said, I wish I had this book sooner. By distilling a great deal of research into understandable language, Dr. Tatkin has laid out a path to intimacy that I'd not seen before but now, makes so much sense. I dare say he has improved my concept of what being in love should look and feel like. Frankly, it feels MUCH better than I ever could have imagined.

No matter how good you think your relationship is, get this book!

My husband had a good laugh over my favorite line in the book: "When we recite our relationship vows, perhaps we should say, "I take you as my pain in the rear, with all your history and baggage, and I take responsibility for all prior injustices you endured at the hands of those I never knew, because you are now in my care.""

Wired for Love challenged my thinking about relationships. Reading it was an exercise in suspending judgement. Do I agree with his approach? Could I do it? Do I want to?

It's light on neuroscience for a nonscientific audience. Tatkin gives some specifics and then generalizes to simplify. The net is: We're wired for war, not love, and we need to help our partners minimize the "primates" (the parts wired for war) and grow the "ambassadors" (the parts wired for love).

He categories people in relationships into three fairly useful groups: Anchors (secure), Islands (avoidant) and Waves (ambivalent).

The thrust of the book is that you must make the relationship the most important thing in your life. All other relationships are secondary. For example, couples are advised to agree to tell each other anything going on with them before telling anyone else including a therapist. Your partner is your go-to, safe person, which reminded me of those attached-at-the-hip couples who do not operate as individuals that annoy me. Every word is "we." On the other hand, the idea is that you can't heal your relational childhood wounds without having a secure relationship that allows you to do this. But he says explicitly, this shouldn't be the goal of the relationship. "Acceptance, high regard, respect, devotion, support and safety" is the only way to help your partner with who they are, i.e., a partner operating as an island or wave).

Part of being in this "couple bubble" is getting to know what distresses and soothes your partner and offering support when he's distressed and vice versa. "If your partner's primates are large and in charge," you may be able to help your partner see this before he can and help him employ his ambassadors (as opposed to being angry when the primates show up and your partner goes on attack). "Your job is to devote yourself to your partner's sense of safety and security. Your job is to know what matters to your partner and how to make him or her feel safe and secure."

The book suggests certain practices as key to maintaining your "couple bubble": Being each other's go-to-person, having embracing/destressing/connecting rituals upon waking, retiring to sleep, leaving in the morning and returning in the evening, not allowing a "third" (children, family, friends, hobbies, addictions, etc.) to disrupt the "couple bubble," and eye contact for rekindling connection.

The book is light on conflict resolution because it's mostly about prevention and a paradigm shift in how you approach a relationship. About fighting, Tatkin claims that couples "who don't know how to fight well did not learn how to engage in rough-and-tumble play during childhood, like with a sibling "who helps us discover our strength and our impact on another's body. We learn how hard to push and pull, how to tell the other person not to push or pull so hard, and so on." By contrast, he refers to a child's parallel play as an example of not knowing how to interact. One of his suggestions is for couples to get down on the floor and engage in rough and tumble play.

"Self-interests will still exist, but they are folded into the greater good of the relationship, such that, when a fight occurs, nobody loses and everybody wins."

Tatkin's dialogue and examples of healthy couples seems contrived, but I do agree with his assertion that when couples are connected particularly in the beginning of the relationship, the behaviors he describes often come naturally (still his healthy couple dialogue feels forced).

Adopting Taskin's suggestions challenge Western, modern views of independent, healthy individuals coming together in partnership. At the same time, the book may point to some fundamental causes for the difficulties in primary relationships.

Hendrix's introduction is useful as a survey of the evolution of primary relationships, the birth of marriage counseling, its founding philosophy and its failure.

Readers who are ready to embrace Taskin's approach will find plenty of suggestions to address relationship issues without a therapist. By contrast, Sue Johnson's, Hold Me Tight, is excellent for understanding where couples go wrong, but offers more as an accompaniment to therapy rather than an explicit plan for motivated couples to change relationship dynamics on their own or in addition to therapy.

Love and connection is essential to our health and wellbeing
throughout our life. Couples, despite their best intention, often
fail to preserve the bonds of support, safety and connectedness that
we all desire and need to survive and thrive in a difficult world. In
this book Stan Tatkin offers individuals and couples a lens through
which to view relationships that is very much needed in lay and
professional circles. Often well meaning self help books, counselors,
healing professionals and friends encourage strategies that
inadvertently widen the divide between couples. In our Western
society we are prided on independence and separateness. Needing
others is often seen as weakness or codependence. . . even though
current neuroscientific understandings and brain research is proving
otherwise. In simple and easy to understand language Stan brings
relevant neuroscientific discoveries to the kitchen table. For
couples struggling to preserve the bonds of intimacy, connection and
support this understanding alleviates much misunderstanding and
personal suffering. Understanding how our early subconscious
imprinting of relationships are formed provides a lens with which to
view relational difficulties non pathologically. It is a hopeful book
which bypasses the narrative story which often binds couples in a
never ending cycle of conflict, misunderstanding and hurt. Making
relationships succeed requires work and Stan challenges us to take
responsibility for understanding ourselves and our partners nervous
system and move beyond the limited concepts of codependency that often
divide us from the very connections and bonds we need and desire!
Highly recommended for every individual, couple and healing
professional! Thank you Stan!

Brian J. Whelan, LCSW, CST, SEP
Boulder, CO