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

The third principle of this book is that partners relate to one another primarily as anchors, islands, or waves. You and your partner should become familiar with each others’ relationship styles. We get to know our partner fully in order to become competent as managers of our partners in the best way. By competent managers, I mean partners who are experts on one another and know how to move, shift, motivate, influence, soothe, and inspire one another. In contrast, partners who are not experts on one another tend to create a mutual sense of threat and insecurity. They don’t enjoy a couple bubble. These partners also tend to wish the other would change, listen to them, or do things the way they do, and ultimately believe they coupled with the wrong person. Sadly, these partners merely recreate the insensitivity, injustice, and insecurity of their childhood, never really knowing what is within their reach “if only … .” For many people, closeness brings both the promise of safety and security and a threat to safety and security. This raises the question, how do you get what you want and need from a relationship, while avoiding what you fear might happen? This quandary is similar to stealing honey without being stung by a bee. The degree to which we must work to get the honey, while avoiding getting stung, in intimate relationships is the degree to which we feel fundamentally insecure. But here’s the rub: if we feel insecure about close relationships, there is no way to become ...