Created for Connection Quotes

“Distressed partners may use different words but they are always asking the same basic questions: “Are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Will you come when I need you, when I call?”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“If love relationships aren’t bargains, deals about profit and loss—what are they?” I heard myself say, casually, “Oh, they’re emotional bonds.… You can’t reason or bargain for love. It’s an emotional response.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“Emotion comes from the Latin word emovere, to move. We talk of being “moved” by our emotions, and we are “moved” when those we love show their deeper feelings to us.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“When a relationship is in free fall, men typically talk of feeling rejected, inadequate, and a failure, women of feeling abandoned and unconnected.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“The Hebraic word for love in the Bible, ialeph,ayin, is silent. It is actually just a sound—the sound of inhaling and exhaling. Throughout Scripture this word is used to describe the intimate connection that God desires to have with us and that we can have with our life partners. This kind of love is one in which we are so close to our beloved that we breathe in the breath of the other. This closeness is described as panim el panim, which literally means face-to-face. The Christian faith affirms that God desires a breath-to-breath and face-to-face relationship with us. This, then, is the model for our love with our partners.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“The people we love, asserts Coan, are the hidden regulators of our bodily processes and our emotional lives. When love doesn’t work, we hurt. Indeed, “hurt feelings” is a precisely accurate phrase, according to psychologist Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California. Her brain imaging studies show that rejection and exclusion trigger the same circuits in the same part of the brain, the anterior cingulate, as physical pain. In fact, this part of the brain turns on anytime we are emotionally separated from those who are close to us.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“Having close ties with others is vital to every aspect of our health—mental, emotional, and physical.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“In one task, a person’s behavior was described to them and they were asked to evaluate this person’s negative and positive traits. Connected participants more easily absorbed new information about the person and revised their assessments. Openness to new experience and flexibility of belief seem to be easier when we feel safe and connected to others. Curiosity comes out of a sense of safety, rigidity out of being vigilant to threats.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“The relationship between God and people of faith can be understood as an attachment bond, in which God is a safe haven, a secure base, and the ultimate source of comfort and care.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“There are only a few simple strategies that we use to connect and deal with perceived disconnection. When we feel safe enough, we can risk reaching for a loved one and asking for our needs to be met. When we feel unsafe, we resort to demanding and controlling or, if we truly expect rejection and desertion, we try to turn away and shut down our needs for connection. These negative strategies can shape the very disconnection we are trying to cope with or avoid.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“Emotional accessibility and responsiveness to another’s signals and needs shape secure loving connection. The quality of our emotional engagement is the key element that shapes our love relationships.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“Loss of a felt sense of connection with such loved ones is painful and creates a disorienting sense of vulnerability. Disconnection at times of high need can be traumatizing for human beings.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“In their answers, adults spoke of needing emotional closeness from their lover, wanting assurance that their lover would respond when they were upset, being distressed when they felt separate and distant from their loved one, and feeling more confident about exploring the world when they knew that their lover had their back. They also indicated different ways of dealing with their partner. When they felt secure with their lover, they could reach out and connect easily; when they felt insecure, they either became anxious, angry, and controlling, or they avoided contact altogether and stayed distant.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“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. The experiment was called the Strange Situation and has generated literally thousands of scientific studies and revolutionized developmental psychology.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“Forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early 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 on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection. Adult attachments may be more reciprocal and less centered on constant physical contact, but the nature of the emotional bond is the same.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“Can I count on you, depend on you? Are you there for me? Will you respond to me when I need, when I call? Do I matter to you? Am I valued and accepted by you? Do you need me, rely on me?”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“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.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“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.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“love is like a language. If you speak it, it flows more and more easily. If you don’t, then you start to lose it.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“The kids who can calm themselves usually have warmer, more responsive mothers, while the moms of the angry kids are unpredictable in their behavior, and the moms of the detached kids are colder and dismissive.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples

“effective dependency” and how being able, from “the cradle to the grave,” to turn to others for emotional support is a sign and source of strength.”
― Sue Johnson, Created for Connection: The "Hold Me Tight" Guide for Christian Couples