Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner's Brain Can Help You Defuse Conflicts and Spark Intimacy

Description

"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 a partner's brain and promoting love and trust within a romantic relationship. Readers learn ten scientific principles they can use to avoid triggering fear and panic in their partners, manage their partners' emotional reactions when they do become upset, and recognize when the brain's threat response is hindering their ability to act in a loving way. 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. Based in the sound science of neurobiology, attachment theory, and emotion regulation research, this book is essential reading for couples and others interested in understanding the complex dynamics at work behind love and trust in intimate relationships.

Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT, is a clinician, researcher, teacher, and developer of the psychobiological approach to couples therapy. He is assistant clinical professor in the family medicine department at the University of California, Los Angeles and is on the adjunct faculty of the masters psychology program at Antioch University in Santa Barbara, the masters psychology program at the California Lutheran University of Thousand Oaks, and the doctoral pre- and perinatal psychology program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. He teaches and supervises psychology students at Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills and is the creator of A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy, or PACT. He is coauthor of Love and War in Intimate Relationships.

"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 "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 "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 "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 "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