Wired for Love (16 page)

Here are some supporting principles to guide you as you develop launching and landing rituals:

1. You both benefit when you put your partner to bed. Although going to sleep together every night would be nice, that isn’t always feasible. One or the other of you may have work to do on a given night. Or, as we discussed, one of you may be a night owl. Nevertheless, you can find the time to put your partner to bed. Make this a habit. And take turns on different nights so both of you have the experience of being put to bed.
   
2. Variety is the spice of ritual. Create lots of bedtime and morning rituals for yourselves. For example, sometimes you may like to watch a TV program or movie together, as a way to wind down from the day. Of course, this easily can become an isolating activity (islands, I’m talking to you). Don’t let that happen. Be sure to make contact at regular intervals during the program or movie. Talk about it (you’re not in a movie theater, so don’t worry about disturbing anyone else). Look at your partner during emotional, funny, or stupid moments. Hold hands.
   

   Other suggestions for bedtime rituals include:
   

   1. Listen to an audio book or a podcast. Or the good old-fashioned radio. Turn the lights out, hold hands, and listen together.
      
   2. Pray together. (No religion required.)
      
   3. Spend time quietly gazing into your partner’s eyes. It can be playful and fun. It can also be relaxing.
      
   4. Read to your partner. When was the last time someone read to you or you read to someone? Caution: reading to your partner can put him or her to sleep, so if that’s not your intent, consider choosing something else to do.
      
   5. Tickle your partner’s back, draw pictures on your partner’s back, or play the “guess what word I’m writing on your back” game. Do this in the dark so it’s a bedtime transition.
      
   6. Give your partner an orgasm. It’s good for health and for the relationship. Your partner having an orgasm can give you a contact high. Endorphins, oxytocin, and vasopressin flow into both partners’ bloodstreams, making you feel connected. Orgasms also are a great muscle relaxant and antianxiety remedy.
      

   Suggestions for morning rituals include:
   

   1. Make breakfast (in bed, or not) for your partner. Alternatively, you can go out for breakfast or to a favorite coffee or tea shop.
      
   2. Lie in bed together and gaze into your partner’s eyes. Greet your partner with a loving “Good morning!”
      
   3. Quietly talk with your partner about the day and what each of you will be doing, facing, or accomplishing. Use this time to remind one another of tasks, appointments, or agreements concerning this day only. Make plans for the nighttime. Agree to meet in bed at a certain time.
      
   4. Give each other orgasms. This can work especially well as part of your morning and evening rituals if you and your partner have opposing sexual arousal patterns (“I want sex at night, and he wants it in the morning”). This way each gets what he or she wants.
      
3. Wherever one goes, the other goes. For partners who share a couple bubble, this is true emotionally, even when it isn’t always the case physically. It’s kind of like running a three-legged race: if one person falls, the other can’t go anywhere. So you want to work as a team and hold each other up. When it comes time to separate, whether for the day or a longer trip, make certain to give your partner a proper send-off. Make eye contact, embrace, make reaffirming remarks about your feelings for one another, and do whatever else it takes to fill your partner’s tank to the brim. You want him or her to perform at his or her peak.
   

Chapter 6

The Go-To People: How to Remain Available to One Another

Marsha and Brian have been together for twelve years. Intentionally childless, they committed themselves to their respective careers and to standing in as the best possible surrogate parents to their nieces and nephews whenever necessary. By all accounts, Marsha and Brian are very much in love. But one problem has been brewing since they first met: both Brian and Marsha retain their own counsel in the form of friends, colleagues, and even on occasion separate psychotherapists. Both are accustomed to going to others outside their couple bubble for the purpose of sharing intimate details about themselves, and neither serves as the primary go-to person for the other. Both have had their secrets, and both have spread information to which the other was not privy. Neither sees any problem with this.

One night as they’re sitting down to dinner, Marsha turns to her husband and says, “Who is the girl I saw you with on that social networking site?”

Brian looks up, surprised. “What girl?”

Marsha eats two mouthfuls of salad before she replies. “I saw a tagged photo of you with this woman on my friend’s page,” she says nonchalantly. “You had a green plastic cup in your hand, and your arm was around her. Look, I don’t care. I just want to know.”

Brian sets his fork down. “I didn’t even know you were into social networking. You looked at your friend’s page? That means
you
have a page on that site.”

“I do,” Marsha acknowledges. “You don’t have to know everything about me, do you?”

“Nope,” says Brain. “You’re right, I don’t.”

They eat in silence for a few moments. “So,” says Marsha, “who’s that woman?”

Brian gives a short laugh. “You don’t have to know everything about me, either,” he says, “do you?”

For a second Marsha looks taken aback. Then she joins his laugh. And the issue is dropped…at least for the time being.

The Benefits of Feeling Tethered to Another Person

But as I mentioned, trouble has been brewing for Brian and Marsha. It finally surfaces after she loses her job as VP of marketing during an economic downturn. Suddenly the life she seemingly breezed through is filled with uncertainty. She finds herself second-guessing her career choices, relationship security, even the decision not to have children. Talking with her usual circle of friends doesn’t provide the level of support she needs. Perhaps the worst part is that, for the first time, Marsha and Brian find themselves constantly quibbling.

“I feel like I can’t talk to you,” she says. “I can talk to my sisters and my best friends. Why not you?”

One answer to Marsha’s plea might be the simple difference that Brian is Marsha’s primary attachment partner. This makes him “deep family” in a way others are not. If Marsha were to marry one of her best friends, we would quickly find out if she could still talk as easily as she would like. Things change when a person is elevated to primary attachment status. However, it could also be that Brian himself makes it difficult for her to talk to him.

“Of course you can talk to me,” says Brian with as much sincerity as he can muster. “You can talk to me about pretty much anything.”

“So then why don’t you tell me stuff about yourself?” counters Marsha, putting aside her own pressing issues for the moment. “I know you keep things from me—things you tell your best buddies.”

“Well, there are certain things I like to keep private. I think you should keep things private, too. I think it would be boring if people were completely open books.”

We therapists keep an ear out for comments such as Brian’s. His notion of things being kept private reveals his one-person or pro-self model of relationships, which is characteristic of islands and waves. For the past twelve years, Marsha has been comfortable with that, too. But now her own personal crisis is pushing her to seek another way of relating within her marriage.

“Why can’t I know the same things your friends know?” Marsha persists.

“They understand things you just wouldn’t understand,” replies Brian. “They’re guys, for Pete’s sake!”

“I don’t get it,” says Marsha, shaking her head.

“There you go. I rest my case,” laughs Brian. “You just don’t get it.”

What this couple lacks is the means to create for themselves a consistent sense of security—a feeling of being tethered to one another, of having a secure base from which to launch and land. By tethered, I mean connected in such a way that—as with a blankie, a warm glass of milk, or a teddy bear—we feel a level of comfort and security that can get us through our days and nights. Marsha and Brian do not share this kind of secure connection. They don’t benefit from the protection of a couple bubble, and although they occasionally give lip service to the notion of “you can always talk to me,” in reality they aren’t free to go to one another about anything and everything that might be on their minds.

What Matters Most

To be sure, most of us begin to realize the need to be tethered to at least one other person, if not early in life, then eventually as we near death. A mentor of mine once told me that people near death never talk about wishing they had traveled to this place or that, or made this amount of money. Their lament, if any, was about their relationships. Many wished they had said they were sorry, or told someone they loved him or her, or just been able to feel closer. So if you’re among the skeptics when it comes to committed relationships, I challenge you to interview people who are elderly or even visit folks on their deathbed. Ask them what mattered most in their life.

Philosophers have written extensively about the basic questions facing all human beings: Who am I? Where did I come from, and where will I go after I die? Does life have meaning? Am I ultimately alone?

How do we deal with such questions? Historically, people have relied on a range of philosophical, mythic, and religious narratives to provide answers in the face of fundamental uncertainty. More recently, we have turned to psychiatry and psychology and pharmacology for answers, or at least to feel better in the meantime. Sweat lodges, meditation, climbing mountain peaks, and trekking to the North Pole are among the means used by seekers.

But what really do we have to sustain us as life becomes more complex and losses mount as a natural consequence of living longer? Perhaps it is being tethered to at least one other person who is available at our beck and call; one person to whom we can reach out, whom we can touch, and by whom we can be touched in return. I submit to you that the most powerful sustenance available to us is another person who’s interested and who cares. He or she serves as our go-to person, the one individual we can always count on to be there for us. Being available in this way is perhaps the most valuable gift you can give your partner.

In early childhood, our go-to person hopefully was our primary caregiver. In adulthood, the go-to person should be our primary partner. Unlike our early caregivers, our adult partner relies on the benefits of tethering in exactly the same way we do; that is, equally and mutually. In other words, while our early tethering was one-way, or asymmetric, our adult tethering should be symmetric.

If you are an anchor you already know all of this, so please bear with me. If you are an island or wave—especially what I’ve termed (in chapter 3) a wild island or wild wave—we have some chatting to do. The idea of tethering is problematic for you, isn’t it? If you’re an island, you probably don’t believe much in tethering. After all, you are good by yourself, and others can be such a bother. If you’re a wave, you believe in tethering, but it’s a rather childish and one-way kind. You want to be tethered, but you either don’t expect it in return or are unwilling to give it in return.

Wired for Tethering

In addition to the role played by our early primary caregivers, the brain can set us up for easy tethering…or not. Helen Fisher, a social anthropologist and researcher on romantic love, and her colleagues (Fisher, Aron, and Brown 2005) report that during courtship, couples’ brains are awash in excitatory neurotransmitters and hormones, such as noradrenaline and dopamine. Some of the same areas of the brain that are involved in addiction behaviors, such as the
ventral tegmental
area (where dopamine is produced), also are activated in romantic love. This accounts for the addictive qualities so characteristic of the infatuation phase of a relationship. Although noradrenaline and dopamine are plentiful in the infatuated brain, serotonin, a calming neurotransmitter, is in low supply. Hence the obsessive, anxious, and worried aspect of romantic love.

Couples who make it beyond the courtship phase and into a more secure, settled phase—notably anchors—have a more active
raphe nucleus
, where serotonin is produced. They are able to readily calm down and relax with one another. We could say they are wired to tether with one another. Island and wave partners, on the other hand, tend to have a less active raphe nucleus. These couples remain anxious and worried; they aren’t able to tether properly, and do not easily and willingly serve as go-to people for each other.

Exercise: Your Childhood Go-To People

Before you commit to being the go-to person for your partner, you may find it helpful to take a look at your own early experiences. Chances are that how you related to go-to people as a child will influence how you approach being the go-to person in your current relationship.

1. Ask yourself, to whom did I go as a child? And for what? Stop for a moment and think about the go-to people in your early life. Think back as far as you can remember. To whom did you run (or even crawl)? If it was a parent, which parent was it?
   
2. See if you can recall any specific incidents, however small they might have been. Perhaps you had a nightmare and called for your mother. Maybe she brought you a glass of warm milk. Or perhaps you got a boo-boo on the nursery school playground, and the teacher took you inside and put some ointment on it.
   
3. As you recall these incidents, see if you also can remember to what degree you felt safe with your go-to people. Could you count on them? Or were there times when your go-to people let you down? Perhaps a particular go-to person who repeatedly let you down? If so, were you able to find a new go-to person with whom you felt safer?
   
4. Finally, ask yourself what your relationship is today with the most important go-to people from your childhood. Are you still in close touch? Do you still go to them for anything?