Jed Diamond had trouble in relationships, until he learned that love isn’t a mystery. Now he’s happily married for 33 years.
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I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want a joyful, intimate, loving, relationship that lasts forever. But we sure seem to have a difficult time making relationships work. According to relationship expert John Gottman, the divorce rate is between 43 percent and 67 percent depending on the study. That’s not very encouraging.
My wife, Carlin, and I have been married for 33 years. It is the third marriage for both of us. In our two previous relationships we did our best to understand love. Things would start out great, but always end badly. I became angry, depressed, and overstressed. I began to have sexual problems. I had to admit that, though I was a marriage and family counselor, I was really in the dark about love. What helped us to keep our marriage alive and well was what we learned about the “new science of love.”
I had to admit that, though I was a marriage and family counselor, I was really in the dark about love.
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Two of experts in this emerging field are John Gottman and Sue Johnson. Dr. Gottman is world renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction and has conducted 40 years of breakthrough research with thousands of couples. Dr. Johnson is the author of Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships and is the primary developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) which has demonstrated its effectiveness in over 25 years of peer-reviewed clinical research.
I’ve learned a lot about the new science of love and share many of my insights in my new book, Stress Relief for Men: How to Use the Revolutionary Tools of Energy Healing to Live Well. One of the key tools is what I call “attachment love.” We used to think that the best relationships were based on two people “standing on their own two feet” and taking responsibility for their individual needs. Now we know that we are deeply connected and true love recognizes how much we are dependent on each other.
Secrets for a Lifetime of Love, Sex, and Intimacy
Here are the newly emerging facts that are important in understanding, developing, and maintaining a loving relationship that lasts through time. Until I learned the real science of love, like most people, I thought love was a wonderful mystery that blessed us at times and left us at times. I collected quotes that seemed to express my experience including these two:
“Love is a friendship set to music.” Joseph Campbell
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.” Anaïs Nin
But I needed more than beautiful words to help my own marriage and to help me help others. I longed for the key that would unlock the door and show me the way. Here are a few of the things I’ve learned from Dr. Johnson’s book which Dr. Gottman says is, “An absolute must for anyone who wants to understand how Love Makes Sense.”
1. The first and foremost instinct of humans is neither sex nor aggression. It is to connect.
The man who first offered us this vision of what we now call attachment or bonding was an uptight, aristocratic English psychiatrist named John Bowlby. But from the wounds of his early experiences separated from his parents, he was nevertheless a rebel who changed the landscape of love and loving forever. His insights are the foundation on which the new science of love rests.
Bowlby proposed that we are designed to love a few precious others who will hold and protect us through the squalls and storms of life. It is Nature’s plan for the survival of the species. Sex may impel us to mate, but it is love that assures our existence.
2. Adult romantic love is an attachment bond, just like the one between mother or father and child.
We’ve long assumed that as we mature, we outgrow the need for the intense closeness, nurturing, and comfort we had as children with our caregivers, and that as adults, the romantic attachments we form are essentially sexual in nature. This is a complete distortion of adult love.
Research by Johnson, Gottman, and others demonstrates that our need to depend on one precious other—to know that when we “call,” he or she will be there for us—never dissolves. In fact, it endures from, as Bowlby put it, “the cradle to the grave.” As adults, we simply transfer that need from our primary caregiver to our lover. Romantic love is not the least bit illogical or random. It is the continuation of the ordered and wise recipe for our survival.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard women say, “I feel like I have another child in the house.” I found that both men and women fail to realize that our needs for love, care, and nurture are as important to men as they are to women and as important when we’re 40 as when were 4.
3. Hot sex doesn’t lead to secure love; secure attachment leads to hot sex. And also to love that lasts. Monogamy is not a myth.
Pick up any men’s or women’s magazine and you’ll find cover lines blaring: “Seduce Him! This Sexy Move Works from 20 Feet Away”; “28 Things to Try in Bed…Or in a Hammock. Or the Floor.”; and “Sex Academy—Get an A in Giving Her an O.” In our ignorance, we’ve made physical intimacy the sine qua non of romantic love.
The tragedy is that by focusing so heavily on sex and neglecting love, we fail to get either. In our pain we check out emotionally, which eventually leads to small, then large, betrayals and eventually to a relationship that falls apart. “The growing craze for internet porn is a catastrophe for love relationships,” says Johnson, “precisely because it abjures emotional connection.”
4. Emotional dependency is not immature or pathological, it is our greatest strength.
Like most of the people in Western society, I believed that “dependency” was something I needed to avoid like the plague. I believed that a “real man” was strong, independent, and self-sufficient. He didn’t complain and he never showed his weaknesses. To a lesser degree women are also raised to value independence and see dependence as a weakness to be overcome.
“Again, this is backwards,” says Johnson. Far from being a sign of frailty, strong emotional connection is a sign of mental health. It is emotional isolation that is the killer. We know that men live sicker and die sooner than women and the suicide rate is 2 to 18 times higher for men than for women. The main reason, I believe, is that men have fewer social supports than women do. We associate manliness with independence and dependence with “wimpiness.”
5. Being the “best you can be” is really only possible when you are deeply connected to another. Splendid isolation is for planets, not people.
Many of us think of love as limiting, narrowing our options and experiences. Like many men, I grew up being taught that falling in love was a trap. It would mean the end of my independence and ability to explore and adventure. But I’ve found it to be exactly the reverse. When I’ve been out of a relationship or in a relationship where I felt distant and insecure, I was afraid to try new things. I would usually overwork, the routine giving me a sense of safety.
But since Carlin and I have learned about the science of love, we are more connected than ever before. The connection has set us free not tied us down. When I know I can trust her and she will be there for me, and vice versa, it allows us to step out into the world and become the very best we can be.
“It is hard to be open to new experiences when our attention and energy are bound up in worry about our safety,” says Johnson, “much easier when we know that someone has our back. Thus fortified, we become imbued with confidence in ourselves and our ability to handle new challenges.”
Love is the ticket to ride the roller coaster of life. It’s more wonderful than anything I could have imagined. Learning to love has helped us create a safe and secure nest for each other and at the same time has given us the key to all that is there for us in the wide wonderful universe.
Photo: Flickr/Victor
“Monogamy is not a myth.” Well, maybe; read Sex at Dawn.
But in any event, “attachment love” is not necessarily monogamous, or even monogamish, to use Dan Savage’s phrase. It is intentional, powerful, and potentially pluripotent.
If I entered a relationship, it would be on a deeper mind, body, soul and energy basis. Although, so shared emotions can weigh heavy. Total honesty, should be a factor. Sadly, we do not like to hear it, but it is a good start or end….
@Jed I have tried,quite unsuccessfully for some time, to pull back the curtain of romanticism that obscures hard realities about relationships only to be rebuked.Someone even wrote a post claiming that love does not have to make logical sense! I here this kind of thinking expressed in phrases like,heart centered thinking,follow your heart,etc..What started as metaphors for compassion and sensitivity have become real beliefs. If one’s brain is where these thoughts and feelings are born shouldn’t more of the focus be on understanding how the brain processes emotions?So often,too often, people try to recapture and live through the initial high… Read more »
This is such a great article. re “Hot sex doesn’t lead to secure love; secure attachment leads to hot sex.” I’ve learned that that is true for me. I used to wonder why sex was so-so until I found a man I was deeply attached to. Then it was amazing.
I disagree with the characterization that this is “science.” At best, it’s a philosophy, though more likely a point-of-view. I respect your experience and agree that humans need attachments and emotional connection. However, a conclusive statement like “secure attachment leads to hot sex” rings hollow and sounds very similar to those equally ridiculous magazine sub-titles your reference. Sex is both a physical and emotional experience that is about as subjective as the flavor of ice cream one prefers. Human beings can have a special connection without sex being involved. And conversely, we can have relationships that are almost exclusively sexual… Read more »
For me science is a way of learning about the world by a systematic exploration to answer questions. I think these ideas about love can be both a philosophy and also based on science. However we get there I think we’re all looking for ways to have loving relationships that last through time.
The 2 most used and abused words in the English language are ‘love’ and ‘believe’ because both are 100% subjective have different meanings to each individual, and both are highly emotive and usually irrational. To use the word science in conjunction with them is as silly as Economists trying to predict human behaviour using econometric equations. One could quite cogently argue that it is only when one is able to discard the insecurities that lead to the need for love, belief systems and the need for attention that one is on track to becoming a mature human being – some… Read more »
Beautiful message, Jed. Thanks. I can use this article for some of my clients struggling with trying to be “hyper-individualistic” – love that phrase. I would add one caution based on my experience helping men and women in LTR’s. It is easy to make the mistake of thinking “attachment love” gives us an excuse to stop giving and growing the minute we don’t receive the “intense closeness, nurturing, and comfort” we think we deserve. When we become dependent on receiving things from others first to allow us to give what THEY need, the downward spiral of resentment kicks in every… Read more »
Steve,
Good suggestions. We do, indeed, need a good balance between taking responsibility for ourselves and becoming the best individual we can be and taking care of each other. Just as children learn to become more independent and self-sufficient when they know they have a loving parent they can count on for comfort and support when times get rough, so too do couples become stronger and more actualized when they know they can seek out and get the support of their spouse in times of need.
Thanks for the wonderful comments. I have truly found that “attachment love” is the kind of love we’ve all longed for, but our society tells us is “childish,” “codependent,” or “clingy.” We’re beginning to realize, and science is beginning to demonstrate, that it is our hyper-individualistic way of life that is destructive. We really do depend on our partner in the same way a child depends on their mother and father. Thanks, too, for your interest in my new book. It will be out shortly and can be ordered here: http://www.northatlanticbooks.com/catalog/results.pperl?title_subtitle_auth_isbn=Jed+Diamond
thank you so much, this article resonates with me, or rather, something hidden a bit deeper… I have realized how harsh I’ve been with myself and my partner, having all those unrealistic expectations, running away from any sign of attachment… he often says that I thrive without him around me, I wish he knew it is actually opposite (he won’t hear me for now)
thank you for this beautiful and gentle reminder of what the whole game of life-love is all about
Thanks for the wonderful comments. We can all benefit from the new science of love.
As Lucy says above these things also ring true inside of me. It does make a lot of sense and goes against everything that society teaches us about relationships. No wonder so many fail. I have just ordered your book for my partner who has been very stressed for the last few years and it is taking its toll on our relationship. Thanks for your insight!
I appreciate the comments. I truly believe that “attachment love” is what’s basic to the human psyche. Its the love we’ve longed to have, but have been told is “childish, codependent, or clingy.” The fact is that our culture has taught us to become hyper-individualistic and to believe that we have to take care of ourselves, that we are each totally responsible for making ourselves happy. This belief is keeping us on a treadmill of fear, hunger, and loneliness.
My new book is just coming out and you can learn more here: http://www.northatlanticbooks.com/catalog/results.pperl?title_subtitle_auth_isbn=Jed+Diamond
These things ring true inside me. This is so very different than what I’ve heard before about romantic relationships in the past. I don’t feel as confused anymore after reading this.
I really loved this article. Thank you.