Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love: 1 (The Dr. Sue Johnson Collection) Hardcover – 8 April 2008

A really good book for anyone in a relationship or working with relationships who's interested in how relationships can work better, it's equally good for self-help or for a helper. This book takes a very different approach from (e.g.) 'Fighting for your Marriage' (Howard Markman) or John Gottman's books. It's based on attachment theory which Johnson explains simply and clearly in just a few pages. Her approach is to define the self-perpetuating 'Demon Dialogues' partners get locked into, and to help the partners firstly to recognise that it's the 'demon dialogue' that's the enemy in the relationship rather than their partner, and secondly how to work together to stop the Demon Dialogue and to build constructive dialogues instead. An easy read, human and humane, very highly recommended.

As a couple counsellor, I often recommend this book to my clients as part of the 'homeworks' while in therapy and the feedback from my couples is that it's a huge support in helping them change the way they talk to each other and deal with emotional distress. It's a wonderful book written by a highly respected psychologist, academic and researcher for the general public. It will really help improve your relationship with your partner and loved ones.

Finally. A book that not only explains love but can show us all a way of not only finding it but staying in it for life. Forget about fickle hormones it's all about secure attachment.

This book aims to help couples by focusing on emotional focused therapy. I hope to be able to work through it as I have two copies, one for myself and one for my husband.

Super

Great way to get a summary of the method.

very good

There are some good points made in this book, of course, most of which you will find in other books about marriage like Gottmann. What I could not believe was how biased this book was in relation to men and women. While the advice about "demon dialogues" is directed at both sexes equally, it is not the same when it comes to "holding tight" vs being withdrawn.There is literally one chapter with male characters who have become withdrawn where the answer is: get over yourself and learn to be affectionate.Charlie has become withdrawn from giving affection because of his wife's sporadic emotional outbursts.This, we learn, is his mistake and it has harmed his marriage. Charlie's wife complains "If I am sad or scared or upset with you, you just turn off. You don't comfort me. And now you don't make love or hold me either. Just when I need you, you go off in your disapproval. You turn away and discard me. I am not the wife you want." The lesson for Charlie is that he must realise that he needs to give affection in order to have a good relationship. He must understand the effect his withdrawal has had on his wife and remedy that. he must "deliberately create moments of engagement and connection"; he must "generate positive patterns of reaching for and responding to his loved one". The importance of oxytocin is stressed.By contrast, where the female has become withdrawn the advice is completely the opposite. Here, it is the injury that the withdrawn woman feels that must be respected. Poor old Sam's wife was in labour and bleeding profusely in the taxi so he gave the drive directions to the hospital because he "went into problem solving mode." His wife blames him for not attending to her and has become withdrawn. Sam is to blame and must accept this. Larry's wife Susan blames him for an event 17 years ago that he cannot even remember when various stresses caused her to sit on the floor weeping. When he came home and was not sufficiently sympathetic and went to make calls, she resolved never to expect caring from him again and became cold. The advice is simple "you have to take your partner's hurt seriously and hang in and ask questions until the meaning of an incident becomes clear, even if to you the event seems trivial or the hurt exaggerated."A similar lesson is in store for David, whose wife Diane does not like the fact that he looks for affection from her. She says that she does want to be close to him but cannot be "pushed into closeness". She explains, "I want you to give me the room to move, to hear when I tell you I am getting overwhelmed. You trying to move my feet in tune with yours doesn't work." David must learn not to expect affection or demonstrable commitment; he must just trust Diane that she is not going to leave him.By contrast, Philippe, who sounds quite a bit like Diane, is in for a different lesson. He does not really do "lovey-dovey" and Tabitha has given him an ultimatum: move in with her or the relationship is over. In what would presumably be quite a surprise for David, in this different context, forcing someone into commitment and affection is the right answer and it is Philippe who must learn not to pull away.For an author who is supposedly attuned to attachment theory, the different approaches are striking. Where the relationship involves an anxious woman and an avoidant man, the man's avoidance must be addressed and he must become affectionate, reassuring the woman and thereby solving the problem in the relationship. There is no question of him forgiving her for her outbursts, volatile behaviour or anything like that because those are seen as *responses* to his avoidance.By contrast, where the woman is avoidant and the man on the anxious side, he must overcome his anxiety and respect whatever reasons the woman gives for her avoidance. She may or may not forgive him for these reasons. It is not for him to explain that actually she has to bear responsibility as well (as is made extremely clear to poor Conrad and Ralph, both of whom are deemed insensitive to their wife's emotions). And he must accept whatever he gets in this regard and simply wait and hope.In short: If you are an anxious man: get over it and stop expecting affection. If you are an avoidant man: get over it and start giving affection.For women the advice is the opposite: if you are anxious and want more affection, you deserve it and your husband must learn to give it and lots of it. If you are avoidant and don't want to give affection, then so long as you have *reasons* (they don't have to make sense and can be trivial) then your husband must respect those reasons for however long it takes for you to forgive him.