Article: Hold Me Tight

You are going to write about love?” a professional colleague exclaimed. “You and every other poet, philosopher and author on the planet. You are out of your mind. People give advice but basically love is impossible to understand.”

“Well, we talk about love all the time,” I said, “ but usually it doesn’t amount to much, besides be nice and don’t argue and it might last.”

“That is about it. That is all anyone can say. And how are you are going to add to this?” He challenged.

My heart sank. Maybe it was too hard. But then I thought of all the talks given, articles and books written, studies published, therapists trained and most of all, all the couples I had seen over the years, and told him,

“ No, I can do this. There is a whole new way of understanding romantic love- a science of love. We have breakthroughs all the time in science. Well, now we understand love, and if we understand it, well, that changes everything.”

He laughed, but I went back to my office in my chilly Canadian city home and kept pounding the keyboard. The couples I had seen over the years were with me. I remembered the moments of risk, of sadness, of fear and silently thanked them for all they had taught me. I remembered the lessons I had learned as a child growing up in an English pub. How I always knew that emotional signals were the music that moved people’s feet when they came together. I remembered the sudden moment years ago when I suddenly realized that my couples fighting in my office looked just like the mum’s and kids in the research studies by  the English psychiatrist John Bowlby.

I suddenly realized what the fights were all about, why people raged and wept so when they could not reach their loved one, and why certain moments of emotional connection in my sessions seemed to change everything. And my colleagues and I kept getting these great results in the therapy we called Emotionally Focused or EFT, (my kids called it Extremely Funny Therapy), even with couples who were facing huge issues and lots of life problems. Couples and therapists began asking me for a book that captured the wisdom of our two decades of work with unhappy couples that everyone could understand.

I began to think, “Well, this is pretty important stuff. People want a loving relationship more than anything else on this planet. I have to write this book.”   

I wanted to mix the exciting new ideas and science with the stories of the real couples who had touched my heart. I wanted to give everyone a chance at “making” the love I saw in my couples. I wanted to give everyone a chance at the love that my parents longed for and did not know how to make. Once I started the seven conversations in the book just took over.

We all already know about love; it’s in our bones. But we have to have a map to find our way. I want this book to help more and more lovers know how to ask for their heart’s desire, ask their loved one, “Hold me tight”, and more and more lovers know how to do just that.

Copyright 2008, Sue Johnson