our own sexual wellbeing without learning how to manage attachment in our relationships. managing attachment: your feels as a sleepy
hedgehog Attachment style is an inescapable factor in sexual response and relationship satisfaction—and it varies not just from person to person but 28 29 also from relationship to relationship.And it can change.These deep emotional patterns are not always very tractable and sometimes require therapy. Many people, though, can make a great deal of progress by increasing their nonjudgmental awareness of their own emotional responses and by reading excellent books on the subject. Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships by Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, directly addresses attachment as it relates to sex, and there’s always my own brief Scientific Guide to Successful Relationships. In that guide, I discuss a skill that I call “staying over your own emotional center of gravity,” which I define this way: “Staying over your own emotional center of gravity . . . means owning your feelings, listening to them, and being responsive without being reactive, taking emotions seriously without taking them personally.”
This is in contrast to running away from your emotions or trying to shift your emotional center of gravity onto your partner. There are some basic rules you have to follow in order to stay over your emotional center of gravity: Your feelings are neither more nor less important than your partner’s. Your pain doesn’t automatically make your experience more valid, nor does your partner’s pain make your partner’s experience more valid. When we are in emotional pain, we tend to prioritize easing that pain over respecting our partner’s experience, so we have to remind ourselves that our different experiences matter equally.
Each of you is 100 percent responsible for your own feelings. Partners in healthy relationships choose to help each other with their feelings, but it is always a choice. We “turn toward” our partner’s needs, as relationship researcher John Gottman puts it, and when our partner supports us, we express our gratitude for that choice.
There are four basic steps to the process: 1. Name the Feeling. “Right now I feel . . . jealous/angry/hurt/etc.” Simple, though there are usually multiple feelings involved at the same time. That’s normal.
2. Welcome the Feeling. Don’t run away from it, don’t judge it or shame it or get mad at it.
Sit still with it, like a welcome guest.
3. Take Responsibility for the Feeling. If you feel fear or anger, how could the perceived threat be managed? If you feel sadness, hurt, or grief, how can you heal the loss? The question to ask yourself as you take responsibility for your feelings is: What will help? There won’t always be something you can actively do, apart from allowing the feeling to discharge and