Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Hold Me Tight teaches couples how to hear their partner's deepest concerns, "are you there for me", "am I really important to you", "is our relationship secure and solid" when those concerns are expressed through criticism or content. It reminds partner's that all communications are attempts to connect, no matter how badly delivered. In this way, Susan Johnson teaches couples to read below the surface of a complaint down to the attachment need being expressed underneath. When attachment needs can be faced and processed directly, couples feel closer. Johnson offers couples in couples counseling an adjunctive support system in addition to the therapy hour. Hold Me Tight is also an excellent resource for couples working things out on their own. It provides a clear and solid guideline for repairing hurt and restoring connection. I am recommending it to the couples in my practice, and the reports coming back about how helpful and transformative Johnson's approach is have been glowing!

I've read all the relationship books, even the ones by the authors whose quotes appear on this cover, and I can say with complete conviction that this is by far the best of the lot. Dr. Sue Johnson's warm, authoritative, and reassuring tone sets the stage for a whole lot of incredibly useful advice. The book gives you a new way to view your relationship and the tools to improve it, whether it needs improving or not! Her form of couples therapy is apparently one of the very few to be proven to work, and that's really the bottom line. Do yourself and your partner a big favor and buy this book! I highly recommend it.

This, together with Gottman's book, is an attempt to deliver an objective and clear guide to resolving relationship difficulties and/or strengthening them. This book (unlike Gottman's) is rooted in attachment theory, which is probably the closest thing to a scientifically based approach to human relationships, or at least there's a biological and evolutionary framework for understanding our emotional needs in relationships. The need for this objective foundation for understanding relationships is pretty obvious when you begin to read through the literature; most of it is vague, superficial or embarrassingly facile. This book attempts to tether its approach to something concrete and verified: we need to be and to feel securely connected to our mates and this need is confirmed in all sorts of ways, both with scientific studies and in anecdotal and clinical settings.

The problem is: what exactly is a secure attachment? When Sue Johnson presents case studies, the answer is something like: partner's need to reaffirm there basic desire and need for a secure attachment. This is done by saying things like: I really need to feel connected, loved, appreciated, valued and desired by you. Relationships flourish when these connected feelings are expressed and reaffirmed. But when you get down to nuts and bolts what behavior exactly, both verbal and physical, constitutes an expression of attachment? And here I think this book fairs about as well as any other.

The fact is that the ways that people can express and feel attached to each is about as varied as all the forms of expression that are available to human beings. So, when reading through these specific cases, I find it hard to identify what exactly it is in the expressions or attitudes of her clients that might work for others (or mostly me). It again seems very vague and general, though in principle right. This leaves this reader wonder why loving another human being should be thought to be so simple as reaffirming our basic biological need for a secure attachment. It seems to me that all the incredible varieties of expressions of love show that it is not so simple. Maybe I'm a skeptic or a cynic, but this seems like another imperfect attempt in the mountain of attempts to understand how to love another human being.... And worth reading!