Stan Tatkin Quotes

When we recite our relationship vows, perhaps we should say, “I take you as my pain in the rear, with all your history and baggage, and I take responsibility for all prior injustices you endured at the hands of those I never knew, because you now are in my care.

Devote yourself to your partner's sense of safety and security and not simply to your idea about what that should be. What may make you feel safe and secure may not be what your partner requires from you. Your job is to know what matters to your partner and how to make him or her feel safe and secure.

In the context of couples, research in this area suggests how we as partners can manage one another’s highs and lows. We don’t have to remain at the mercy of each other’s runaway moods and feelings. Rather, as competent managers of our partners, we can become expert at moving, shifting, motivating, influencing, soothing, and inspiring one another.

When we enter into a relationship, we want to matter to our partner, to be visible and important....We want to know our efforts are noticed and appreciated. We want to know our relationship is regarded as important by our partner and will not be relegated to second or third place because of a competing person, task, or thing.

Couples in distress too often turn to solutions that can be summed up by "You do your thing and I'll do my thing" or "You take care of yourself and I'll take care of myself." We hear pop psychology pronouncements such as "I'm not ready to be in a relationship" and "You have to love yourself before anyone can love you." Is any of this true? Is it really possible to love yourself before someone ever loves you? Think about it. How could this be true? If it were true, babies would come into this world already self-loving or self-hating. And we know they don't. In fact, human beings don't start by thinking anything about themselves, good or bad. We learn to love ourselves precisely because we have experienced being loved by someone. We learn to take care of ourselves because somebody has taken care of us.

Fears and expectations that date back to earlier experiences of dependency, but that didn't arise during courtship or dating, are activated as commitment to the relationship increases. As a result, partners start to anticipate the worst, not the best from their relationship.

Your personal growth depends on your relationship remaining safe and secure at all times, because if either of you feel the least bit unsafe, untrusting, or insecure, you won’t have the internal resources for personal growth. Instead, your mind and body will be preoccupied by doubt and threat.

The couple bubble is an agreement to put the relationship before anything and everything else. It means putting your partner's well-being, self-esteem and distress relief first. And it means your partner does the same for you. You both agree to do it for each other. Therefore, you say to each other, "We come first." In this way, you cement your relationship. It is like making a pact or taking a vow, or like reinforcing a vow you already took with one another.

Your job is to know what matters to your partner and how to make him or her feel safe and secure.

the point is that couples should feel secure in knowing they can reach out to their partner at any time, anywhere, and their partner will be receptive.

What counts is their ability to be there for one another, no matter what.

This longing for a safe zone is one reason we pair up. However, partners—whether in a romantic relationship or committed friendship—often fail to use each other as advocates and allies against all hostile forces. They don’t see the opportunities to make a home for one another; to create a safe place in which to relax and feel accepted, wanted, protected, and cared for.

They may lack confidence in their ability to leave a romantic relationship when and if necessary. Fear of abandonment eclipses all other matters, including their own happiness in a relationship.

We want to know our efforts are noticed and appreciated. We want to know our relationship is regarded as important by our partner and will not be relegated to second or third place because of a competing person, task, or thing.

We learn to love ourselves precisely because we have experienced being loved by someone. We learn to take care of ourselves because somebody has taken care of us. Our self-worth and self-esteem also develop because of other people.

If there is a hallmark for this age, perhaps it will be our ability to take the complex findings of scientific research and apply them smoothly and effectively in our everyday lives, to better understand ourselves and to love more fully.

When we enter into a relationship, we want to matter to our partner, to be visible and important. As in the case of Jenny and Bradley, we may not know how to achieve this, but we want it so much that it shapes much of what we do and say to one another. We want to know our efforts are noticed and appreciated. We want to know our relationship is regarded as important by our partner and will not be relegated to second or third place because of a competing person, task, or thing.

best hopes coming true. As the relationship progresses and the pair become closer and more interdependent, a couple bubble may form, and the perception of permanence may emerge. This is of course what they hope for. Yet sometimes along with security comes its opposite. Fears and expectations that date back to earlier experiences of dependency, but that didn’t arise during courtship or dating, are activated as commitment to the relationship increases. As a result, partners start to anticipate the worst, not the best, from their relationship. Anticipation of the worst is not logically purposeful, nor does it

Thou Shall Not Get Killed During courtship, partners are predisposed to anticipate their

necessarily surface in conscious awareness, because this type of anticipation resides in the deep and wordless part of the brain. Much of what we do as partners is fundamentally about survival and our beastly, instinctual selves. In fact, we could say the human species has survived over millennia due to the simple imperative “Thou shall not get killed.” Love and war are both conditions of our human brain. Arguably, though, the brain is wired first and foremost for war, rather than for love. Its primary function is to ensure we survive as individuals and as a species. And it is very, very good at this.

We take too much for granted when it comes to separations and reunions, and pay the price for not understanding the natural human imperative to make and continually remake secure connections with our most important others. Don’t take my word for this. Check your own launchings and landings. Play with them. Perform them properly, and then improperly or not at all. Compare the difference. Experience for yourself.

How Couples Come to Value Autonomy Over Mutuality Alongside our modern Western emphasis on autonomy, we see increasing evidence of loneliness inside and outside of marriages; a rising incidence of violence and alienation; and divorce rates that, while they may be decreasing, remain well above ideal. Like Jenny and Bradley, couples in distress too often turn to solutions that can be summed up by “You do your thing and I’ll do my thing” or “You take care of yourself and I’ll take care of myself.

You can be right, or you can be in a relationship. —Stan Tatkin

Check in with simple, nonthreatening questions or requests: • “Are you saying . . . ?” • “I want your eyes because this is important . . .” • “Let me make sure I understand . . .” • “Say back what you heard . . .” • “Let me repeat that.” • “What do you think I meant by . . . ?” • “We may not be talking about the same thing. Are you saying . . . ?

There is no perfect partner. What makes a partner right for you is a shared willingness to create a secure relationship. If you both are willing to go all in together, you are 'perfect' for each other.

We can say their model is one of mutuality. It is based on sharing and mutual respect. Neither expects the other to be different from who he or she is, and both use this shared knowledge as a way to protect one another in private as well as public settings.

We take too much for granted when it comes to separations and reunions, and pay the price for not understanding the natural human imperative to make and continually remake secure connections with our most important others.

It’s one thing to fight well, and something else altogether to love well.

Stan Tatkin recommends a beautiful activity called the “Welcome Home Exercise”5. Maybe you’re at home making dinner, and your partner comes home from a long day at work. To do this exercise, all you have to do is turn the heat down on the food, walk over to your partner, and give them a big hug. You stay in that full-body, belly-to-belly embrace long enough for both of your bodies to relax and regulate.

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky (2004)

If it’s good for me, you should be all right with it” type of agreement.

But it is only when the relationship becomes permanent in either or both partners’ mind that these predilections really come to life.