Reviewing "Created for Connection: 'The Hold Me Tight' Guide for Christian Couples"

Book Review: “Created for Connection: The ‘Hold Me Tight’ Guide for Christian Couples” by Dr. Sue Johnson with Kenneth Sanderfer

Every human being has needs. In our earliest days, our primary caregivers (typically parents) meet our physical and emotional needs. By doing so, they create a safe and loving relationship within which we have freedom to grow and thrive. Children crave the love they receive from their parents and miss their parents when they are not physically close. Not only does a parent’s love soothe and support the child while she is young, but this love also provides a framework for all future relationships she will enter. This idea forms the basis of attachment theory.

Dr. Sue Johnson’s Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) model incorporates attachment theory to show us that just as children need love from a caregiver, adults in romantic relationships need safe emotional contact with one another. The implications of this safe, trusting contact being broken are dire for many couples. In Created For Connection, Johnson and Sanderfer coordinate the basis of EFT with tenets of the Christian faith, outlining seven conversations in which married couples can engage to begin meeting one another’s emotional needs and creating a close, unbreakable bond.

Conversation 1: Recognizing the Demon Dialogues

Every couple has a “dance,” or a pattern by which we become stuck communicating unhealthily. This pattern forms in response to a perceived lack of connectivity with each other. (For more information about the types of “dances”, visit this blog post) Identifying the “dance” is the first step in preventing its continual destruction of a marriage. 

Conversation 2: Finding the Raw Spots

“Raw spots” can be any incidents, issues, or topics which have formed during the current relationship or in the past, resulting from an emotional need having been repeatedly neglected. First, we recognize that we cannot gain access to our spouse in the ways that we need. Then, we (deliberately or accidentally) touch their “raw spots” and are primed to enter the “dance,” which breaks down connection even further. Recognizing and understanding raw spots can help couples break down what happens during these exchanges when raw spots are activated, and work toward mutual understanding of one another’s emotional needs.

Conversation 3: Revisiting a Rocky Moment

When we are emotionally heightened while engaging in the “dance” with our spouse, we aren’t able to rationalize in order to discuss what went wrong. Replaying a particularly tense moment of past conflict with the intent of making sense of the “dance” helps couples rebuild trust. Couples who take accountability for their part of the “dance” and get curious about their partner’s emotions are working to make the “dance” the enemy, rather than each other.

Conversation 4: Hold Me Tight - Engaging and Connecting

There are two parts to a “Hold Me Tight” conversation: “What Am I Most Afraid Of?” and “What Do I Need Most From You?” Vulnerability is required for this type of discussion, which means couples are typically much more prepared for this after moving through Conversations 1-3 together. In a sense, Christian couples are deeply able to understand the semantics of this conversation because of a discipline in which we should be engaging daily: prayer. Prayer, by nature, brings us to the feet of Christ sharing our fears and needs, and allows us to reach for Him. A successful “Hold Me Tight” conversation ends when both partners have shared and received one another’s fears and attachment needs, and are reaching for each other. 

Conversation 5: Forgiving Injuries

Many couples have inflicted irreparable hurt to one another and are unable to move past those times - what Johnson and Sanderfer call “Never Again Moments.” Until these moments are revisited and genuine forgiveness is achieved, emotional connection may continue to hit dead ends. 

Conversation 6: Bonding Through Sex and Touch

Sexual intimacy between married couples is God’s desire and plan. In order to enjoy this gift fully, our emotional needs must be met first, and an environment of trust established between spouses. Emotional safety and physical synchrony exist in a reciprocal relationship.

Conversation 7: Keeping Your Love Alive

As marriages continue down the years, hardships enter unannounced and changes take place. In order to outlast the test of time, couples must create plans for their desired future together. God’s design is that marriage sanctifies us, which can only happen when we are open and willing to grow and mature together. The promise of continuing to seek emotional connection with one another engages a couple for a lifetime of love, growth, and strengthened bonds. 

We never stop needing to be emotionally connected to our loved ones, regardless of life’s many changing circumstances. Dr. Sue Johnson says, “Until we address the fundamental need for connection and the fear of losing it, the standard techniques, such as learning problem solving or communication skills, examining childhood hurts, or taking time-outs, are misguided and ineffectual.” Working through these seven conversations can help by giving couples the resources to seek out emotional connection with one another for the lifetime of their marriage.

Attachment and Sexuality

In Christian communities, the topic of sex is often considered taboo, and is therefore difficult to talk about, even in the context of committed marriages. Purity culture, despite it’s best intentions, has often painted sexuality as sinful, a fleshly and worldly desire that must be killed off as we “die to self.” And while I can appreciate the efforts to promote abstinence until marriage (as research continues to affirm the negative consequences of extramarital sexuality), it often leaves newly married couples struggling to define their sexuality in a healthy way, and to explore the physical and emotional pleasure that God intended it to provide. 

And while we could write books on the subject of the goodness of sex (which a few Christian authors have undertaken), we will instead point our attention here to the ways in which sexuality is a means of expressing our attachment to our most intimate partner, and is influenced by the attachment styles we developed in all important relationships (not just sexual ones).

As a refresher, attachment needs are biological. As Dr. Curt Thompson states, “we are all born into the world looking for someone looking for us.” As infants, we need to know that someone sees us, will soothe us, and will work to keep us safe. The degree to which our caregivers are able to meet those needs determines whether we grow up to trust the world as a relatively safe place. And though we grow up into adults, our needs for safety and security within the context of human relationships remain, and are expressed in our most intimate relationships.

For children, attachment needs are often met through expressive behaviors, including: gazing, holding, touching, caressing, smiling, and crying. Interestingly enough, these are the same behaviors we often see expressed between adult romantic partners, though sexual arousal is often accompanied by the experience. The same core needs are being met in both contexts, suggesting that sexuality is really a means for our partner to meet our strongest desires for connection and belonging. This flies in the face of the current cultural belief that argues sex is meant to be a purely physical experience without any need for commitment or connection between partners.

If we assume that sex is the proverbial stage in which adult relationships play out their attachments, then we would expect to see woundings here too. And that’s exactly what we see. As Dr. Johnson summarizes in her book on attachment theory, those with an avoidant attachment style tend to be focused on performance and physical sensation and report less frequency and satisfaction with sexual encounters. Those with secure attachment, in contrast, are able to explore their sexuality with playfulness and curiosity, and are able to experience the freedom in the immersion of the experience. Bottom line - those with secure attachments have more, and enjoy more, sex.

The implications here are tremendous. If sexuality is a means to meet emotional and attachment needs, then understanding attachment wounds and working on the relationship with a focus on attachment becomes critical to ensuring a healthy sexual relationship between partners. Sex then becomes a physical representation of an emotional reality - rather than merely a pastime to enjoy. And it’s presence within the marriage can be an agent of beauty in our lives, rather than something to feel shame about. 

References

Johnson, Sue M. (2019). Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Individuals, Couples, and Families. The Guilford Press. New York, NY.
Thompson, Curt (2015). The Soul of Shame. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL.

What Attachment Is and Why It Matters

We’ve said before that attachment plays a critical role in your development, not only as a child, but as you continue to grow as an adult. For many people, this concept is foreign and not well understood, and its implications are easily missed. 

To introduce you to the role that attachment plays in everyday life, let’s conduct a little thought experiment. Let’s say you’ve just arrived at work and your immediate supervisor seems upset. There are several indications of this to you, starting with a more agitated presence, louder tone of voice, and furrowed brows. What is your first response? Do you, a) conduct a mental assessment trying to remember what it is you’ve done or failed to do that would elicit such a response; or b) try to offer support to what seems to be a rotten day - for them? So? What did you choose? Regardless of what your response is, it is shaped by your attachment. And if you’re like me, the idea that others might interpret this circumstance differently than you might take you by surprise. 

Our attachment style filters our experience. It primes us to see the environment and relationships as either safe or unsafe, and will determine to a large extent the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that come from interacting with said environment and relationships. Which means that every interaction you experience is impacted by your attachment. 

So what is attachment? To put it simply, attachment is the degree to which we are bonded to a primary caregiver (usually a parent). Developed in the early years of our infancy and childhood, our attachment style is determined by our caregiver’s responsiveness to our physical and emotional needs. It is during this critical period, in which we cannot take care of ourselves, that we learn whether or not we can rely on others to take care of us. If they respond with loving kindness and meet our needs appropriately, we learn that the world is safe and our capacity to trust others is strengthened, creating a secure attachment. On the other hand, if our caregivers are distracted or cruel, we will learn we cannot depend on others for our needs, and will likely develop an insecure attachment (of which there are various subtypes). These learning experiences shape how we respond to the environment, whether with a parent or our immediate supervisor, as in the earlier example.

So, for those of us who tended toward choice “a,” this may be an indication of an insecure attachment, whereas the latter response (choice “b”) would suggest a secure attachment. Of course, it would be inappropriate to determine your attachment style based on one such thought experiment, but it is a piece of the puzzle. 

If you’re interested in learning more about your attachment style, there are several resources available to you. While these resources do not replace specific and tailored therapeutic interventions, they can help you begin to understand some of your behavior patterns. Resources include Adam Young’s podcast “The Place We Find Ourselves” at www.adamyoungcounseling.com. You can also search for attachment style quiz/questionnaire and many are provided free (with just an email address required).