What Makes Us Stay Together?

'This is a masterful, comprehensive, wonderfully clear, and theoretically sophisticated clinical journey around couple relationships. Attachment theory is rarely made as relevant to clinical understanding as in this volume.'- Peter Fonagy, PhD, FBA, Professor and Head of the Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London'Based on attachment theory, the authors write with great clarity about the dynamics of couple relationships. This is a highly readable and meticulously researched book that I will be recommending to all practitioners involved in couple work and as an excellent teaching aid. Its appeal will also extend to anyone wishing to further their understanding of how and why we maintain our emotional bonds over time. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and it kept me thinking long after I had put it back on the shelf.'- Antonino Ferro, President of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society (SPI) and member of the American Psychoanalytic Association'This excellent book is an accessible, well-written, wise account of the virtues and vicissitudes of couple relationships from an attachment perspective. Drawing on the latest research, it delineates marriage's principal dimensions - distance/ closeness, emotion regulation, sexuality, attachment-seeking, and care-giving - and how the rhythms of connection, disconnection, and reconnection typify intimate relationships. These themes are then deployed to analyse marital violence, infidelity, jealousy, and sexual difficulties, and the healing powers of forgiveness. The text is convincingly illustrated with clinical material and helpful diagrams. It will be essential reading for couple therapists, psychotherapists generally, those interested in the clinical applications of attachment, and indeed anyone wishing for illumination on the mysteries of marriage.'- Professor Jeremy Holmes, MD, FRCPsych, University of Exeter, and author of The Search for the Secure Base