When we’re looking for experts to help us deal with a troubled marriage or to improve the quality of our love lives, the last person we think about is our “kid’s doctor.” Yet, we may be missing the best resource available. Here’s why. The latest research, based on a new science of love, demonstrates that good loving for kids is similar to good loving for adults.
Two of experts in this emerging field are John Gottman and Sue Johnson. Dr. Gottman is world renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction and has conducted 40 years of breakthrough research with thousands of couples. Dr. Johnson is the author of Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships and is the primary developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) which has demonstrated its effectiveness in over 25 years of peer-reviewed clinical research.
In his book What Makes Love Last? How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal,Gottman says that most troubled marriages suffer from a series of small, often unrecognized, betrayals that can lead to more serious violations of trust in the relationship. But over his many decades working with couples he has discovered ways to reverse these destructive trends. “I now know that there is a fundamental principle for making relationships work that serves as an antidote to unfaithfulness.”
Sue Johnson has also found surprising ways couples can keep their relationships alive and well. In Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships, she says, “Today, we have a revolutionary new perspective on romantic love, one that is optimistic and practical. Grounded in science, it reveals that love is vital to our existence. And far from being unfathomable, love is exquisitely logical and understandable.”
The Old View of Raising Children
It wasn’t that long ago that it was believed that children needed to be spanked regularly in order to teach them to be good. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” were mantas that many parents had drilled into their consciousness. It was also recommended that children be fed on a schedule and parents were discouraged from rocking a baby to sleep or responding quickly to the baby’s cries.
Sue Johnson notes that many of us grew up at a time when child-care experts were advocating distant, detached care. It was believed that this would turn children into self-possessed, autonomous beings as quickly as possible. One of the fathers of modern social science, John B. Watson, was adamant that mother love was a “dangerous instrument.” He was convinced that women’s sentimental natures were a defect that prevented them from pushing their children into independence.
This view has a certain kind of logic. If we want to teach kids how to become strong, independent adults, toughen them up and encourage them to take care of themselves. The problem is, this approach has shown to be all wrong. Rather than teaching kids to become more independent it actually causes them to become anxious, irritable, angry, and depressed adults.
The New View of Raising Children
Most of us who study psychology have heard of Sigmund Freud, the founder of analytic psychology or B.F. Skinner, one of the founders of behaviorism. But few have heard of John Bowlby, who many believe is the most important health expert of our generation. “As a psychologist and as a human being,” says Dr. Johnson, “if I had to give an award for the single best set of ideas anyone had ever had, I’d give it to John Bowlby hands down over Freud or anyone else in the business of understanding people.”
Although Bowlby died in 1990, the ideas he pioneered, which he called “attachment theory,” have become mainstays of modern child rearing. (The story goes that when asked by his wife why he didn’t give attachment theory its rightful name, a “theory of love,” Dr. Bowlby replied, “What?” I’d be laughed out of science.”) Bowlby was aided significantly by psychologist Mary Ainsworth, a Canadian researcher who helped give shape to Bowlby’s ideas and to test them. Together they identified four key ideas that form the basis of healthy child-rearing:
- We seek out, monitor, and try to maintain emotional and physical connection with our loved ones. We rely on our loved ones to be emotionally accessible, responsive, and engaged with us.
- We reach out to our loved ones particularly when we are uncertain, threatened, anxious or upset. Contact with them gives us a sense of having a safe haven, where we will find comfort and emotional support. This sense of safety allows us to sooth ourselves when we are angry, hurt, or frightened.
- We miss our loved ones and become extremely upset when they are physically or emotionally absent. This separation anxiety can become intense and produce feelings of helplessness and anger. Being left or fear of being left is inherently traumatizing for human beings.
- We depend on our loved ones to support us emotionally and be a secure base as we venture out in the world and try new things. The more secure we feel, the better able we are to become more autonomous and self-actualized.
The Principles of Good Child Rearing Are the Basis for a Science of Love
I never learned about Bowlby’s work when I was in medical school or when I was in graduate school in social work and psychology. I wish I had learned about him sooner. It would have made me a better husband, father, and therapist. In my new book, Stress Relief for Men: How to Use the Revolutionary Tools of Energy Healing to Live Well,I focus on what we now know about “attachment love.”
I pointed out that couples therapy is in the midst of a revolution. The key element in this revolution is the development of a new science of love. As baseball legend Yogi Berra told us, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you wind up somewhere else.” Without a clear model of love and the process of connection and disconnection, it is difficult to know how we can heal our past and have the kinds of loving relationships we want in the present.
The most recent scientific studies on love offer surprising understandings. They tell us that the nature of our emotional attachment with our partner is the same kind of attachment a child has with their parents. If we want to learn about adult romance and love, we must learn about the kind of love children need, because it’s the same kind of love we need throughout our lives. John Bowlby said we need attachment love “from the cradle to the grave.” In their book Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help you Find—and Keep—Love, Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller tell us that “dependency is not a bad word.” They go on to describe why healthy dependency is necessary for true love to flourish:
- Your attachment needs are legitimate.
- You shouldn’t feel bad for depending on the person you are closest to—it is part of your genetic makeup.
- A relationship, from an attachment perspective, should make you feel more self-confident and give you peace of mind. If it doesn’t, this is a wake-up call!
Men, in Particular, Need to Learn About the New Science of Love
Like most men I was taught that maturity means being independent and self-sufficient. If I felt afraid or needed to be held and comforted, I felt that I was acting like a baby. I was sure that if I didn’t “act like a man,” I’d have no chance to find a woman who would want me or be able to hang onto one once I found her.
I now understand that my desire for nurturing and connection was based on science, not sentimentality. It was one of those life-changing “aha” moments. My whole life, I had been putting myself down whenever I felt I needed love, touch, and nurturing. I told myself, and others told me, that if I acted “needy,” I wasn’t a real man.
• “Quit acting like a child.”
• “Don’t be a wimp.”
• “Man up!”
These were some of the words that cut me to the core and enveloped me in shame. I learned early on, as did most men, to keep my feelings locked inside and show the world that I could “take it” like a man. It was truly an experience of emotional freedom to realize there wasn’t something wrong with me. The real problem isn’t our desire for emotional nurturing and intimacy, it is a culture that denies our real needs and teaches people that to be “normal” is to be distant and independent.
I still remember my loving pediatrician, Dr. Minden. The last time I saw him I was 10 years old. The next time I saw a doctor, I was 14 years old with a dislocated shoulder, and he was a competent clinician, but with little empathy. I feel blessed that the spirit of Dr. Minden has returned to my life. What’s been your experience?
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