According to Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, there are three aspects to long-lasting love, connection, and relationship: 1) Accessibility, 2) Responsiveness and 3) Engagement.
ACCESSIBILITY: Simply put, this means that both you and your partner are available for each other and you’re not feeling shut out or lonely in the relationship. Both can stop what they are doing and put each other first.
Be available just to listen to your partner, be attuned to whether they are reaching out to you and be open to connecting, even when upset.
RESPONSIVENESS: Apart from being available, you will also ¬act on what your partner is confiding. It’s knowing that even when you fight, you know you will eventually work it out and come back together. Emotional responsiveness has been found to be a powerful predictor of the future quality of newlyweds’ relationships (Huston, Caughlin, Houts, Smith, & George, 2001).
Pay attention to your partner, reassure your partner about how important they are to you and their concerns, rather than giving solutions, give empathy and validate how they feel, and help your partner feel that they can lean on you when they’re anxious or unsure.
EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT: This refers to being positively emotionally engaged. It’s like an invisible umbilical cord that keeps you connected emotionally even when you are apart. The more emotionally engaged partners are, the stronger the bond between them.
Feeling confident that your partner cares about your joys, hurts, and fears. Feeling comfortable being close to and trusting your partner. Feeling you can confide in your partner about anything and can take emotional risks with your partner. Being involved in ways that help the other come close. Feeling safe to be vulnerable with your partner and communicate tender feelings.
In this type of relationship, there is a healthy and secure connection or bond; a positive “interdependence.” In such relationships, people are healthier, live longer, handle stress and uncertainty better and are more self-confident. Interestingly, and perhaps counter-intuitively, the more connected we are, the more separate and different we can be. When we feel safe, we can take more risks with each other and in the world. We can explore who we are, what we can do and know that our partner is there for us as we grow and transform.
When this connection is threatened by hurt or breach of trust, a type of primal panic arises. Intense fear of losing the object of our love. So EFT sees behaviors such as anger, complaining and criticizing, as attempts to re-engage with our apparently, inaccessible loved one. EFT helps to heal and re-establish these secure bonds by optimizing accessibility, engagement, and responsiveness; three keys to healthy and long-lasting adult love.
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