Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship (Goop Press)

Instead, you will begin to see that you are partners suffering from past hurts and also partners in the project of helping each other create safety in your relationship and respond to each other’s needs. This way, you both can experience the sensations of feeling fully alive and joyful connecting. You are allies on this journey, not competitors. Yo

Having your own bad, immature, and broken parts open to the scrutiny of that person Solving conflict in ways that do not involve leaving the relationship Staying in the relationship even if the other person changes for the worse Being called to sacrifice many individual preferences for the sake of the relationship

Ickes finds that the longer many couples are married, the less accurate they are at reading each other. They lock in some early version of who their spouse is, and over the years, as the other person changes, that version stays fixed—and they know less and less about what’s actually going on in the other’s heart and mind.

The therapist Terry Real described our well-worn behaviors as “our internalized family of origin. It’s our repertoire of relational themes.” People don’t have to tell you their stories with words because they always act them out for you. Often they project negative expectations onto the therapist, but if the therapist doesn’t meet those negative ex