emotional connection Quotes

“When you have a safe connection in your relationship, you can pass the quality on, not just to your kid but to your kid’s future partners. (...) When we love our partner well, we offer a blueprint for a loving relationship to our children and their partners.”

“The drama of love is all about this hunger for safe emotional connection, a survival imperative we experience from the cradle to the grave. Loving connection is the only safety nature ever offers us.”

“Most of the blaming (...) is a desperate attachment cry, a protest against disconnection. It can only be quieted by a lover moving emotionally close to hold and reassure. Nothing else will do.”

“A major part of keeping love alive is recognizing moments of connection and holding them up where you both can see them (...). They remind us of how precious our relationship is and what close connection feels like. They remind us of the simple ways we can transform our partner’s world with the power of our caring.”

“Isolation and the potential loss of loving connection is coded by the human brain into a primal panic response.”

“Distressed partners may use different words but they are always asking the same basic questions, ‘Are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Will you come when I need you, when I call?’ Love is the best survival mechanism there is, and to feel suddenly emotionally cut off from a partner, disconnected, is terrifying.”

“We have to reconnect, to speak our needs in a way that moves our partner to respond. This longing for emotional connection with those nearest to us is the emotional priority, overshadowing even the drive for food or sex.”

“Emotional connection is crucial to healing. In fact, trauma experts overwhelmingly agree that the best predictor of the impact of any trauma is not the severity of the event, but whether we can seek and take comfort from others.”

“As lovers, we poise together delicately on a tightrope. When the winds of doubt and fear begin blowing, if we panic and clutch at each other or abruptly turn away and head for cover, the rope sways more and more and our balance becomes even more precarious. To stay on the rope, we must shift with each other’s moves, respond to each other’s emotions. As we connect, we balance each other. We are in emotional equilibrium.”

“Caretaking and pragmatic support come naturally when we feel close and connected. ‘When you love, you wish to do things for,’ Ernest Hemingway wrote. ‘You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.’ We know from research that secure partners are more sensitive to each other’s needs for care.”

“You must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.”

“He felt a hollow space between himself and the person he was supposed to be. ”

“Did you know him well?” said Antony quietly. He meant, “Were you fond of him?”

They always looked back before turning the corner, for their mother was always at the window to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them. Somehow it seemed as if they couldn’t have got through the day without that, for whatever their mood might be, the last glimpse of that motherly face was sure to affect them like sunshine.

Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it.