Wired for Love (26 page)

Exercise: Seeing the Blind Spots

Do you think you might have a blind spot when it comes to the level of stress at home? If you answer yes to the following, stress may be hurting your relationship.

1. Do you or others in your family have frequent and unexplained physical ailments, such as digestive problems, insomnia, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, or allergies? Any autoimmune or inflammatory problems?
   
2. Are you or others in your family suffering from depression or anxiety, or emotional overload?
   
3. Do you or your partner say or do things that could be perceived as threatening?
   
4. Do you and your partner fight frequently?
   

I realize these may be tough questions to ask. But if you don’t ask, you risk losing not only your relationship but your health and well-being.

Healing Within the Couple Bubble

It’s not enough to minimize stress at home: your relationship can and should serve as your strongest force for health and well-being. Consider how another couple handled this issue.

Susi and Tamara came from families that did not provide much physical contact or nurturing. Neither remembers being hugged, held, rocked, or kissed as a child. As an adult couple, Susi and Tamara were good friends and thought well of one another and the relationship. They had the occasional argument, but neither ever threatened the other. Essentially, they lived parallel lives and rarely made physical contact. They slept in different rooms and weren’t affectionate or huggy.

Both Susi and Tamara complained of almost continuous anxiety, but neither seemed good at calming or soothing the other. It never occurred to them that their physical distance and lack of physical comforting came with a price tag. Tamara had fibromyalgia and Epstein-Barr syndrome, which worsened as she aged. Susi had numerous health problems, including irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, obesity, and joint pain.

When this couple eventually discovered in therapy that their lack of contact contributed to their health woes, change did not come easily. Because they were unheld babies, each had strong aversion reactions to close physical contact. Although they never became as affectionate as many other couples, they took steps to develop a couple bubble for the first time. They started to sleep in the same room and made time to cuddle at night. Surprisingly quickly, these changes resulted in reduced physical complaints from both Susi and Tamara.

We All Need to Be Touched

We have known, scientifically speaking, since the 1950s, that every child needs touch, holding, and rocking. Harry Harlow (1958) and others, such as James Prescott (1975), famously studied rhesus baby monkeys and found a stronger drive for physical comfort than for food. Others, such as John Bowlby (1969), Margaret Mahler and her colleagues (Mahler, Pine, and Bergman 2000), and David Stern (1998) found identical needs in human infants and children. And these needs continue into adulthood. We all need to be touched, hugged, held, and (at times) rocked by another. Even under minor stress, our primitives will not fully settle if touch is unavailable to us.

Do you remember the study I mentioned in chapter 2 about the London cabbies whose hippocampus grew larger on the job? Well, a recent study by Brigitte Apfel and her team (2011) found that Gulf War veterans suffering from chronic stress had a smaller hippocampus than did veterans who had recovered from stress. One interpretation of this finding is that our hippocampus actually shrinks when we are under stress for an extended time. Not only does the hippocampus regulate our stress response, but chronic stress appears to inhibit its ability to control the release of stress hormones. While you’re unlikely to ever determine the size of your hippocampus, all this goes to say it’s valuable to know something we may take for granted—such as the amount of time spent touching or hugging—can have measurable neurobiological consequences. Moreover, giving each other the touch you need may well have the capacity to reverse damages.

Exercise: Be Medicine for Each Other

How much time do you and your partner spend in close physical contact? I don’t mean just making love; that’s part of it, of course, but there’s much more: hugging, holding each other, cuddling, holding hands, kissing, giving a massage, and so on. Contact in these ways is not only enjoyable, it serves as actual medicine for both of you—to help your body heal, and as a preventive means to maintain your health.

If you haven’t already, I suggest you add this to your daily routine over the next week.

1. Find a time when you can be alone together for a minimum of ten minutes every day. It can be before you go to sleep, or any other time that’s convenient.
   
2. Spend this time in close physical contact. No sex! You can cuddle, caress, or even cradle one another as you would a baby. If you are someone who feels uneasy with physical contact, do this anyway and talk about it with your partner. Chances are high that you have always been touch aversive. But that doesn’t mean you need to stay this way. Right? We’re talking about your health here.
   
3. Notice the effect this time has on your level of stress and on your physical health. Although you may want to continue beyond one week to realize the full effect, I’d be surprised if you don’t notice any benefits even within these first few days.
   

Tenth Guiding Principle

The tenth principle is that
partners can minimize each other’s stress and optimize each other’s health.
I find this fitting for the closing of this book because it in effect ties together what we have already discussed. Bottom line, by adhering to the principles presented in the previous chapters—for example, a couple bubble based in true mutuality, well-trained ambassadors that keep your primitives in check, an up-to-date owner’s manual for your relationship—you avoid causing stress to yourself and your partner. In so doing, you actively foster physical and emotional health and well-being for both of you.

Here are some supporting principles to guide you:

1. Manage each other’s stress. In recent decades, techniques for stress reduction have become increasingly popular. You may already be familiar with these—time management, eating regular meals, getting enough sleep, exercising, relaxation, to name a few. However, what’s missing in most approaches to stress management is the key role partners can play. I’m suggesting that, as experts on one another who understand something about how your brains function, you can add the dimension of stress reduction to your owner’s manual. Knowing the three or four things that make your partner feel bad gives you an advantage when it comes to detecting stress and even anticipating it.
   

   You and your partner can support one another in reducing stress by making sure you engage in healthy activities and achieve balance in your lifestyle. If you notice your partner isn’t getting enough sleep, for example, step in and help find a solution. You might volunteer to take on extra household chores until he or she has caught up on needed rest. If your partner is slacking in his or her exercise routine, this might be the time to go to the gym together. Or if your partner had a hard day at work, maybe tonight is the right evening to rent that comedy you’ve talked about watching.
   

2. Be aware of the unique experience of stress. As you help manage your partner’s stress, keep in mind that everyone experiences stress in a different way. For example, a tax audit that causes you to lose sleep could be seen by your partner as a minor blip on the radar. In this case, you each bring a different history and set of feelings about financial matters. So be careful not to impose your own evaluation of stress on your partner. Remember, you are an expert on him or her. So when you help your partner reduce stress, you do so on his or her terms. And, of course, your partner will reciprocate in kind.
   
3. As you age… . Not all illness is caused by stress, but stress can aggravate any illness and make it worse. As you and your partner age, you inevitably will encounter the natural challenges all our bodies face as the years advance. Know, however, that by loving one another fully, learning how to defuse conflict and make choices that are pro-relationship rather than pro-self, and wiring yourselves for love, you stand the best chance of enjoying a happy, healthy, and ultimately satisfying union.
   

Postscript

When all is said and done, most of us are doing the best we can, and most of us don’t go into relationships with the intention of messing things up. We try our best to love and be loved in return. Yet despite our best intentions, when we do mess things up, it most likely is because we disregarded, dismissed, or didn’t know about at least one of the principles described in this book.

This should give hope to the reader because, the truth is, you can still be wired for love, if not in this relationship, then in the next one. It is never too late. And there is no one reading this book who can’t ultimately do it right.

Thankfully, relationships are not like baseball, in which it’s three strikes and you’re out. Couples have more options, and more resources at their fingertips. The universe keeps pitching us new opportunities to redo, repair, and reinvent ourselves in relationship to another person, perhaps even the same person. We just need to envision a more principled reason to be together, a more life-enhancing purpose to devote ourselves to another person. This purpose must be based on true mutuality; on giving ourselves fully to our chosen other; and on the willingness to accept one another as we are, with all our irritating qualities.

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