drsuejohnson.com

Young people report distress at the sexual landscape, especially implicating ubiquitous porn, which Julian suggests has “given men some dismaying sexual habits. Casual sex is also just less satisfying for most of us than sex with a regular partner; the article suggests this is because regular partners learn each other’s needs and wants and how to respond to them skillfully. This fits with Kate Julian’s comments on porn-induced detachment and with her points about how avoiding risking and reaching for others seems to limit our sexual experience. We need to get that emotional connection is our core essential requirement as human beings, more than our need to satisfy our sexual drive, even.

There is a new book out by Gemma Hartley called Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women and the Way Forward. The point is, this labor is mostly considered women’s work and women resent it. I have listened to literally hundreds of women in couple therapy and in relationship education groups weep about feeling unappreciated and taken for granted in ways that fit into this concept of emotional labor. Yes, women get mad because their men do not join them in the tasks of running a household, but they get even more desperate, afraid, and frantic when their men do not help them take any care of the emotional bond that makes them a couple.

It feels like last month that took a leap of faith with a strong, rather brash mountain man and stepped onto a fast train of marriage, adopting kids, buying houses, career struggles, travel and all the ups and downs that come with a love relationship. Fights where I swore I was about to leave, moments where I knew that I was held and loved and blessed, team work going around the world with small kids, scary times where we held each other tight  – all rolled out in the great drama that has been our life together. We know better just ‘how’ to work at love because we now have a science of bonding, and my team of clinicians and trainers and researchers are proud to be part of this growing science. In this world of easy hookups, cynical dismissal of loyalty and long term commitment, and the spector of loneliness casting its shadow wider and wider, it is clear that the world needs our message and our science.

The truth is that this book has taken me 30 years to write – 30 years of listening to individuals  – couples and families – listening to therapists telling me how they get stuck – reading research results and watching tapes of people in therapy sessions and educational groups facing their vulnerabilities and walking through them to find balance, peace and connection with others. Jules and his wife Mary learn to see the desperation for connection that drives their son Paul’s acting out, to tune into him and hold him when he begins to flail around and to support each other to shape a more loving secure family life. The science of the last two decades, on emotion and how it makes sense, on the fact that our nervous systems are wired for connection with others – set up for attachment bonds, and, results from our own lab, on how to move people from disconnection and despair to a whole sense of self and a confident ability to dance with others, has to be our guide into the 21st century. I want this book to make a difference – to inspire therapists everywhere – to bring the different tribes of therapy folks together and to empower us to lead those of us who are stumbling forward into a place I call “safe and sound”.