Secure Love

1. Are you able to articulate your needs with accuracy and authenticity? Are you comfortable expressing your fears and unmet needs?

2. Do you agree that all relationship behaviors are attempts to experience, maintain, gain, or regain closeness and security with our loved ones?

3. How do you determine if you and your partner have communication issues or if there is an unchangeable incompatibility in the relationship?

4. Do you fight fair in relationships? How do you know if you are fighting fair? Do you know how to stay connected even during conflict?

5. Do you experience missteps as rejection?

6. Do you have realistic expectations in a relationship or do you struggle with desiring perfection?

7. Does understanding the root of your partner’s imperfect behavior help you empathize with them?

8. Is it important for you to understand how your childhood impacts your behavior today? Does this awareness help you make changes in your behavior?

9. Do you struggle with negative self-talk? How have you made efforts to validate yourself and be kinder to yourself in general? Do you know how to accept yourself? Do you believe that how you communicate with yourself impacts how you communicate with your partner? Can you give to your partner what you can’t first give to yourself?

10. Are you concerned that it would feel inauthentic in some way to borrow some of the phrases (suggested in the book) that could improve communication? Is it hard to make healthy changes while also feeling like you are being true to yourself?

11. Are you aware of your attachment style and how this impacts you in relationships?

12. Are you able to validate someone’s perspective while maintaining your own? Can two perspectives both have validity even when they seem to be in contradiction with each other? Have you learned how to let go of the need to agree?

13. Have you made efforts to increase your vulnerability in relationships? Are you willing to take the risk of getting emotionally wounded in order to experience authenticity, connectedness, a sense of empowerment, and real resolutions to problems? In general, is the risk of vulnerability worth the reward?

14. Have people misunderstood the idea of “being responsible for your own feelings” as there being something wrong with seeking comfort from a partner or others? Has our society mistakenly perpetuated a message that it is weak or wrong in some way to seek support?

15. Is it difficult for you to continue to make efforts in changing and growing if your partner (or others around you) don’t seem to be on the same journey? Do you agree with the idea that modeling positive behavior with have an impact on your partner (or others) with time?

16. Do you sometimes struggle to remember that you and your partner can be hurting at the same time and that pain isn’t a zero-sum game? Is this also an issue in our society as a whole?

17. Do you feel that you have to hide “bad parts” of yourself from your partner? Do you fear that you will be rejected if you don’t hide them?

18. Do people sometimes say mean things when they are desperate to be heard? How do you maintain a sense of stability when you feel like someone is saying hurtful things to you? What stops you from entering the environment of unhealthy communication?

19. Are you able to validate another person’s anger? How does it feel when someone validates your own anger?

20. What do you think of the idea of showing curiosity about your partner and their feelings, in particular with understanding how they came to think the way they do? Would you like to practice more curiosity and less defensiveness in your life?

21. Have you been able to develop a skill of tolerance? How often do you wish that you had let things go that in hindsight seem relatively insignificant? (“Can I let this one go?”)

22. Do you know how to truly listen to your partner (or anyone) without thinking about what you might say in response?

23. In general, do apologies mean as much to you as the feeling of being truly understood? When you give apologies, do you put effort into devising a plan for changing the behavior that led to the apology?

24. Is it difficult for you to openly discuss sex in relationships because of messages you received growing up that may have contributed to your discomfort? Is it important for you to be fully open about your thoughts and feeling surrounding sex, or do you think it’s necessary to keep some things hidden?

25. Do you agree that there is no definition of a “healthy sex life” that can override the unique “healthy” experience in your relationship? Do you determine on your own what is healthy and right for you or do you struggle in trying to live according to societal norms?

26. Have you ever been to couples therapy? What was this experience like for you? What went right and what went wrong?

27. What do you think of the author’s rule of thumb that at least 80 percent of the time you are either consciously aware of positive feelings about your partner and the relationship or you have a subconscious felt sense of “all is well”? Does this sound too low? Too high?

28. What do you think of the idea that there are no rules about what a secure relationship should look like?

29. Do you struggle with comparing yourself to other couples (which can get in the way of enjoying what you have)?

30. Is it important for you to go out into the world and have experiences to come back and share with your partner?

 

“Make secure attachment your goal, but don’t let a quest for the perfect relationship get in the way of the “good-enough” relationship. Make “good-enough” your goal and you might find that “good-enough” is exactly what you’ve been looking for.”