Emotional Attunement

What is emotional attunement?

Emotional attunement is the ability to know your partner on a deep emotional level, and a vital ingredient for successful relationships. It is being able to hear, see, feel, interpret, and respond to your partner, using both verbal and non-verbal communication.

Emotional attunement is often most noticeable when absent in relationships. It hurts when you take a risk to be vulnerable with your partner and are not met at the place of intimacy you had hoped for. This often leaves couples feeling misunderstood and disconnected. Genuine efforts to be recognized by your partner can start to feel hopeless. Eventually, you may even learn to stop expecting empathy and support from your partner altogether.

The lack of emotional attunement is felt profoundly when couples argue. One person wants an issue or feeling to be acknowledged, while the other person feels blamed, often ensuing in defensiveness. At this point, you both fall out of sync with each other and miss the necessary cues to remain connected during times of conflict—pushing you and your partner even further apart from each other.

How emotional attunement can help your relationship

Emotional attunement allows you to better understand your partner through body language and by assessing what is happening around them. Being able to tune into each other in this way lets you know how and when to engage with your partner. Practicing attunement supports you and your partner’s ability to anticipate each other’s needs, promoting a sense of trust, intimacy, and safety.

These skills are the foundation for which effective communication, conflict management, and intimate connection all grow. Without this foundation, many learned communication skills will fall short of success. Being emotionally attuned in your relationship fosters understanding and feelings of being known by your partner.

Practicing emotional attunement

Understand yourself. Before you can attune to others, you must first attune to yourself. This means reflecting on your own thoughts, feelings, and emotional needs. What are your triggers, and why are they triggering? How do your past experiences influence your expectations, hopes, and fears for the future? What do these things look like in terms of your relationship with your partner? Gaining insight through self-reflection not only allows you to understand your own needs, but also helps you communicate your needs to your partner.

Get curious. Attuned couples are intimately familiar with one another’s worlds—the important things about your life and the experiences that have shaped you today. Couples who are emotionally attuned make space in their minds for their relationship and remember the major events in each other’s histories. Emotionally attuned couples know each other’s aspirations in life, fears, and dreams.

Update your knowledge. Attuned couples also continue to update their information about each other as their partner’s feelings and thoughts change over time. Many people think they know everything there is to know about their partner, especially if you have been with your partner for quite some time. Early relationships are filled with novelty, curiosity, and excitement to better know the person sitting in front of you. Over time, it’s easy to make the mistake of thinking your partner has nothing new to share—that the novelty is gone. This assumption is only true if people never change! Yet, people are continuously changing through experience, reflection, and interactions. Even the person you think you know so well is still somewhat a mystery.

Try answering some of these questions about your partner and see how well you know your partner’s internal world.

• Name one of your partner’s current hobbies.

• What is your partner currently most stressed about?

• What is your partner’s biggest fear?

• How does your partner like to be comforted and soothed?

• What is your partner’s ideal job?

• Who was your partner’s childhood best friend?

• What turns your partner on sexually?

• What was your partner’s worst childhood experience?

Going over these questions together can help you both develop more details for each other’s internal worlds. However, getting to know each other intimately is an ongoing process. Your knowledge about your partner should be updated regularly by spending time together catching up on what has been happening in each other’s day-to-day.

Couples who share detailed understandings of each other are often better prepared to navigate stress and conflict. When you and your partner are aware of each other’s feelings, thoughts, and motivations, you are both less likely to be thrown off by the changes of life. The more you know about each other, the stronger your connection will feel, which better prepares your relationship to handle future challenges.

If you are interested in exploring emotional attunement in your relationship further, you can schedule a free consultation with me through the link below or via email at amy@reconnectingrelationships.com

Schedule with Amy

Amy’s Bio

Marriage is Hard Work

As my wedding anniversary nears, I can remember one particular response I received when sharing the news that I was getting married.  A lady that worked in the same building as me asked, “Are you sure?” She dipped her head back and rolled her eyes regretfully as she described how marriage is a ball and chain.  I understood she meant no malice but instead was offering me portentous advice based on her own experiences.  Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t take her seriously, but it certainly opened my eyes to how some people feel about marriage. 

This November marks 22 years with my husband.  In being together this length of time, we have had our share of ups and downs.  And one thing I know for sure is marriage is hard work!  But when you hear that marriage is hard work, because I’m sure you’ve heard this pretty often, what comes to mind? And just how difficult should you expect it to be? 

Hard work means so many things.  It means not taking your relationship for granted.  It means attuning to your partner intentionally.  It means taking your partner into consideration when making big decisions and maybe even the small ones.  It means letting him or her know how much you care and appreciate them.  It means trying over and over to understand each other.

Putting in the effort to your marriage can be so rewarding.  The best way I can describe it is like getting through a tough physical workout.  At first it feels a little daunting, then you’re right in the middle of it all and gaining momentum, and when it’s over you feel proud for getting to the other side of it.  Maybe you hurt a little but you know that you’ll be stronger because of it.  So essentially what I’m saying is the kind of hard work you put into a relationship should make you feel good. 

Each partner has to be an active participant in the marriage.  I read somewhere that in successful relationships a partner must be willing to put in 100% without the expectation to receive something back.  Sound crazy?  Just think about it.  No tit for tat.  No more he said, she said.  No need to keep count. Each of you share the responsibility for the relationship fairly.  But 50/50 is no such thing!  It’s all in!

Ready to give it a real shot? Call your local therapist today!

Give Trust

What is a relationship without trust?  Will a relationship be successful without trust?  Does trust have to go both ways?  What do you have in a relationship if you do not have trust?  Trust is pivotal in relationships and is usually seen as a part of the foundation of a relationship.  Trust can be lost in many ways.  Perhaps trust was lost when an embarrassing story was told about you.  Or maybe when something hidden has been revealed.  Most commonly, trust is lost when we have been betrayed.  Once that trust is lost, we feel powerless and vulnerable.  We can oftentimes feel so powerless and vulnerable that we begin to question whether that trust can be restored.  We are resilient creatures and therefore can bounce back and handle things we seem to think we cannot.  “But how?” may be your next question.

I grew up, like many others, hearing, “you have to earn my trust” or “you have to earn back your trust.”  Then, one day, I came across this quote, “trust isn’t something that you earn, it’s something that you give” (Richard Fagerlin).  This really got me thinking and questioning the way I thought trust was restored; then, it all started to make sense.  One of the many reasons trust should be given and not earned is because when trust is earned, we begin to keep score.  When score is being kept in a relationship no one ever wins, and it creates a division or the sense that someone is better than the other.  When we work from the concept that trust should be earned, we may also be setting unreasonably high standards that can never be achieved, or we start low and continuously raise those standards in order for them to not be met.

Giving our trust to someone is a choice that we must make for ourselves.  We must make the decision to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, once again, and let down that brick wall that we have built to protect ourselves from the betrayal.  One must be committed to giving and building trust as it is often a long and strenuous process.  An important concept to remember is that by giving someone your trust again, you are not condoning or excusing their behavior.  By giving someone your trust, you are giving them the benefit of a doubt.  It is also a way to regain that lost power and control because you are choosing to let go of the betrayal.  Just because trust is given does not mean you have to give it to everyone.  When choosing to give your trust make sure you are looking for red flags, are checking for safety, and are setting boundaries. If you still need help giving trust, you can always contact your local therapist’s office.

“Only a confident, secure, courageous person can choose to trust.”

-Richard Fagerlin