The Healing Power of Touch

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Why Human Contact Is a Biological Necessity, What Its Absence Costs Us, and How to Bring It Back

An original essay on affectionate touch, touch deprivation, self-touch, touch in long partnership, and the somatic science of why being touched well regulates the nervous system.

“The mind cannot forget what the hands have learned.” — Jon Zahourek

Of all the senses, touch is the first to develop. Long before a human being can see or hear, the developing fetus can feel. By the time we are born, the skin is already an exquisitely sensitive organ, and it remains, throughout life, our largest one. We are built, from the very beginning, to be touched.

And yet touch is the sense we speak about least, attend to least, and most often go without. We discuss what we see and hear. We rarely discuss what we have or have not felt against our skin. This essay is an attempt to give touch the attention it deserves — because the research on touch, and my own years of clinical work, both point to the same conclusion. Human contact is not a luxury. It is a biological necessity. Its presence regulates us. Its absence costs us, in ways that are measurable and serious.

Touch and the developing child

The most sobering evidence for the necessity of touch comes from what happens to children who do not receive enough of it.

In the middle of the twentieth century, researchers studying infants in orphanages and hospitals documented a devastating pattern. Infants who were fed and kept clean but who were not held, not touched affectionately, not given consistent loving physical contact, failed to thrive. Some became listless and withdrawn. Some stopped growing despite adequate nutrition. In the most severe cases, infants died. The condition was real enough to have a name, and the cause was not nutritional. It was the absence of touch.

Later research clarified the mechanism. Affectionate touch is one of the primary ways an infant’s nervous system learns to regulate itself. When a caregiver holds, strokes, rocks, and soothes an infant, the infant’s stress response is calmed from the outside. Over thousands of repetitions, the infant’s own nervous system gradually internalizes this regulation. The capacity to self-soothe is built, in large part, through having been physically soothed. The child who is not touched enough does not build this capacity as fully. The deficit can persist into adulthood, showing up as difficulty with self-regulation, heightened anxiety, and a body that has never fully learned that it is safe.

This is not only about infancy. Children need affectionate touch throughout their development. The hug after a hard day. The hand on the back. The closeness of a parent’s body during a story. These are not sentimental extras. They are part of how a child’s nervous system is built. A childhood without enough warm, safe, affectionate touch leaves a mark that the adult often carries without knowing where it came from.

The somatic science of why touch regulates us

Touch does specific, measurable things in the body, and understanding them helps explain why being touched well feels the way it does.

The skin contains specialized nerve fibers that respond specifically to slow, gentle, affectionate touch — the kind of touch involved in a caress, a stroke, a tender holding. These fibers are distinct from the ones that register pressure or temperature or pain. When they are activated by slow affectionate touch, they send signals that are processed in brain regions involved in emotion and social connection rather than only in the regions that map physical sensation. In other words, the body has a dedicated system for receiving affectionate touch as emotional and relational information, not merely as physical contact.

Affectionate touch also influences the body’s chemistry. It is associated with the release of oxytocin, a hormone involved in bonding, trust, and the felt sense of safety. It is associated with reductions in cortisol, the primary stress hormone. It supports the activation of what Stephen Porges, in his polyvagal theory, calls the social engagement system — the nervous system state of safety and connection. Touch, in short, is one of the most direct and reliable ways to move a human nervous system from a state of threat or isolation toward a state of safety and connection.

This is why being held when you are distressed actually helps, and not only metaphorically. The touch is doing physiological work. It is downregulating the stress response, releasing the chemistry of safety, and signaling to your nervous system, below the level of conscious thought, that you are not alone and not in danger. The body knows it is being touched with care, and the knowing changes its state.

Touch deprivation in adult life

We tend to think of touch deprivation as a problem of infancy. It is also, increasingly, a problem of adult life.

Many adults live with far less affectionate touch than their nervous systems need. People who live alone. People whose primary relationships have lost their physical warmth. Widowed people. Divorced people. People whose work and life have become so busy and so screen-mediated that whole days pass without meaningful physical contact with another human being. Older adults, in particular, often experience a profound loss of touch as partners die and family becomes distant. The phenomenon has become common enough that researchers and writers have given it names — touch hunger, skin hunger, touch starvation.

The cost of this deprivation is real. Adults who lack affectionate touch report higher levels of anxiety, more depression, poorer sleep, and a greater sense of loneliness and isolation. The nervous system that is not regularly soothed through touch runs at a higher baseline of activation. The body that is rarely held carries a low, chronic sense of being unsafe. None of this is a moral failing or a sign of weakness. It is the predictable result of a nervous system not receiving one of its basic inputs.

Naming this matters, because touch deprivation is often invisible to the person experiencing it. They may know they feel anxious, lonely, or unsettled without recognizing that one of the contributing factors is simply that their skin has not been touched with affection in a long time. Recognizing touch hunger for what it is can be the first step toward addressing it.

Self-touch

When affectionate touch from others is limited, self-touch becomes genuinely important, and it is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing.

The same nerve fibers that respond to a loved one’s caress can be activated by your own hand. The same regulating chemistry can, to a meaningful degree, be accessed through your own touch. This is not a complete substitute for being held by another person, but it is real, and it is available to everyone at any moment.

There are simple practices. A hand placed on the heart and a hand on the belly, held there while you breathe slowly, is one of the most reliable self-soothing practices I teach. The warmth and pressure of your own hands, combined with slow breath, sends the nervous system a signal of safety. Slowly stroking your own forearm, your own face, the back of your own neck, can activate the affectionate-touch system and produce a measurable calming. Holding your own hands. Wrapping your arms around yourself. Giving your own shoulders a slow, kind press. These are not consolation prizes. They are genuine nervous system practices, and they belong in the toolkit of anyone who is, for whatever reason, going through a period of limited touch.

There is also the practice of touching your own body with care rather than with the evaluation and criticism that many adults habitually direct at themselves. To touch your own body kindly, as something to be cared for rather than judged, is its own quiet healing. The body that has been treated as a problem to be fixed begins, slowly, to register that it is being treated as a home to be tended.

Touch in long partnership

Within an intimate partnership, touch is one of the central channels of connection, and it is also one of the first things to quietly erode.

Long-term couples often experience a slow narrowing of their physical contact. The casual touch of early relationship — the hand-holding, the spontaneous embrace, the easy closeness on the couch — can gradually fade until the only remaining touch is either functional or specifically sexual. When this happens, something important is lost. The steady background warmth of affectionate, non-demanding touch is part of what keeps a partnership feeling like a safe harbor. Without it, partners can live alongside each other and slowly become starved for contact even within the relationship itself.

Affectionate touch and sexual touch are related but not identical, and a healthy partnership needs both. Sexual touch is its own profound form of contact, reaching, as it does, places of vulnerability and pleasure that only an intimate partner reaches. But affectionate, non-sexual touch — the long hug, the hand held while walking, the slow back rub with no agenda, the simple holding in bed — is its own distinct nourishment. Couples who maintain a rich life of affectionate touch often find that the sexual connection is supported by it rather than competing with it. The affectionate touch keeps the channel of physical connection open, warm, and safe.

If the touch in your partnership has narrowed, it can be rebuilt, and it does not require dramatic effort. It requires small, consistent, low-pressure contact. Holding hands again. Hugging for longer than the brief social hug — long enough for both nervous systems to actually settle, which often takes longer than people expect. Sitting close. Offering and receiving simple massage with no expectation that it lead anywhere. The rebuilding does not need to be forced or performed. It needs only to be reintroduced, gently and regularly, until the body remembers.

A note on touch and trauma

For some people, touch is not simply soothing. For those who have experienced abuse, assault, or other violations involving touch, physical contact can be complicated. Touch can trigger the very threat responses it might otherwise calm. The body that has been hurt through touch may have learned to brace against it.

If this is your experience, it deserves care and patience rather than force. The capacity to receive affectionate touch as safe can be rebuilt, but it is genuine clinical work, often done gradually and often with professional support. Touch should never be forced, including by yourself onto yourself. The goal is not to override the body’s protective responses but to slowly, respectfully, help the nervous system relearn that some touch, in some contexts, with trusted people, is safe. Trauma-informed therapy, including somatic approaches and careful work around consent and pacing, can support this. The body that learned to brace can, with time and care, learn to receive.

Bringing touch back

If you recognize that your own life has become low in affectionate touch, there are gentle ways to bring it back.

Widen the circle of safe physical contact. The handshake, the hug offered to trusted friends and family, the hand on a friend’s shoulder, the warm greeting. These ordinary contacts matter more than we usually credit. Offer them, where they are welcome and appropriate, more often than you currently do.

Hug the people you love for longer. The brief social hug barely registers. A hug held until both bodies actually soften does real regulating work. Most people underestimate how long this takes — often a slow count of twenty or more.

Practice self-touch deliberately. Hand on heart and belly with slow breath. Kind stroking of your own arms and face. Treating your own body, with your own hands, as something cared for.

If you are partnered, reintroduce affectionate, non-demanding touch as a regular practice. Hold hands. Sit close. Offer simple massage. Rebuild the warm background contact that long partnership tends to erode.

Consider the forms of professional and structured touch that exist for exactly this reason. Massage therapy. Other forms of bodywork. These provide safe, structured, professional affectionate touch, and for people in periods of significant touch deprivation, they can be genuinely restorative.

And if touch is complicated for you because of your history, treat that as worthy of care. Work with a trauma-informed therapist. Move gently. Let the rebuilding take the time it takes.

A closing thought

We are built, from before birth, to be touched. The need does not end when we leave the womb, and it does not end when we become competent, independent adults. The nervous system continues, across the entire span of a life, to be regulated, soothed, and reassured through affectionate physical contact. This is not weakness or excessive need. It is simply how human beings are made.

As the sex therapist and author Alexandra Katehakis has written, touch is an innate gift that each of us possesses simply because we are alive. We can offer it. We can receive it. We can, even alone, channel it through our own hands into our own faithful bodies.

If your life has grown quiet of touch, this is worth tending. Reach out, where it is safe and welcome, to the people you love. Let yourself be held. Hold yourself when no one else is there. The skin is waiting to be met, the nervous system is waiting to be soothed, and the simple, ancient medicine of loving touch is available — most of the time, in most lives — far more than we remember to use it.

Further reading: Stephen Porges, The Polyvagal Theory. Tiffany Field, Touch. Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy. For clinical work integrating somatic and trauma-informed approaches to touch in California or Florida, visit thecourageousself.com.

April Wright, MA, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and Florida specializing in EMDR, sex therapy, and couples counseling. She trained in sex and couples therapy at AACAST at UCLA. She blogs about attachment, healing, sexuality, and the courageous arts of becoming oneself at courageous-arts.com and sees clients at thecourageousself.com.

The Heart Grows Smarter

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By 

Published: November 5, 2012   For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

If you go back and read a bunch of biographies of people born 100 to 150 years ago, you notice a few things that were more common then than now.  First, many more families suffered the loss of a child, which had a devastating and historically underappreciated impact on their overall worldviews.  Second, and maybe related, many more children grew up in cold and emotionally distant homes, where fathers, in particular, barely knew their children and found it impossible to express their love for them.

David Brooks_New York Times
David Brooks

It wasn’t only parents who were emotionally diffident; it was the people who studied them. In 1938, a group of researchers began an intensive study of 268 students at Harvard University. The plan was to track them through their entire lives, measuring, testing and interviewing them every few years to see how lives develop.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the researchers didn’t pay much attention to the men’s relationships. Instead, following the intellectual fashions of the day, they paid a lot of attention to the men’s physiognomy. Did they have a “masculine” body type? Did they show signs of vigorous genetic endowments?

But as this study — the Grant Study — progressed, the power of relationships became clear. The men who grew up in homes with warm parents were much more likely to become first lieutenants and majors in World War II. The men who grew up in cold, barren homes were much more likely to finish the war as privates.

Body type was useless as a predictor of how the men would fare in life. So was birth order or political affiliation. Even social class had a limited effect. But having a warm childhood was powerful. As George Vaillant, the study director, sums it up in “Triumphs of Experience,” his most recent summary of the research, “It was the capacity for intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspects of these men’s lives.”

Of the 31 men in the study incapable of establishing intimate bonds, only four are still alive. Of those who were better at forming relationships, more than a third are living.

It’s not that the men who flourished had perfect childhoods. Rather, as Vaillant puts it, “What goes right is more important than what goes wrong.” The positive effect of one loving relative, mentor or friend can overwhelm the negative effects of the bad things that happen.

In case after case, the magic formula is capacity for intimacy combined with persistence, discipline, order and dependability. The men who could be affectionate about people and organized about things had very enjoyable lives.

But a childhood does not totally determine a life. The beauty of the Grant Study is that, as Vaillant emphasizes, it has followed its subjects for nine decades. The big finding is that you can teach an old dog new tricks. The men kept changing all the way through, even in their 80s and 90s.

One man in the study paid his way through Harvard by working as a psychiatric attendant. He slept from 6 p.m. to midnight. Worked the night shift at a hospital, then biked to class by 8 in the morning. After college, he tried his hand at theater. He did not succeed, and, at age 40, he saw himself as “mediocre and without imagination.” His middle years were professionally and maritally unhappy.

But, as he got older, he became less emotionally inhibited. In old age, he became a successful actor, playing roles like King Lear. He got married at 78. By 86, the only medicine he was taking was Viagra. He lived to 96.

Another subject grew up feeling that he “didn’t know either parent very well.” At 19, he wrote, “I don’t find it easy to make friends.” At 39, he wrote, “I feel lonely, rootless and disoriented.” At 50, he had basically given up trying to socialize and was trapped in an unhappy marriage.

But, as he aged, he changed. He became the president of his nursing home. He had girlfriends after the death of his first wife and then remarried. He didn’t turn into a social butterfly, but life was better.

The men of the Grant Study frequently became more emotionally attuned as they aged, more adept at recognizing and expressing emotion. Part of the explanation is biological. People, especially men, become more aware of their emotions as they get older.

Part of this is probably historical. Over the past half-century or so, American culture has become more attuned to the power of relationships. Masculinity has changed, at least a bit.

The so-called Flynn Effect describes the rise in measured I.Q. scores over the decades. Perhaps we could invent something called the Grant Effect, on the improvement of mass emotional intelligence over the decades. This gradual change might be one of the greatest contributors to progress and well-being that we’ve experienced in our lifetimes.

The Secret of Love (Spoiler Alert)

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journey by Deepak Chopra, MD

The Internet has taken up the slack from print media by offering tips on love and relationships, which pop up on home pages, in tweets and in news teasers many times a day. If the secret to lasting romance could be shared like a recipe for cinnamon buns, our problems would be over. But love isn’t a fact, formula, or definable in words.

Love is a process, perhaps the most mysterious one in human psychology. No one knows what creates love as a powerful bond that is so full of meaning. If romance was only a heady brew of hormones, genetic inheritance and sex drive, all we’d need is better data to explain it. But love is transporting. It carries us beyond our everyday selves and makes reality shine with an inner light. The reverse can also happen. We crash to earth when the wear and tear of relationships makes love fade.

The process of love is kept alive by evolving and not getting stuck. Infatuation is an early stage of the process. You bond with another person as if by alchemy, but in time the ego returns with the claims of “I, me, and mine.” At that point love must change. Two people must negotiate how much to share, how much to surrender and how much to stand their ground. It would be tragic if romance faded into everyday familiarity, but it doesn’t have to.

Beyond the stage of two egos negotiating for their own interests, there is deepening love. It doesn’t try to turn the present into the past. A married couple of twenty years isn’t still infatuated with one other. So what keeps the process alive? For me, the answer was revealed by reading a startling sentence from the Upanishads, which are like a textbook of spiritual understanding. The sentence says, “You do not love a spouse for the sake of the spouse but for the sake of the self.”

At first glance this seems like a horrible sentiment: We all love on a personal basis and we expect to be loved the same way, for ourselves. But if “self” means your everyday personality, there is much that isn’t very lovable about each of us and as a marriage or relationship unfolds, there’s a guarantee that our partners will see those unlovable things more clearly. Even a knight in shining armor might want to save more than one damsel, and even saint must use deodorant once in a while.

In the world’s wisdom tradition, “love” and “self” are both universal. They exist beyond the individual personality. The secret of love is to expand beyond the personal. When people say that they want unconditional love, they often imply that they want to be loved despite their shortcomings, issues and quirks. But that’s nearly impossible if love remains at the personal level. At a certain point, if you begin to see love itself as your goal, universal love is more powerful and secure than personal love.

The poet Rabindranath Tagore described the spiritual side of love in a single expression” “Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.” The gift of human awareness is that we can locate the source of creation in ourselves. By going deeper into the self, asking “Who am I?” without settling for a superficial answer, the ego-personality fades. A sense of the true self begins to dawn, and it is this self that exists in contact with love as the only reality.

The journey becomes more fascinating if someone else travels with you. Life isn’t about abstractions; it’s about experience. If you have a beloved who stands for the feeling of love, bonding, and affection, your journey has a focus that can’t be supplied merely by thinking. The experiences that love bring include surrender, devotion, selflessness, giving, gratitude, appreciation, kindness and bliss. So if the phrase “universal love” seems daunting or improbable to you, break it down into these smaller experiences. Pursue them, and you will be traveling in the direction of your source, where the true self and true love merge.

That’s where my spoiler alert comes in. Announcing the secret of love cuts short the actual experience. It doesn’t always help to know what’s coming, because you might fall into exaggerated expectations and fall short. It’s better and more realistic to become aware that love is now your personal project. Show kindness and gratitude. Speak about what your beloved means to you. Every step on this journey works on behalf of the two of you but also on behalf of the self that unites you at the deepest level.

The Secret to Desire in a Long-term Relationship

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Healthy Relationship Habits: Communication

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1.    Communicate daily.  Communicating daily ensure you are in tune to your partners latest interests, ideas, thoughts, and emotions which give greater opportunity for connection and intimacy.

2.    Learn to listen. By listening, you are able to summarize what your partner said and how they feel in about two sentences when they have completely stopped speaking.

3.    Check in.  Randomly inquiry about your partner.  Showing interest in unexpected way, shows you care, are curious, and want to included in your partner’s daily life whether mundane or not.

4.    “I” statements – I think, I feel, I prefer.  By taking ownership of your wants, needs, and emotions, your partner is less likely to become defensive.

5.     Express emotions.  Use specific feelings and actions that instilled the anger, hurt, sadness, joy, or happiness.

6.     Don’t blame. Take a moment to declare what your role may have been in the situation. No matter the situation, everyone involved played a part.  Taking responsibility for your function creates an atmosphere for safety and expression.

7.    Share, get to know each other, ask questions, be curious, and unleash childhood experiences, share pictures, memories, and stories.  Sharing small bits of you ensures safety and trust over time.

8.    Speak what is true to you. Stop, reflect for a moment, determine what is true for you in the situation and speak your truth kindly.  Identify a specific event or topic and use “When this happened, I feel/ felt, because I, and I (clarifying your requests, what you’d like to see in the future, actions you plan to take, and when, and what you will do to take care of yourself), and I appreciate.  Finish with kindness.

9.    Never go to bed angry!  Clear up the argument before hitting the sheets.  Come to a

Couple_sitting_outdoor_table_talking

compromise or determine a time and place to reconvene the discussion.  Make-up sex just may be the perfect way to move past an argument.

10.   Be Specific in your communication.  Discuss one topic at a time and don’t move on to the next until the first one is resolved.

11.   Remind your partner why you fell in love with them.  Describe specific things you love about them.

12.   Show appreciation for who they are and what they do.  Again be specific in sharing your appreciation. “I appreciate it when you….”

13.   No Yelling.  The louder you yell, the less the other person listens to you! Speak in a warm and loving tone calmly and respectfully and more likely your partner will listen.

14.   Use preferences – avoid demands. Ex: Instead of “You need to clean the scattered newspaper in the living room tonight” try “I feel anxious because the large stack of newspaper in the living room is distracting.  I would really appreciate it if you could find a secluded place to store the newspapers tonight.”

15.   Use eye contact. Think how it feels to be spoken to while someone is looking at you versus looking at the newspaper.

16.   Do not give unsolicited advice. When you know you partner is having a rough day, just listen and don’t try to solve their problem.  They are fully capable of solving their own issues.  A good listening ear may be all the help that is required.

Embrace Conflict as a Path to Deeper Connection

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By Lori Hollander LCSW-C, BCD Relationships & Marriage

Conventional wisdom says that having conflict in a partnership is “bad.” Most couples perceive conflict or its lack as a measure of a relationship’s strength or weakness. The truth is that conflict in itself is not bad; in fact it is a necessary part of every relationship.

How could you truly be emotionally intimate with another person, live with them day in and day out, experience all the frustrations of life and not have conflict? If there is no conflict, one partner is not speaking up.

Conflict is not only vital to an authentic and genuine connection; it is the route to discovering your partner’s likes and dislikes, needs and desires. The process of exploring your differences and building consensus teaches you about your partner’s depth and character. Meeting conflict head on is the very path that bolsters connection; facing and embracing discord strengthens the bond between you and drives your relationship to a deeper, more intimate level.

In our practice, Alisa and Trey have come for their first Couple to Couple® coaching session with me and Bob:
Alisa: “You don’t make me a priority! Our marriage is the last thing on your list.”
Trey: “What do you mean? I work 70 hours a week to give you the lifestyle you have.”
Alisa: “You just don’t get it. It’s the little things that matter more to me. When was the last time you planned a date for us?”
Trey: “You only work part-time; why haven’t you planned a date?”

The dialogue between Alisa and Trey is a common example of how couples experience conflict; anger and blame underlie their exchange. Notice how often the word “you” is used in their short conversation: eight times to be exact. The word “I” is used only once.

In conflict couples’ use of “you” reflects each partner’s belief that the other is doing, saying or feeling something “wrong;” which naturally implies that the other person is “right.” Thus the “right – wrong” tug of war is born. In this mode of dialogue, anger escalates and each partner becomes more entrenched in his/her own position, making resolution even more elusive. Without attention, resentment, hostility and passive-aggressiveness grow in a dark and veiled fashion. The fate of the relationship will ultimately be decided by the way conflict is handled.

Unless parents model embracing conflict, we most likely will not learn conflict resolution skills growing up. When differences arise, we respond in the way nature has biologically wired us. Our fight or flight survival instinct, which kept us alive in cave man days, prompts us physiologically to respond to a threat by fighting off or fleeing the danger. When our partner comes at us with anger and blame, heart rate and blood pressure increase, adrenaline pumps, pupils dilate, hearing becomes more acute and blood flows away from our arms and legs and to our muscles so we can prepare to fight off the threat or run away from it as fast as we can.

Each of us has our predominant or typical way of responding, usually a result of the healthy or “not so healthy” lessons we learned and practiced throughout our lives.  Ask yourself, when conflict occurs do I typically get angry and fight, or do I withdraw and flee? Do I engage and move into the conflict or do I avoid and move away from the conflict “sweeping it under the rug?”

With couples, several outcomes result when two people engage.  If both you and your partner fight, there will be arguments that escalate. If you both avoid conflict, a standoff will occur resulting in a chasm that separates the two of you.  Since avoidance creates more avoidance, partners end up living parallel lives without much emotional intimacy. In a relationship where one person withdraws and the other one fights the result will be one partner angrily pursuing the other; or one withdrawing so much that the angry partner gets frustrated and gives up. None of these patterns are healthy.

Paradoxically what couples need most is a way to avoid, “avoiding conflict” or a healthy way to “fight.”  When you don’t avoid or get rapt in conflict and, instead, embrace your relationship “in trouble” as you would embrace a wounded child, you take the first step on a new and exciting path that will transform your partnership.  Taking on the conflict, averts the ensuing poison and prevents the potential crippling effects on each other’s self-esteem.

So how do couples resolve conflict? Here are the steps:
1)   Consciously acknowledge your fight or flight response when you become angry.
2)   Mutually agree to explore the disagreement in a respectful way.
3)   Take turns expressing thoughts and feelings, one at a time, without interrupting.
4)   Use “I” statements to avoid blame and own your feelings.
5)   Listen between the lines for understanding and meaning.
6)   Be “curious” about your partner’s point of view.
7)   Talk until you can “make your partner’s case” as well as your own.
8)   Remember the goal is not to figure out who is right or wrong, but to understand each other’s position.
9)   Then and only then, can you problem solve.

Ironically without the very conflict that tears at the fabric of our connection, you cannot achieve the deepest degree of intimacy. There is some truth to the old saying, “No pain, no gain.” Leveraging conflict stimulates the growth of you and your partner and, most importantly, of the third entity – the relationship itself.

As partners discover how to manage conflict, the vital connection begins to materialize.  A vision of you and your partner turning toward each other, rather than away, emerges no matter what the circumstances, bringing a sense of security and trust. You become strong in your belief that your partner would never intentionally hurt you, so when he/she does, you work on resolving the issue and forgiving, i.e. letting go of the anger.

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.
-Leo Tolstoy

Miraculously the two of you engage in actively embracing and resolving issues; being direct and honest with each other; disciplining yourselves to practice empathy; and taking care not to hurt the other, despite your individual differences. You and your partner will discover a new resilience, a new peace and an inner confidence knowing that no matter what arises, the two of you will work it through.

A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers.
 -Ruth Bell Graham

In this newly created relationship, the two of you will feel bound in the healthiest aspects of a relationship waiting for you.  You begin to honor and respect your partner anew, and your commitment flourishes.  All seems secure in the relationship that you’re living – it is the dawn of a spiritual connection that you have consciously co-created.