Are You on Love Autopilot?

"There is actually nothing more difficult on the planet than another person." - Stan Tatkin Stan Tatkin is a clinician, researcher, teacher, and developer of A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT), which draws on cutting-edge research in neuroscience, attachment theory, and biology. In his funny, eye-opening TED Talk, Relationships Are Hard, But Why?, Tatkin characterizes the two distinct brain systems at play in our automatic neurobiological reflexes: our ambassadors (smart, deliberate, slow, expensive) and our primitives (fast, automatic, cheap). Our ambassadors make the hard decision about who to craft a relationship with and once they do, our primitives take over. We begin to "think" we know our partner and after a period of time, we automate the process of connecting and relating with them. If we don't understand this automatic brain, we often get into trouble-not just in the form of fights, but by fighting in a way that threatens the safety of the relationship. Sound familiar? Watch and learn.