Emotional Connection: The Story and Science of Preventing Conflict and Creating Lifetime Love (Paperback or Softback)

My relationship is falling apart and I don't know why. How emotional understanding of why you do what you do can save your marriage.

Emotional Connection is a story of a real couple in trouble. It’s their therapeutic journey toward healing. And it’s the science that makes sense of it all.

Bonus: 52 Discussion Questions to help you grow in emotional connection.

All couples want their relationships to succeed. There is no shortage of relationship advice about better couples communication, protecting your marriage from affairs, resolving conflict or saving your marriage from divorce.

The truth is, without a sustained focus on building intimate connection, a marriage can become dissatisfying. The initial love attraction and the commitment to vows are often not enough to protect relationships from disconnection, affairs and divorce. Childhood trauma, adolescent attachment injuries, and early marriage priorities all plot the course for our adult relationship security.

The feelings and excitement of new love begin to fade after a year or two. What once felt like a magical connection begins to look like the relationship you said you would never have. You commit to reconnect when the nest is empty. It never happens. Instead you become strangers.

It’s only in recent years that the theory and science of secure loving attachment has been taught to couples therapists. Now thousands of well-researched articles discuss how bonds of love are created and nurtured. Author Dr. Michael Regier, a seasoned therapist certified in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), takes these lifesaving truths and insights about secure attachment and lasting love and lays them out in a way that you can apply to your relationship.

How is Emotional Connection different? Its unique combination of story, science and couples therapy is easy to relate to and understand, while being grounded in science. It's rich with examples of how you can prepare for, protect or save your marriage.

• Story: Step into the lives of a couple, perhaps like you or others you know. You will feel their pain and fear. Experience their hope and joy. Learn from their journey how to avoid the pitfalls that lead to relationship conflict. Readers will engage in the seemingly perfect lives of Ben and Claire. When disconnection opens the door to trouble, ripping at the foundations of marriage, they find professional help, learn the principles of attachment and the keys to deep connection. You, the reader, will learn alongside them, how to prevent conflict and protect your relationship.
• Therapy: Ever wonder what couples therapy or marriage counseling is like?Readers get a bird’s-eye view of it, through Ben and Claire’s weekly therapy sessions. You will be exposed to their emotional battle zone and witness their feelings of fear and incompetence when their relationship seems impossible to repair.
• Analysis & Science: The principles in this book are supported by research.Readers will learn the big picture of what contributes to relationship’s success or failure. Author and therapist Dr. Regier shares the scientifically proven methods that are used daily to help couples see the real enemy lurking within relationship.The tools to strengthen and repair relationships and to save marriage will be revealed behind closed-door therapy sessions.

Who is Emotional Connection for? If you are single, in a new relationship, or engaged to be married, or if your relationship is already in danger, there is much in these pages of immense value as you embark on your lives together.

Authors Dr. Michael and Paula Regier are married and work together in the Center for Relational Excellence in Visalia, California. Michael earned his Ph.D. from the California School of Professional Psychology and has over thirty years of experience as a clinical psychologist. He is a certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist. He is a former faculty member at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Kaweah Delta Psychiatric residency program in Visalia, California.

Paula has a background in business and accounting and is Practice Administrator of the Center for Relational Excellence. She has developed a second career as a neurofeedback technician where she helps emotionally over- and under-aroused individuals overcome trauma, find focus and achieve emotional balance. Michael and Paula are passionate about helping couples prevent relationship failure through attachment based treatment and education.