Free Wired for Love by Stan Tatkin Page A

suddenly becoming weak, slouched, nauseous, faint, numb, or shut down. In later chapters, I will discuss more specific techniques you and your partner can use when your primitives are running the show.
    Of course, identifying your primitives can be accomplished only by none other than…your ambassadors; specifically, your hippocampus. By definition, if you are able to notice your primitives in action, they can’t have gained the upper hand. If they have, it’s too late; better luck next time. And you can be assured that there most likely will be a next time.
It’s always helpful to recognize what works well, in addition to what does not. For this reason, I also recommend identifying your ambassadors. Notice when they step up to the plate in support of your relationship; give them credit where credit is due. And invite them to step forward whenever their warmth, wisdom, and calm are needed.
    If your primitives are allowed to have their way—as sometimes happens—there will be no lollygagging around when danger’s afoot. Life will be filled with one crisis after another, as you continually fire blind without thinking of the consequences. But when relationships are at stake, you want to avoid pulling the trigger. So call on your ambassadors to slow things down.
Identify your partner’s primitives and ambassadors in action. At times, especially if your partner’s primitives are large and in charge, you may be able to do this before your partner can. Likewise, your partner sometimes may be able to do it for you before you can yourself. Find nonthreatening ways to let each other know what you have noticed. If possible, do this as close in time as you can to the actual incident.
    Learning to recognize your partner’s primitives and ambassadors gives you both a tool with which to better understand one another. This understanding is one important ingredient of a couple bubble. In the next chapter, we’ll look more closely at what it means to really know your partner.

Chapter 3
    Know Your Partner: How Does He or She Really Work?
    Who are we as relationship partners? How do we move toward and away from (both literally and figuratively) those upon whom we depend? It always amazes me that couples can be together for fifteen, twenty, even thirty years and the partners still feel they don’t know each other. In so many ways, they don’t know what makes each other tick.
    As we saw in chapter 2, becoming acquainted with our primitives and ambassadors helps us answer these questions to some extent. But not everyone responds the same way in a relationship. The balance of power within and between the primitive and ambassador camps differs from person to person. Not everyone’s ambassadors, for example, can rein in their primitives equally fast. In fact, due to the variance in your brains, you and your partner may experience different interactions between your primitives and ambassadors.
    So, we each come to the table oriented toward a certain style of relating. We may recognize our partner’s style, but often it is not on a conscious level. Unhappy partners often claim ignorance (“If I knew you were like this, I’d never have married you”) and maintain claims of ignorance (“I just don’t know what planet you’re on”) throughout the relationship. In this chapter, we explore why this mystification can occur, and what you can do to overcome it in your relationship.
    As a couple therapist, I have come to know that such claims of ignorance are essentially untrue, even though they may feel true to the people who say them. They are untrue because we all have a style of relating that remains quite stable over time. Growing up, our parents’ or caregivers’ styles of relating set the standard by which we learned to adapt. Simply put, as we saw in chapter 2, our social wiring is set at an early age. Despite our intelligence and exposure to new ideas, this wiring remains virtually unchanged as we age. For instance, I commonly