Book SummaryHold Me Tight, by Sue Johnson

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Hold Me Tight

When you’re in a struggling romantic relationship—whether you don’t feel heard, every conversation turns into a fight, or you barely speak at all—you may feel like it’s impossible to fix. But clinical psychologist Sue Johnson says you don’t need to give up yet. In Hold Me Tight, she offers a roadmap for healing your relationship so you and your partner can communicate healthily, resolve conflicts, and grow close once again.

Johnson explains that the root of most relationship conflict is emotional disconnection: when partners don’t feel safe sharing their emotions with each other. She argues that talking about this disconnection—and the reasons you don’t feel safe being vulnerable—is the key to addressing your issues, reconnecting with your partner, and building a more emotionally healthy relationship.

(Shortform note: Before you put in the...

Hold Me Tight Summary Part 1: The Key to a Healthy Relationship

Johnson begins by explaining the core of her couples therapy method, known as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). The key to a successful relationship is emotional security. In other words, in order for your relationship to thrive, you have to feel comfortable and safe communicating your emotions with one another. On the other hand, Johnson argues that a lack of emotional security is the primary cause of serious conflicts in relationships.

(Shortform note: Johnson notes that EFT is based on attachment therapy, a style first developed in the 1960s by psychologists Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby. The authors of Attached (Amir Levine and Rachel Heller) explain that attachment therapy originally focused on parent-child relationships and theorized that children need strong emotional bonds with parent figures for healthy development. Later psychologists applied similar principles to romantic relationships, arguing that the way people form emotional bonds—patterns learned from their parents—are integral to overall relationship health. Johnson focuses less on the parent-child...

Hold Me Tight Summary Part 2: Resolving Relationship Conflicts

Johnson explains that the first step of repairing your emotional connection with your partner is stopping the feedback loop of conflict: Feeling unsafe leads to conflict, which leads to feeling even less safe, which leads to more conflict, and so on. This feedback loop is fueled by negative communication patterns—defensive and unproductive ways of talking to one another that create tension and exacerbate emotional distance.

While every couple has moments of bad communication, Johnson says that negative communication is the norm in relationships lacking emotional safety—and escaping this norm is the first part of repairing your relationship as a whole. In this section, we’ll explore Johnson’s three steps for addressing negative communication patterns:

1. Identify when and how you and your partner communicate negatively.
2. Identify the vulnerabilities that cause you to communicate negatively.
3. Resolve a conflict with your partner in a healthier way.

(Shortform note: While Johnson focuses on negative patterns that crop up during communication, therapist and author David Richo (*[How to Be an Adult in...

Hold Me Tight Summary Part 3: Reconnecting With Your Partner

In addition to stopping the ongoing damage to your emotional security, learning to avoid and resolve conflicts equips you and your partner to have deeper, more vulnerable conversations about your relationship. Johnson explains that in these conversations, you’ll be able to heal the damage you’ve done in the past and grow close to one another again.

(Shortform note: By having couples work on their emotional safety on a lower-stakes scale before digging into deeper conversations about their relationship, Johnson is mirroring an essential process in effective psychotherapy. Often, therapists will focus their first sessions with new patients establishing a sense of safety and trust rather than discussing sensitive issues. Without this foundation, clients are unlikely to lower their defenses, engage with their therapist, or disclose vulnerable material—all essential for therapeutic progress.)

In Part 3, we’ll cover two methods Johnson provides for healing your relationship: sharing your fears and needs, and working through your emotional wounds.

Method #1: Share Your Fears and...

Shortform Exercise: Make a Plan for Your Relationship

Using Johnson’s method, think about how you can address problems in your relationship.

Do you and your partner use any of the negative communication patterns Johnson describes? What does this look like in your relationship?