The Facebook group, Everyone Matters, posted a set of “Happiest Moment” pictures this morning. They are not what you’d expect. The first, for example, is a picture of a man kissing the forehead of a woman hooked up to a ventilator and other tubes and wires. How could this be anyone’s happiest moment? Wouldn’t it be a saddest moment? The caption tells us, though, that it is a picture of Ryan Kaltenbach, an ordinary — possibly extraordinary — husband kissing his wife after she opened her eyes for the first time following a heart and double lung transplant. The other pictures are just as touching: newborn twins sleeping nose to nose, sisters holding hands as the 6 year-old walks the younger one to the school for her first day of kindergarten, a woman who seems to have lost her hair to chemotherapy smiling broadly as she talks with someone on a cell phone, and more. All of them, even the one of a pale boy smiling from his hospital bed, draped in a Giant’s jersey, show that what most of us care about is connecting with others–connecting with loved ones, pets, even sports teams. We revel in our relationships.
Attachment–the process of bonding with another–has been studied by psychologists from every orientation. They confirm again and again that humans are pack animals–more like dogs than like cats. As British psychologist John Bowlby demonstrated in the 1950s, when our attachments are secure we thrive; when they’re threatened we suffer. This process begins, ideally, before birth, when parents begin to care about and envision the child they’ll bring into the world, and it continues even after death, when bereaved family members maintain the connection through reminiscing, rituals, and mental conversations.
John and Judy Gottman have extensively researched the ways couples maintain connection. They describe two crucial relationship moments: turning toward and turning away from one other. When our loved ones make a bid for our attention– by asking questions, sharing opinions, or using facial expressions and gestures to communicate feelings–they are inviting connection. Taking up the invitation and responding, however briefly, strengthens the relationship. Turning away, on the other hand, and ignoring that bid for attention, undermines the relationship and leaves partners feeling rejected, unheard and unappreciated.
I believe that we can develop relationship habits that become invisible to us. We may habitually fail to respond to a loved one’s comments about small things (the weather, a hard day at work, or indecision about what to eat for dinner) not out of malice or cruel intent, but simply because we don’t think it matters whether we respond. The Gottmans tell, us, though, that it matters a great deal. These small acts of turning toward our loved ones build those secure attachments that add up to a host of “happiest moments.”