How to Emotionally Connect With Your Partner: The Skill of Attunement
with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby and Nidhi Tewari, LCSW
How to Emotionally Connect With Your Partner
Connection isn’t a personality trait. It’s a learnable skill called attunement — and almost any couple, including yours, can get it back.
You can be lying in bed next to someone you have loved for years and still feel like there is an ocean between you. Nothing is technically wrong. There was no blowup, no slammed door. And yet you feel unseen, a little lonely, and quietly worried that the distance means something. If you have caught yourself wondering how to emotionally connect with your partner again, the short version is this: connection is not a trait you were born with or without. It is a skill, and the name for it is attunement.
My guest is Nidhi Tewari, MSW, LCSW, a licensed clinical social worker and the author of Working Well: How to Build a Happier, Healthier Workplace Through the Science of Attunement. Her research focuses on what actually happens, in our bodies and in our nervous systems, when two people are truly in sync — and what gets in the way when they are not. She brings both the science and her own life into the conversation, including a story about her best friend’s illness that shaped how she now teaches this work.
We sat down to talk through why self-regulation always precedes co-regulation, the four communication styles (FACE) that quietly leave your partner feeling unseen, the one question that changes almost any hard conversation, why “I’m fine” is so often a request to be mind-read, and how to ask for what you need without blaming the person you love.
“The way you do one relationship is how you do all of them.” — Nidhi Tewari, LCSW, Love, Happiness and Success Podcast
Moments from this episode
Episode transcript
Nidhi Tewari: We could all use help learning ways to better connect with one another.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: What if something you’ve never heard of, much less thought about, is actually the secret sauce, the practice that could make every single relationship in your life 10X better? Well, it’s a thing. It’s called attunement, and by the end of today’s show, you will not just have acquired a new vocabulary word, you’re going to have picked up a few new relationship skills that are going to make so many things feel so much easier.
Nidhi Tewari: Is their body language closed off? Are we noticing their facial expressions are shifting? Is their demeanor, the language and the tone of voice that they’re using, changing, becoming stronger or more defensive? Are we noticing people literally leaning away instead of leaning in? Reading those cues gives you a window into what’s happening internally with the other person.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: If this is your first time tuning in, hello, hello. I’m so glad you’re here, that you found me and this. This is Love, Happiness, and Success. I’m Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and we are here every single week talking about all kinds of different things that help you learn, grow, develop yourself, have better relationships, and even get ahead in your career path or your definition of success, whatever that might be.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Today, we are diving into this idea of relationships, not just intimate partnerships, but really every relationship in your life, from coworkers and colleagues to your family of origin, to your friends, and yes, also to your partner, through the skill of attunement. And we’re learning all about this today with a very special guest.
Nidhi Tewari: A whole neurobiological process happens that creates this feeling of vibing with one another, being close and connected to one another.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: My guest is Nidhi Tewari, a licensed clinical social worker and workplace wellbeing expert, not to mention the author of the new book, Working Well, about the science of attunement and how it actually shows up in all the different relationships in our life. So Nidhi, so good to connect with you today.
Nidhi Tewari: Thanks so much for having me.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: So let’s just jump right into this. One of the core concepts of your work is something called attunement, and let’s just unpack that. It’s a big word. What does that mean to you, attunement?
Nidhi Tewari: In essence, attunement just means being in tune or in sync with people. It’s this full body presence that we have with the people that we’re close to or in dialogue with, and it allows people to feel felt in their experiences with us. The way that I think about it is that it allows us to connect on a really deep level, and not only is it this interpersonal dynamic, this relational dynamic that’s happening, it’s actually happening on a physiological level as well. When I was doing the research for this book, I found a lot of studies that talked about how when they did MRIs of people who were in sync with one another, our heart rates sync up, our hormones sync up, our neurons, the way that our neurons fire sync up. So this whole neurobiological process happens that creates this feeling of vibing with one another.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: It is a reality-based thing, that it’s happening not just in the way we feel, but in the way our bodies respond. Are you referring to the work of Dr. Helen Fisher right now, just out of curiosity?
Nidhi Tewari: I would have to look back at it.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Sorry to put you on the spot. Dr. Fisher, who the world lost last year unfortunately, did so much fascinating research. People falling in love or going through heartbreak, but also experiencing emotional connection with other people in a functional MRI that looked at physiological changes that people experienced when they connected with others or also when they felt very disconnected from others. And it supported what you’re saying, that we actually can regulate ourselves through attunement with other people. So, take us into this. Why is that so important? What does this look like? Are we doing it right now? Is this it?
Nidhi Tewari: It’s this moment-to-moment shifting that happens to be responsive to the other person. On a practical level, it can look like when you notice that your partner is off, and you start to observe, okay, they’re withdrawing a little bit, I notice that they’re pulling away. So you might lean in, you might try to reach out a bit more. That’s a moment-to-moment responsiveness. Now, if they continue to withdraw and pull away, to be attuned means to maybe give them some space, give them the opportunity to notice what they’re experiencing internally before they then reach out back to you for connection. That is part of attuning, being able to notice these subtle shifts moment to moment with the people that we’re interacting with and adapting accordingly.
Nidhi Tewari: My research, which is mostly focused on the workplace, identified four main skills. These are the components people need to master here. Really simple stuff, actually. You can remember it through the acronym FRSC, pronounced like frisk.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: FRSC. Okay. I love a good four-step plan. This is good, and acronyms, all the better.
Nidhi Tewari: Absolutely. F is for flexibility. So it’s being able to be agile, adaptable in the moment, and recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all. What your best friend needed from you yesterday may not be what they need from you today. What your boss is requiring of you in this moment is not necessarily what they need from you in the next moment. So having that flexibility and responsiveness is key.
Nidhi Tewari: Then we have reading cues. This is our ability to gauge verbal and non-verbal cues from the other person. Is their body language closed off? Are we noticing their facial expressions shifting? Is their demeanor, the tone of voice, changing, becoming stronger or more defensive? Are we noticing people literally leaning away instead of leaning in? Reading those cues gives you a window into what’s happening internally with the other person.
Nidhi Tewari: S is then self-regulation. You start to notice, “Oh, no, they’re leaning away from me. What am I doing that’s wrong?” You start to get defensive. Part of that is being able to regulate your own nervous system so that you can be fully present with the other person and meet your needs and their needs simultaneously.
Nidhi Tewari: And then C is collaboration. Recognizing that every relationship that we’re in, whether it’s with our boss, our partner, our siblings, we are in a collaborative relationship where we are seeking alignment. We’re on the same team. Being able to work together to come to a mutually agreeable conclusion if we’re in conflict, or find a way to meet each other where we’re at, is absolutely essential. So those four skills, if you can master those, you will have a really great head start when it comes to attunement.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: It all sounds great. It can be harder to put into practice than it is to talk about. So let’s actually crack into that. And, I hope this is okay to ask you maybe a more personal question. I’m curious to know if there was a time in your life when this wasn’t working, that turned into part of your drive to do this research, to create this book. Is there an origin story here?
Nidhi Tewari: Oh yeah. When I was a high performer in an organization, I was taking on all the things. I was planning the holiday gatherings. I was doing trainings for everybody. I literally mentored people on the team. Did far above what was expected of me. And then, in 2016, my best friend of 10-plus years was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. Within 18 months, she went from diagnosis to passing away.
Nidhi Tewari: In that timeframe, I recognized that initially my team was extremely supportive of me. They wanted to show up. They checked in on me. They were accommodating. I felt very seen and felt in my experience. Unfortunately, at some point that shifted, and it went from feeling very attuned to noticing this connection gap, this experience of misattunement, where they literally told me to compartmentalize this experience, that I needed to focus on work during work hours. It led to me feeling quite betrayed at work.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Oh, no.
Nidhi Tewari: It was one of a few experiences in the workplace where I noticed, this is a pattern, and this is with people who are mental health clinicians, people who are trained in attunement. That is a core skill that we learn in our formal training. And I thought to myself, if they’re struggling to attune to me, I can’t imagine what’s happening in the corporate world where they have no training in this, and people are experiencing similar struggles to me and have even less support available to them.
Nidhi Tewari: Now, I’ve also personally been misattuned on my own towards other people, and if I recognize that as a therapist, I have a lot of gaps too because I’m human. For example, I have fallen into the trap of being the fixer for people, where they come to me with a problem, and because of my own discomfort and my desire to help them and feel important, I jump in with solutions. “Well, okay, so you’re feeling stressed about having to take the kids to soccer practice and cook dinner and then work 40 hours a week. Have you thought about reorganizing your schedule? Why don’t you try this new type of hot yoga?” Right? I just jumped in with these solutions, and I realized I was creating disconnection in my relationships by trying to fix it for people. So on a personal level, I realized that I’m also not immune to this, and that we could all use help learning ways to better connect with one another. Both of those experiences led to me wanting to write this book to help other people to do better.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Thank you so much for sharing that story, and such nice examples of what can happen so frequently in our lives when Person A is not really getting Person B, how they feel or what they need. Thank you for sharing that so bravely. As a therapist, I have not always been in tune with my clients either. We’re human. If we were to go into the imaginary time machine, back into 2016, 2017 when you’d gone through this terrible loss of your friend, and you were at work with big feelings present and really not being okay, why should you be? If people had been attuned to you and really open and receptive to what you were communicating in the way you showed up, what would they have understood about you and what you needed?
Nidhi Tewari: I think they would have seen how incredibly depressed I was during that time. I went from being my best friend’s best friend to being her caregiver. I was taking her to her medical appointments and helping her to pick up her prescriptions, and there were so many sleepless nights where I was absolutely terrified, knowing the prognosis of this type of brain cancer. And as a result of that, I really did struggle to get up and get to work on time. I had a hard time focusing. All of these things were cues. They should have been signals to my leadership and to my colleagues that something is wrong with Nidhi. I need to do a better job of checking in, and perhaps there are better supports we can put into place. Maybe we can be flexible with her in terms of our expectations, given these extraordinary circumstances. One of the moments that really stood out to me, that I mention in the book, is this gotcha moment that happened with my boss during that time.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Oh, no.
Nidhi Tewari: So I was running late, like I mentioned a moment ago, because I just was so depressed. I could not function in the mornings. It was hard. And already as an ADHDer, mornings are not my thing. So you add on top of that depression, it’s a wrap. I’m not getting there on time. I had explained this to her. I had told her, “Hey, this is something that I’m having a hard time with. Can we shift some things around to accommodate?” And nothing really changed.
Nidhi Tewari: One day I showed up to work, I was maybe 10, 15 minutes late, and she shows up with some Starbucks in her hand and is like, “Hey, I just wanted to check in and spend some time with you and just chat.” So I assumed, okay, wow, she’s really making an effort to connect with me. Until later on that day, I got back to the office, and I had a one-on-one with her where I was reprimanded. That was her catching me in the moment of being late. It was a gotcha. It was like, “See, I knew that you were 15 minutes late. I caught you in the act. Here’s what you need to be doing differently.”
Nidhi Tewari: There was no conversation of, “What’s going on? Are you okay? We know that there’s so much happening. Where are things at now?” None of that. It was just jumping straight to reprimanding me. So that moment really stood out to me. Had they just been a bit more curious, it could have really transformed my time there.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Absolutely. Gosh, I’m sorry that you experienced that. What a nice example of what we’re talking about right now. And in the context of what you shared previously, you were the A++++ star performer who was doing above and beyond all the things, the person that everybody else was like, “Hey, Nidhi, catch.” That is the way you described yourself, and then all of a sudden feeling really different. For people just to come alongside you and be curious about you in that moment instead of punitive, that is such a great example of what might have strengthened a relationship, increased the trust. That’s a bonding moment right there, as opposed to a moment that I’m guessing broke the trust and created a rupture in that relationship that might have felt hard to come back from.
Nidhi Tewari: 100%. And there was no repair that happened afterwards either. It was very short. I had worked with that organization for almost four years, and at that point it was like, “Okay, my time is up here.” I need to leave. I had also noticed during that time that the people who were leaders within this organization had their own discomfort with what was happening with me. I had picked up on that. That’s part of being in tune with other people, not just noticing these moments of connection. It’s also noticing these moments that people are pulling away.
Nidhi Tewari: I observed that there was quite a bit of dysregulation. They were out of sorts themselves from an emotional standpoint, whether it was their own grief getting triggered or their own feelings of helplessness or desire for everybody to perform in a particular way. There was no understanding of how disorienting this was for me, and that I was also experiencing a loss of identity that I think so many people experience when you’re a high performer and suddenly you just cannot perform at that level any longer.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: One of the things I’ve observed, and have certainly experienced in my personal life too, with myself when I’m not okay or with other people, is that I think when we are activated, when we are having intense feelings or our own internal experience, it can be fairly consuming. It makes it harder to really be present with and notice what’s going on inside of other people if we’re experiencing big things. Although maybe sometimes it could lead to more empathy if we’re having a similar experience to someone else. But I’d be curious to hear what your research or exploration in your book has to say about that. Is attunement disrupted by our own stuff?
Nidhi Tewari: It 100% is, absolutely. Which is why it’s so important for us to not only observe what’s happening within ourselves, we have to hold that alongside the person that we are in relationship with. If you’re dysregulated, the other person will pick up on that, and they will feel disconnected from you. If somebody comes to you and they’re feeling stressed, and your go-to is to avoid or to distract or to try to solution it, that is going to leave the other person feeling very disconnected and unseen and unheard by you. That’s not a result of anything that they’re doing necessarily. It’s due to our own discomfort, our own difficulties being able to tolerate other people’s hardship, and holding space and being able to be present with that.
Nidhi Tewari: So that’s why that self-regulation piece is so important. And self-regulation always precedes co-regulation. We can’t be with other people if we cannot be with ourselves first. It’s why I focus so much on that in the first section of this book. We’ve got to master ourselves before we’re going to be connecting with anybody else. That’s usually where I find a lot of people, especially at work, are missing the skill set, because they think, “Well, isn’t that meant for therapy?” Or, “I get why that would be relevant in my romantic relationships or my friendships, but why is that relevant to me as a leader or alongside my colleagues?” Well, because the same stuff shows up. The way you do one relationship is how you do all of them.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I love that perspective. Sometimes people are like, “Love, happiness, and success, wouldn’t it be better if we just talked about one thing, Lisa?” Because there is a diversity to the things we’re talking about on the show. But my reason for that is exactly what you’re saying. You bring yourself into every situation in your life, and you’re not actually a different person when you’re showing up in relationships at work, which are a lot of your time and your energy and your life, than you are with your mother, with your partner, with your friend. You carry yourself into all of these, and your patterns in one area will always show up in another area.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: One of the things, honestly, is I do career counseling, career coaching as part of what I do here at Growing Self, and I love this concept of professional growth. I think so many times when people are feeling frustrated with their job, it always turns into, “Get a new job. Do something else.” Which is fine. Sometimes there is a disconnect between what we’re doing and what our strengths and gifts are, what we want to be doing. But so many times there are really substantial growth opportunities that can happen by staying there and actually figuring out, why is this feeling so hard, and what does this say about my own opportunities for development?
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Can we talk about what happens when we are not engaging in good attunement in our jobs, and how that can change our experience?
Nidhi Tewari: One of the challenges that’s plaguing workplaces right now is this feeling of loneliness and isolation and disconnection in the 40 hours a week that we’re spending alongside these people at work. I think that a lot of that is rooted in misattunement. It’s because we are not able to connect effectively. We have these very cursory level conversations with people: “Hey, how was your weekend?” “Oh, what about that snowstorm that we just had?” Things that expose nothing about the other person. There’s no vulnerability there. And the core of that is that there isn’t the trust and psychological safety built in a lot of workplaces for people to feel safe being themselves, showing up as their whole person, and being open about what’s really happening.
Nidhi Tewari: So attunement is what’s missing in the workplace. And in the research study that I conducted, we looked at some particular questions: does your boss read your facial expressions? When they sense that you’re not interested in something they’re talking about, do they shift gears? If you’re sending them cues non-verbally and verbally that something isn’t landing, are they shifting their expectations of you? What we found is that when workplaces have really high levels of attunement, it improves so many outcomes, like trust, job satisfaction. People felt happier, healthier in their workplaces. Productivity. All of these things that we desire from a business standpoint are connected to how well we create a culture within the workplace. And the culture is not pizza parties and happy hours. That’s completely the wrong thing.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Did you watch Severance?
Nidhi Tewari: Right.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Melon bar. All right. It’s waffle day. Oh my god.
Nidhi Tewari: Yeah, that’s not it. It’s how do we help people to feel valued, like they matter. When I was writing an article for Harvard Business Review, one of the most searched terms within Glassdoor was, does this leader have their team’s back? That’s something that is missing right now in the workplace, how much distrust there is. We have an uphill battle, but if we can learn the skill set, we’re laying a solid foundation to improve the way that we work.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Let me ask you a different question. Right now I’m imagining a couple of my friends, business leaders, many of them therapists like you and I, and conversations I’ve had with some of them around: “I feel like I’m such a sensitive person, and I’m always talking with employees about what’s going on with them, and they’re telling me things. And then that makes me feel like I can’t hold boundaries, or I need to accommodate their feelings to the point where I start over-functioning and doing their job. It’s almost feeling more like a personal friendship that changes the dynamic when I am actually their supervisor.” I’m curious to your response to my imaginary friend who is probably more sensitive than the average. What’s your reaction to that?
Nidhi Tewari: I think that there’s a way to be attuned to people while still maintaining your boundaries. The goal of the interaction here is not to resolve things for the other person. It’s not for you to become their personal therapist. It’s simply to be abreast of what’s happening so that you have context for their behavior. When somebody is struggling to meet their deadlines or they’re falling behind on responding to emails, that you get really curious about what might be happening behind the scenes so that you have an understanding of how that’s influencing the way that they’re showing up at work.
Nidhi Tewari: Where the boundary gets blurred is when we start to dive into putting on that therapist hat. Leave that for the clinician chair. The expectation is instead to just be able to normalize and validate for people, that they’re not alone in their experience, that what they’re experiencing makes sense, and that you will now direct them to the appropriate resources and support to get them the help that they need. Often, that is all that anybody’s asking. They’re not wanting you to show up and be their bestie. They’re simply wanting to let you know so that you’re not holding them accountable to standards that they just cannot meet at this moment in time.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I could certainly see how that approach would lead to more wellbeing and satisfaction in the job, but I’m also really starting to hear how some of these same ideas would make a ton of difference in the outcomes when it comes to personal relationships. Tell us what this looks like at home.
Nidhi Tewari: I think one of the most important elements of this is recognizing how you show up in your relationships at home. There are four ways that people most commonly will show up, and three of them are not what we want to go for, and then the last one is the ideal. You could remember this with the word FACE, because we’ve got to face our communication styles.
Nidhi Tewari: F is for fixers. These are the people that jump in with the solutions like I mentioned earlier in this episode. When somebody shares something with you, you immediately want to solve it. That is driven by a couple of factors. One is that it’s our own discomfort. It makes us feel like we can’t tolerate the fact that this other person is in the depths of despair, and so we want to just make it better. The second piece is that it helps us to feel important and helpful, like we’re doing something to better them. And often it does not land, because if we wanted advice, we would ask for it. When we receive unsolicited advice, it feels very presumptuous, that the other person somehow knows us better than we know ourselves.
Nidhi Tewari: As people are listening to this, be registering, where am I on these four different styles? Then we have the avoiders. The avoiders are the people that bypass your emotions altogether. They either change the subject — you share something with your partner and you’re like, “I am just really having a hard time with my dad who has dementia. I feel exhausted. I’m really scared about his decline.” And they’re like, “Well, we’ll figure this out. Don’t worry. For right now, why don’t we think about dinner, and then we’ll come back to this later?” So they’ve now distracted away from your discomfort, avoided it, skirted it, and you are left feeling unheard and unseen.
Nidhi Tewari: The other way avoidance typically shows up is through toxic positivity and emotional bypassing.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That’s the worst.
Nidhi Tewari: The worst. People will come in and say things like, “Oh, your dad has dementia? Ugh, I’m so sorry. Don’t worry, you’re going to get through it. Just don’t stress.”
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: But at least, whatever.
Nidhi Tewari: “At least it’s not cancer.” Like, what? Why would you ever say that? But we say that, and it’s okay if you do this — just be aware of it and work on it, because it is very invalidating to the other person’s feelings, and it makes them feel, once again, unseen and misunderstood.
Nidhi Tewari: Then we have the connectors. This sounds really good. “Oh, I want to be a connector.” Except this is not one that we want to aim for. The connectors are the ones where you share something with them. Let’s take that same example, my dad has dementia, and they say something like, “Oh my God, I totally get where you’re coming from. My mom also had dementia, and here’s how I dealt with it, and it was so stressful, and I felt so overwhelmed.” All of a sudden, the focus has now shifted from the person who originally needed support to the spotlight being on you as the person who’s connected your experience to them. Sometimes this can land because people feel validated and less alone, but often the person who’s needing the support is actually falling into a caretaker role for you now. It doesn’t always resonate, and we have to be really cautious of assuming that our experience is exactly like the other person’s. Even if your mom and my dad had dementia, chances are their journeys were very different.
Nidhi Tewari: The last one is the one that is the gold standard, and that’s going to be the explorers. These are the people who ask instead of assuming. They’re the ones who are going to get really curious and say, “Tell me more about how XYZ is affecting you,” or, “What solutions have you tried thus far?” Like, “What are your thoughts on this?” They’re going to allow you to expound upon your feelings so that they can better understand where you’re coming from. They hold space for you. They are present with you. They don’t try to move you through the emotions quickly. They are just right alongside you. And these are the people that we really want to become. The ones who can manage our own discomfort in hard conversations, be with people instead of trying to fix them or move them through, and to help them feel really seen, to feel felt in that moment with us.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I appreciate you explaining that so clearly because in my experience — and I’ve done all of those things at various points, by the way. Which one is your go-to? Can I ask?
Nidhi Tewari: I am the fixer for sure. For sure. Every time my husband is like, “Blah, blah, blah’s going on with work,” or, “Da, da, da, da is happening at home,” I’m like, “Oh, well, you could try this,” or, “Why don’t you give this a try?” He’s just like, “Stop it. That’s not what I want. That’s not what I desire from you.”
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Oh my God. As I was listening to you talk, I was like, connector right here. You know what? Can we just talk about the fact that I think those responses are always fueled by anxiety, aren’t they? A fixer is like, “Okay, we’re going to fix it.” A connector, the experience is like, “I need this person to know that they’re not alone,” and then I start talking about myself to illustrate that. Although I can also totally understand — in the presence of something really hard, really dark, my father is dying, that kind of thing — I think that there’s this, “What do I say?” That comes up for people. Well-intentioned people literally don’t know what to say. From my experience, I worry about saying the wrong thing. Sensitive to the fact, like, oh, this is serious, and I don’t want to misstep. And then ironically, in our efforts to not do the wrong thing, you step right into that. So I really appreciate your laying out what not to do, but also what to do instead, which is lean in and just start asking questions. Open-ended questions that invite the other person to tell you more. Would you summarize it that way?
Nidhi Tewari: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. If we can first start off by saying something along the lines of, “I’m so sorry that you’re going through that. That’s just absolutely devastating, and it makes complete sense to me that this is an incredibly overwhelming, helpless experience for you.” That’s normalization and validation right off the bat. We’re disarming the other person, and we’re helping them to feel really understood by us without us making it about our experiences. Then we can move into, “So, share more with me. What’s been the hardest part for you so far navigating all of this? What kinds of supports have been helpful for you thus far? Is there anything that I can do that might be helpful for you?” Those types of questions really open up the door for deeper connection and better attunement between the two of us.
Nidhi Tewari: To your point, we get so caught up in what to say and how to say it that we miss the mark. And often what people need — and this should be maybe a relief to people listening — is not the right words. They just need you and your presence. They just simply need you to be with them, and that is it. If we can just master being able to manage that and show up and ask good questions and meet them where they are, that’s all anybody ever asks of us.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Now I’m also going to speak for somebody who’s here on this conversation with us, one of our imaginary friends who probably likes it very much when other people take that approach with us, right? But I’m imagining people listening to this right now who might be having even more reflexive anxiety at the idea of intentionally walking into these dark emotions more deeply with another person. ‘Cause chances are, if you have a friend going through something like that and you say, “What’s been the hardest part about this for you?” — tears ensue. And I think many people feel frightened at the thought of dark emotions, or that they’re pushing somebody else into contact with these feelings, that that would be harmful, negative, we should avoid that. And what you’re saying is, oh no, that’s where we’re going. So for somebody who’s like, “I don’t know about this,” what do you say to that?
Nidhi Tewari: I think the thing to keep in mind is that those dark emotions exist whether you bring them up or not. They are there within this person. And often it’s a huge relief when somebody asks that question so that they can truly be seen in the experience, because so many people in our lives are avoidant. We just want to skirt right past it. That is not helpful to a lot of people. Now, part of attuning is recognizing that not everybody is going to want to be vulnerable and share, so you adapt accordingly. You don’t force it. If you ask what’s been the hardest part and they just kind of skate by it, that’s okay. Leave it, let it. They will come back to you when they are ready to talk about it. You can still ask other questions about supports and ways that they’re navigating it, things that are a little bit less deep that are still impactful. If we just recognize that people also have agency, and so if they want to say no to answering a question, they’re an adult and they will do that. We don’t have to bubble-wrap people and try to protect them from their own feelings.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That’s even something that I’m going to remember. As you’re talking, I’m thinking about — oh, I’m going to mess up the number, is it 100 questions? There has been research that’s shown that if you put strangers together and they are presented with a list of questions to ask each other that really invite the other person to go into deeper conversation about how they’re really feeling and some of the dark emotions and harder parts, it actually creates these feelings of connection, bondedness, intimacy, even among strangers. To be doing this in an intentional way with people that you know and that you care about, that’s really powerful stuff.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Listen, there are so many people listening to this right now, and I think we’ve all experienced this — where we’re that person that needs some attunement, and we have people in our lives responding to us in these ways that create disconnection. It can be frustrating, it can be hurtful. Maybe we have people trying to fix us or people glossing over these moments when we really do need to talk about our feelings. How can we broach that in a way that doesn’t just wind up eliciting defensiveness and more avoidance or anxiety?
Nidhi Tewari: I think it’s so important to recognize whether we are actually asking for what we need or are we expecting other people to mind read? This is something I personally have experienced in my marriage. We’ve been together for 20 years, married for going on nine now, and there are so many times where, at least early in our relationship, I would get so upset with him for not being attuned to me. I was like, “I said that I’m fine. That doesn’t mean you just walk off and you give me space. What do you mean?”
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: “I mean I’m fine. What are you doing?”
Nidhi Tewari: Exactly. “Don’t take me at face value.”
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: How dare you?
Nidhi Tewari: I had to recognize that what I was doing was expecting him to mind read. He does take me at face value. If I say that I need something, he’s going to give it to me because he trusts that what I say is what I desire. I had to learn that I was expecting him to mind read. When I said I’m fine, what I was actually expecting him to read between the lines was, “She’s not actually fine. Sit with her, rub her back, check in in maybe 10, 15 minutes, keep the conversation going.” But I never explicitly asked for that. So that is the first little bit of work for us to do personally.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Step one.
Nidhi Tewari: Step one is, are you actually clear?
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: In words? This is so good. My background, I’m a marriage and family therapist among other things, and we do a lot of couples counseling. It’s amazing how many people have those kinds of experiences, but also believe that they are showing their partner the truth through their behaviors, that in their minds they are communicating non-verbally in ways that feel very clear to them that are not at all picked up on by their partners. It’s really genuinely a surprise, because frequently in my experience, we all come from cultures. The culture of our family of origin is that maybe that’s how communication was expressed and received in that particular environment. But then you try to do it with somebody who’s not hip to the lingo, and they don’t know what’s going on. So that is such good advice.
Nidhi Tewari: If you can know what the upbringing was of your partner, that is hugely influential in how we engage with one another. The classic pairing I’m sure that you’re familiar with is people that have an anxious attachment connecting with somebody who has an avoidant attachment. When you have an anxious attachment, you grew up with a caregiver who was anxious, kind of helicoptery. You became anxious as a result of that, or they were kind of unpredictable, so you developed anxiety not knowing how they were going to respond to you. And then the avoidant person is the one who just completely sweeps things under the rug, is like, “I’ll get over it. Just give me some time,” and it’s never spoken about again.
Nidhi Tewari: The dynamic that plays out here is that the avoidant person, based off of their models growing up, is like, “If I just wait long enough, it’ll blow over, and we’ll get back to status quo. We’ll hit equilibrium again. All is good.” But then the anxious person is like, “I need to resolve this issue because I don’t know where we stand. If you don’t communicate with me, then how am I going to know that we’re okay and that you’re not going to leave me, and I won’t be abandoned in this process?” So it’s a painful back and forth that happens.
Nidhi Tewari: If you recognize that your partner’s tendency is to be anxious, what you need to do in that moment is provide reassurance. Maybe communicate, “Hey, we’re hitting a roadblock in our discussion right now, but I really want to come back to this. So why don’t we take a break, 30 to 45 minutes. I’m going to go for a run. I’ll be back, and then we’ll sit down and talk about it.” Just putting those guardrails around the communication helps to diffuse some of that anxiety that the person with anxious attachment is going to feel. Because now they know that you’re not leaving as a form of pushing them away or abandoning them, that you’re leaving and stepping away as a form of love, as a boundary to ensure that the conversation comes to a point of resolution. Just understanding the backgrounds of your partner and what their upbringing was like, and what their styles of attachment and the way that they connect with people are, is massively important.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: There’s that curiosity again. “This is hard for you to let go of right now. Tell me more about what’s coming up for you,” is that way of leaning in. But again, if you are hoping to have that kind of response from your partner, and they are persistently engaging in avoidant behaviors, or they’re hijacking the conversation, or they’re being toxically positive or fixing, again, how, what — maybe you have an example of this in your own life — how to skillfully broach that conversation so that it turns into just an honest discussion of, “I’d love to feel closer and more connected to you. The times I do are when we do this together.” How would you start that?
Nidhi Tewari: I think that it’s important to be able to recognize the strengths and what they’re doing well. You hit the nail on the head there, because we respond so much better to positive affirmation and positive reinforcement than pointing out, “Well, you never do this, and you make me feel really unseen and unheard.” So if instead we can point to moments where you do feel felt, like you feel seen by your partner — like, “Hey, hon, I really appreciate when you just sit with me and you rub my back. That helps me to feel connected even in a moment where I’m not ready to talk. If we can have that more, I feel like that would deepen our relationship even further.”
Nidhi Tewari: You’re drawing attention to what they’re doing well, and perhaps you can even identify, “Sometimes this behavior, the thing that you’re doing is the thing that’s creating disconnection, not you as a person is who I feel disconnected from.” So I might say something along the lines of, “When you jump in to try and offer solutions, I know it’s coming from a really good place because you care about me and you don’t like seeing me struggle. But what I really need in that moment is to just maybe have you sit with me, ask some questions, let me vent before we get to this place of solutions. And maybe eventually I’ll get there. I just need some time.” Something like that is not pointing fingers. It’s not saying you’re a terrible partner. It’s not saying that you’re horrible at listening to me. You’re instead pointing out a specific behavior that you feel is creating disconnection, and you’re offering what an alternative might be for them to utilize with you. You’re giving them a solution there that will help to point them in the right direction.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Such good advice. But I’m also just thinking about one of the things that you said at the beginning of our conversation about the importance of being able to regulate yourself. Because thinking about my own experiences and so many clients, when hurtful things happen in the moment and we have big feelings — you feel hurt, you feel frustrated, you feel disappointed — it’s so easy to just reflexively talk from that place. And what you’re talking about, it really requires a little perspective and distance sometimes to calm down, figure out, what do I really need right now? How do I start with the strengths? You have to be calm in order to be able to do that. And I know that that’s a big part of what you do in your book and in your work, that first section, all right, how to get yourself under control so that you can engage that way.
Nidhi Tewari: Absolutely.
Nidhi Tewari: Part of it is taking the space to notice how the past is connecting to the present. This interaction you’re having with your partner or with your sibling or whoever it is that is your loved one, is not just being informed by this moment. Our earlier experiences, our feelings of disconnection, the moments where people have pushed past our emotions, flood us in the present day. So we just need to pause for a second, and if we can just name what’s happening, then we can tame it. Name it and tame it. That’s such an important piece of it. And regulating our nervous system — we cannot be connected when we’re in a dysregulated state. So you will not be speaking from your best self when you’re in this —
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That’s one way to put it. Yeah.
Nidhi Tewari: Right? That’s the nice, kind way to say it. We’re dropping the ball a little bit in our communication when we are in this up in arms, angry, anxious, frustrated state. So calm yourself down first and foremost, and then re-approach the conversation from that steadier standpoint.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Such good advice. Well, Nidhi Tewari, this has been such an interesting and insightful conversation. I know we’re out of time, but I’d love it if you wouldn’t mind sharing with our listeners where to learn more about you, your work, your book. What should they know?
Nidhi Tewari: My website is nidhitewarilcsw.com. It’s my first name, last name, lcsw, dot com. You can see my speaking offerings and my book. You can order it there. I’m on all the social media platforms — TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn. My handle is @nidhitewarilcsw, licensed clinical social worker, LCSW. My book is Working Well, and you can order it through the Penguin Random House website or any retailer that sells books.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Amazing. Well, congratulations on the book, Nidhi. It’s obviously been a labor of love and really important.
Nidhi Tewari: Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Thank you so much for spending this time with me, and hopefully we’ll have a chance to talk again.
Nidhi Tewari: Absolutely, will do.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That was such a fascinating conversation. I really enjoyed the way my guest did a deep dive into this different way of being in contact with other people that is so deeply attuned. It’s curious, it’s open, it’s receptive. Just listening to everything she shared, I think we can all understand how if we practice that intentionally, it becomes so much easier. Think about how much conflict just dissolves when there is agreement and an openness and a willingness to listen.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: The other thing that was coming up for me is that, as a marriage counselor — it’s a big part of my practice — what I do often see is that when couples in particular have been in a negative relational cycle, when there has been conflict, especially over a long period of time, and when attunement hasn’t been happening on one side or sometimes both sides, it can begin to erode not just trust, as in trust of the good intentions of another person, trust of being heard and understood, trust of having there be responsiveness, but it can also begin to erode goodwill. It starts to feel difficult to operate in a spirit of openness, generosity, a willingness to listen. If you’ve been in a relationship, sometimes for years, where it feels like you’re not getting that from your partner, that’s when this can feel really hard to practice. Not impossible, but in my experience, many people require support to come back in and try to have that be different.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That is when working with a competent relationship expert can make all the difference, especially if you’re in relationship patterns that are feeling kind of entrenched, because they really do take on a life of their own. To get this type of support, I would very specifically recommend that you look for a licensed marriage and family therapist that has deep specialized training and expertise in systemic dynamics, attunement, but also communication skills and ways of being with each other that can begin to repair some damage that’s been done over time from the lack of attunement.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Ideally, you’ll look for a marriage and family therapist who does more than treatment. Systemic family therapy is a very powerful treatment modality for a lot of things, including anxiety, depression, trauma. But if that’s not why you’re there, you would be very well-served by working with an MFT who specializes in relational coaching competencies — which is more than about talking about how we feel and saying nice things to each other. It really explores what the skills gaps are for both of you, what the strengths are, and what are the motivations you each have for working on a relationship for the purpose of making it better. But also, taking a real clear look at what are you each doing that’s maybe not working very well. Not for the purpose of being critical or shaming, but to bring visibility into those moments when you or your partner are responding to each other in a way that obstructs the kind of closeness and connection that you really want to have. So then with that clarity and that understanding, we can begin to teach new ways of being. So when this happens, try that instead, and then go forth and practice it.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Because remember, the heart of coaching competencies is not just about saying things out loud with therapists like me. It’s about then what do you do with that outside of those sessions, and then over time, using sessions to develop and increase new skills. Talk about how that went and what did we learn from it. It’s not just about insight. That’s part of it, but it’s how we put insight into action. If that type of approach appeals to you, that is what the clinicians in my network at Growing Self actually do. They’re not just licensed marriage and family therapists. They also have coaching competencies that most therapists don’t, and so it feels pretty different. It is certainly deep, insightful, powerful. We have magical moments. People connect with feelings. They even cry. But then it is, what do we do with that?
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: If that sounds like the kind of experience you’re looking for, it’s so easy to get started. Come to growingself.com and just request a free consultation. You can meet someone or check it out, see if it looks like a good fit. And if it does, be on your way to creating positive change in your relationship. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I enjoyed this topic. I hope we can reconnect with my guest again in the future, and I’m so glad to bring it to you. I’ll be back in touch again very soon with another episode of Love, Happiness, and Success. And in the meantime, I hope you take good care and challenge yourself to practice even one of the things you learned about today. I know I’m going to. All right, talk to you later.
What to take with you
Connection is a skill, not a personality trait.
Attunement — being so present that your partner feels felt — can be learned by anyone, including people who feel hopeless about it right now.
Self-regulation always precedes co-regulation.
You cannot tune in to your partner while your own nervous system is on fire. Calming yourself comes first, every time.
Most of us default to a style that quietly disconnects.
Fixers, Avoiders, and Connectors all leave the other person feeling unseen. Only the Explorer, who asks instead of assuming, builds closeness.
One question changes almost any hard conversation.
“What’s been the hardest part for you?” invites the other person in without fixing, rushing, or making it about you.
“I’m fine” is often a request to be mind-read.
Real connection means saying what you need in plain words instead of expecting your partner to decode your behavior.
Name the behavior, not the person.
“When you jump in to fix it, what I need is for you to sit with me first” repairs without blame. Name it, and you can tame it.
How to Emotionally Connect With Your Partner: The Skill of Attunement
You can be lying in bed next to someone you have loved for years and still feel like there is an ocean between you. Nothing is technically wrong. There was no blowup, no slammed door, no obvious villain. And yet you feel unseen, a little lonely, and quietly worried that the distance means something. If you have caught yourself wondering how to emotionally connect with your partner again, here is the short version: connection is not a trait you were born with or without. It is a skill. The name for it is attunement, and it can be learned.
I am a marriage and family therapist, and the clinicians on my team at our marriage counseling practice watch this exact thing play out every week. Two people who love each other, both trying, both kind, both somehow walking away from conversations feeling more alone than when they started. It is rarely about who they are. It is almost always about how they connect, or miss each other, in the small moments that actually make up a relationship.
Here is what I want you to hear before we go one step further. Most people who come to us with this problem have already read the articles. They know they are supposed to put the phone down, make eye contact, and use I statements. Information is not the missing piece. The missing piece is that your nervous system has been running the same pattern for years, sometimes since you were a kid, and a paragraph on a blog is not going to override that at 10pm on a Tuesday when you are tired and your feelings are hurt.
So that is the honest frame for this article. What I am about to share with you is real, and it will give you language for what has been happening between you and your partner. It comes from a conversation I had with Nidhi Tewari, a licensed clinical social worker and the author of Working Well, and it is genuinely good. But the part where you do it differently, with the actual person you love, in the actual moment it counts, that is the work the coaches and therapists on my team do with people every single day. Keep that in the back of your mind while you read. The goal is not to collect one more framework. The goal is to feel close to your person again.
How do I emotionally connect with my partner?
You emotionally connect with your partner through attunement, which simply means being so present that the other person feels felt. Nidhi describes it as being in tune or in sync with someone, a kind of full-body presence that lets them feel understood in real time. It is not a grand gesture. It is a series of small, moment-to-moment adjustments.
And it is not only a feeling. When two people are truly in sync, the effect shows up in the body. Nidhi pointed to research using brain imaging that found heart rates, hormones, and even the firing of neurons start to line up between people who are closely connected. I mentioned the late Dr. Helen Fisher on the show, whose functional MRI studies traced what happens in the brain when we bond with someone and when we feel cut off from them. The headline is the same: we are wired to regulate one another. Connection is a physiological event, not a personality quiz.
Nidhi’s research, which focused on the workplace but applies everywhere, found four skills underneath attunement. She remembers them with a short acronym, FRSC, which she pronounces like the word frisk. Flexibility, because what your partner needed yesterday is not always what they need today. Reading cues, the verbal and nonverbal signals that tell you someone is leaning in or pulling away. Self-regulation, managing your own nervous system so you can stay present. And collaboration, the sense that you are on the same team looking for alignment, not opponents trying to win. Master those four, and you have a real head start.
If that already sounds easier to read than to live, you are right, and that gap is exactly where coaching becomes useful. Most people I work with can define connection just fine. What changes their relationship is having someone help them practice it in the specific places it keeps breaking down. It is hard to see your own patterns clearly from inside them.
Why do I feel disconnected from my partner even when nothing is wrong?
You feel disconnected because attunement has quietly broken down, usually because one or both of you is a little dysregulated and reaching for a habit that creates distance. As Nidhi put it, your partner will pick up on your dysregulation and feel it, even if neither of you names it. The disconnection is not proof that something is wrong with you or with the relationship. It is a signal that the tuning has drifted.
This is why she says self-regulation always precedes co-regulation. You cannot be with another person if you cannot first be with yourself. When you are flooded with your own stress, it gets much harder to notice what is happening inside someone else, and your go-to move, whether that is fixing, distracting, or shutting down, lands as distance. A lot of what looks like a communication problem is really a regulation problem wearing a communication costume.
This is also where real listening lives. Feeling disconnected often traces back to one person not feeling heard, which is its own learnable skill. If that resonates, our piece on empathy in relationships and our guide to becoming a better listener are good companions to this episode.
If you have read this far and recognized your own relationship, that recognition is worth something. It is also worth saying out loud to someone who can help you do something with it. Naming the drift is step one. Closing it is the work.
Which communication style are you? Meet the FACE framework
When someone you love is struggling, you tend to default to one of four communication styles, and only one of them actually builds connection. Nidhi calls them FACE. Three of the four leave the other person feeling unseen, even when your intentions are good.
The Fixer jumps straight to solutions. You share a hard thing and they say, have you tried this, why not reorganize your schedule, have you considered hot yoga. It comes from love and from their own discomfort, but as Nidhi says, if we wanted advice, we would ask for it. The Avoider sidesteps the feeling entirely, either by changing the subject or by sprinkling on toxic positivity, the cheerful do not worry, you will be fine that leaves you feeling brushed aside. The Connector relates with a story of their own, oh, the same thing happened to me, and without meaning to, the spotlight slides off you and onto them. I owned that one on the mic. Connector, right here.
The fourth style is the one to grow toward. The Explorer asks instead of assuming. They get curious, they deepen the conversation, they let you say more, and they stay present without trying to move you through your feelings on a schedule. They hold space. Nidhi, by the way, confessed she is a Fixer, and every time she offers her husband a solution he reminds her that is not what he wants. Even the experts are practicing this.
A quick way to find yourself in all four is the infographic below. Read it with your partner, and notice the temptation to assign them a style before you look at your own.
Knowing your style is the easy part. Catching yourself mid-Fixer in a real conversation, when you are tired and your partner is upset, is a different skill entirely. That is the version of this work the coaches on my team do with people, and it is also a big reason couples come in: not because anything is broken, but because they want to connect on a deeper level and want help making the new behavior stick.
Our free communication training is a short two-part video and workbook that turns the Explorer move into something you can practice this week. No cost, no pressure.
Get the Free Training →How do I make someone feel heard?
You make someone feel heard by asking instead of assuming, which is the heart of the Explorer move. Start with a little normalization and validation, something like, I am so sorry you are going through this, it makes complete sense that it feels overwhelming. That one beat disarms the other person and signals you are not about to fix them or flee. Then you open the door with a question.
The single best one Nidhi offered is this: what has been the hardest part of this for you? It is a small sentence that does enormous work. It tells the other person you are willing to go where the feeling actually is. And here is the part that should be a relief to anyone who freezes up around someone else’s pain. Often what people need is not the right words. They just need you and your presence. You do not have to perform wisdom. You have to stay.
There is good science under this. In a now-classic study, researchers found that pairs of strangers who worked through a set of increasingly personal questions reported dramatically more closeness afterward than pairs who made small talk. I mentioned that study on the show. Curiosity, aimed with care, manufactures intimacy. If it can bond strangers, imagine what it can do on purpose between two people who already love each other.
A caution Nidhi added, and I love her for it: attuning also means respecting that not everyone wants to open up in a given moment. If you ask and your partner skates past it, let it go. They will come back when they are ready. You do not have to bubble-wrap the people you love or protect them from their own feelings. Make the offer, then follow their lead.
How do I ask for what I need instead of expecting my partner to read my mind?
You ask by saying it in plain words, instead of communicating through behavior and hoping your partner decodes it. This is the trap Nidhi named so honestly from her own marriage. She and her husband have been together twenty years, and early on she would get upset with him for not being attuned to her. She would say I’m fine, he would take her at her word and give her space, and she would be quietly furious that he had not read between the lines.
What she eventually saw was that she was expecting him to mind-read. When she said I’m fine, what she actually wanted was for him to sit with her, rub her back, and check in again in ten or fifteen minutes. But she never said that out loud. So the first piece of personal work is simple and uncomfortable: are you actually asking for what you need, or are you expecting people to mind-read? Say it in words.
In couples work I see this constantly. People genuinely believe they are showing their partner the truth through their behavior, communicating in a nonverbal language that feels obvious to them and is completely invisible to the person across the table. Often that language came straight from the family they grew up in. Learning to translate it into clear requests is one of the most freeing skills a couple can build, and it is exactly the kind of thing relationship coaching is designed to help with. If you are weighing whether coaching or therapy fits your situation, our explainer on coaching versus couples therapy lays out the difference.
What do I do when my partner just tries to fix my problems?
When your partner reaches for solutions instead of presence, the move that works is to name the behavior, not the person, and to lead with what they are doing right. Nidhi’s script is a small masterpiece: when you jump in to offer solutions, I know it comes from a good place, because you care about me. But what I really need in that moment is for you to sit with me, ask a few questions, and let me vent before we get to fixing. That is not an attack. It points at a specific behavior and offers a clear alternative.
A lot of this lands differently once you understand attachment. The classic pairing is an anxious partner and an avoidant one. The avoidant person assumes that if they just wait, the tension will blow over and things will reset. The anxious person needs to resolve it now, because not knowing where they stand feels like danger. If you know your partner leans anxious, a little reassurance changes everything: instead of going silent, you might say, we are hitting a rough patch in this conversation, I want to come back to it, let me take thirty minutes and then we will sit down. That turns walking away from a threat into an act of care. Our guide to anxious versus avoidant attachment goes deeper on these dynamics.
None of this works if you try to do it while you are activated. When you are hurt or angry, it is so easy to speak from that raw place and make things worse. Nidhi’s shorthand is the one I will be stealing: if you can name what is happening inside you, you can begin to tame it. Name it and tame it. Calm yourself first, then re-approach the conversation from a steadier place. This is not about swallowing your feelings. It is about being able to say them in a way your partner can actually hear.
This is also one of the most common reasons couples reach out to us, and you do not need things to be falling apart to do it. Our coaches work with people on exactly this, the fixer-and-shut-down loop, the anxious-and-avoidant dance, and it tends to shift faster with a skilled third person in the room than it does when you keep trying to referee it yourselves at midnight.
Why reading this article probably isn’t enough
I want to be honest with you about something, because I would be doing you a disservice if I let you close this article thinking that reading it was the work.
Here is what usually happens. You read a piece like this one. Something clicks. You feel a flicker of hope and make a quiet promise to try the Explorer move next time. Then next time arrives, your partner says the thing that always gets you, your nervous system does what it has done for years, and you are right back in the same conversation you have been having for a decade, wondering why nothing changed. That does not mean you failed. It means you were trying to override a deep pattern, by yourself, in the exact moment that pattern is loudest. That is the hardest possible place to do something new.
What actually changes things is having someone in your corner who knows your specific patterns, who can help you debrief after a hard night and recalibrate before the next one. That is what working with our team looks like. Not lectures, not generic advice, but a real, ongoing relationship with someone paying close attention to your life. If you are wondering whether it works, our honest take on whether couples therapy works is a good read.
If something in this article landed somewhere specific, that is the signal to talk to a real person. We do free first conversations for exactly this, with no pressure and no commitment. You can schedule a free consultation and just see if it feels like a fit. You do not need to be in crisis. You only need to want to feel close to your person again.
Where to start this week
If you take one thing from my conversation with Nidhi, let it be this: you do not have to become a different person to connect with your partner. You have to get a little more present, a little more curious, and a little more willing to say what you actually need out loud. Pick one move. Try the question, what has been the hardest part for you. Or notice your style the next time your partner is upset and resist the urge to fix. Small, repeated, on purpose. That is how attunement is built.
And if you want a guide for that practice, that is what we are here for. The clinicians in my network at Growing Self are licensed marriage and family therapists who also hold coaching competencies most therapists do not, which means we do not just talk about how you feel, we help you turn insight into new behavior and then practice it together until it sticks. If that sounds like the kind of help you have been looking for, come request a free consultation and let’s see if we are a good fit. I am so glad you are here, and I hope you challenge yourself to practice even one thing you read today. I know I will.
xoxo,
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby
About this episode’s experts
Nidhi Tewari, MSW, LCSW
Nidhi Tewari is a licensed clinical social worker and a work-culture and wellbeing expert who has spent more than a decade helping high-performing leaders navigate stress, burnout, and the very human messiness of being a whole person at work. She is an EMDR therapist based in Richmond, Virginia, and her research on attunement, the science of being in sync with the people around us, sits at the center of her first book, Working Well: How to Build a Happier, Healthier Workplace Through the Science of Attunement (Penguin Random House, foreword by Amy Cuddy). The book makes the case that the healthiest workplaces, and by extension the healthiest relationships, are the ones that treat people as whole and complex rather than asking them to compartmentalize their lives.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby
Licensed psychologist, marriage and family therapist, and Board Certified Coach. Founder of Growing Self Counseling & Coaching. Host of the Love, Happiness & Success podcast (15M+ downloads). 25+ years of clinical practice. Creator of the Growing Self Institute, where she trains licensed mental health professionals in evidence-based coaching psychology.
Resources Dr. Lisa talked about in this episode
Sources cited in this episode
- Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363–377.
- Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.
- Aron, A., Fisher, H., Mashek, D. J., Strong, G., Li, H., & Brown, L. L. (2005). Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94(1), 327–337.
- The Gottman Institute. The science of attunement and turning toward bids for connection. gottman.com.
- American Psychological Association. APA Dictionary of Psychology, attunement and co-regulation. apa.org.
- Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley. Practices that build closeness, including the 36 questions. greatergood.berkeley.edu.
- Tewari, N. (2026). Working Well: How to Build a Happier, Healthier Workplace Through the Science of Attunement (foreword by A. Cuddy). Penguin Random House.
Your questions about emotional connection
Through attunement, which means being present enough that your partner feels truly seen and heard. In practice that looks like reading their cues, regulating yourself, asking instead of assuming, and staying with them rather than rushing to fix or flee.
Attunement is being in tune or in sync with another person, a full-body presence that lets them feel felt. Research shows it is physiological as well as emotional, with connected people’s heart rates and neural activity tending to align.
Disconnection often shows up because one or both partners is dysregulated and reaching for a habit that creates distance, such as fixing, avoiding, or shutting down. It is usually a signal that the tuning has drifted, not proof that something is wrong with you.
Nidhi Tewari calls them FACE: Fixers jump to solutions, Avoiders sidestep the feeling, Connectors relate with their own story, and Explorers ask and stay present. Only the Explorer reliably leaves the other person feeling understood.
Lead with validation, then ask an open question like, what has been the hardest part of this for you. Stay present without fixing or rushing. Often people do not need the right words — they need your presence.
Say it in plain words instead of communicating through behavior. If you say you are fine but want comfort, name that you want comfort. Clear requests prevent the silent mind-reading trap.
Name the behavior, not the person, and lead with what they do well. For example: I know your suggestions come from love, and what I need right now is for you to listen first. Then offer the alternative you want.
Anxious partners need reassurance and resolution, while avoidant partners tend to wait for tension to pass. Naming the pattern and offering reassurance, such as promising to return to a paused conversation, reduces the anxious-avoidant standoff.
It means that putting a feeling into words helps calm the nervous system. When you can name what is happening inside you, you can begin to regulate it and respond from a steadier place instead of reacting.
Yes. You do not need things to be falling apart to reach out. A free first conversation with a coach or therapist is designed for people who simply want to feel closer and learn the skills to get there.
