On love, attachment & being known

I have recommended this book so many times in couples sessions that I have lost count. And every time, people come back and say — why did no one tell us this before?

The idea is simple: we don't all experience love the same way. What feels like love to you might not feel like love to your partner — not because they don't care, but because they are speaking a different language. Chapman's framework is gentle, practical, and surprisingly moving. A classic for good reason.

If I could only recommend one book to understand why relationships feel the way they feel — this would be it. Levine and Heller take decades of attachment research and make it genuinely readable, even for people who don't usually enjoy psychology books.

Understanding your attachment style — anxious, avoidant, or secure — doesn't fix everything. But it does something almost as valuable: it makes you make sense to yourself. And that, in my experience, is where real change begins.

Richard Schwartz created Internal Family Systems — the therapeutic model that sits at the heart of so much of my work. And in this book, he brings those principles into the most intimate space of all: the relationship between two people.

What he offers here is a profound reframe. Instead of looking to our partners to complete us — to be our safe haven, our healer, our everything — he invites us to discover that within ourselves. Not so that we need less from relationships, but so that we can be more fully present in them.

This is a quiet book. But it has changed how I see love.