Your Brain on Love

Understand your brain on love.

A short course on attachment, the nervous system and what makes long-term love work, based on Stan Tatkin's program.

Start lesson 1
Three scenes side by side: a person reading alone on a small island, a person riding a wave with arms stretched out, and a person standing steady beside an anchor.
Island protects space.Wave protects connection.Anchor is at ease with both.

Eleven short lessons, in two parts.

First what is going on in you and between you, then what to do about it. Take them in order: each one builds on the last.

  1. Part 1: what is going on

    1. 1Why love is hard
    2. 2Your brain on love
    3. 3Three styles of closeness
    4. 4Living with each style
    5. 5Two nervous systems
    6. 6Blind spots: deficits, trauma and loss

  2. Part 2: what to do about it

    1. 7Becoming a team
    2. 8Repair and attraction
    3. 9Partings, reunions and thirds
    4. 10Fighting well
    5. 11Going the distance

Built so it stays with you.

Most of what we read is gone within a week. Every lesson here uses the four things that help you remember.

  1. ReadShort sections in plain language, with the key term explained where it first appears.
  2. RecallQuestions that make you pull the idea back out of memory, with the reasoning after every answer.
  3. TryOne small experiment per lesson to do with a real person this week.
  4. ReturnEach lesson opens with two questions from earlier ones, and flashcards come back after a day, three days, a week.

What this is, and what it is not.

This is a study guide to one program, Stan Tatkin's Your Brain on Love, written in our own words and checked against the source. Where the course says “Tatkin says”, it is his claim; where a note starts with “A note from us”, it is ours.

It is education, not therapy. The exercises assume two people who are safe with each other.

Sources and model notes