Living with each style.

Lesson 3 described the three styles from the inside. This lesson turns to your partner: what tends to show up once the relationship feels permanent, and which of your responses make it worse or better.

One reminder from Tatkin first. You learn a partner's style to understand how they work, not to criticise them.

Why partners change after commitment

During courtship nearly everyone looks like an anchor: easy, warm and flexible. Tatkin's dry explanation is that anyone who looked too much like an island or a wave early on would not have been chosen. So when people later complain that their partner is not who they seemed to be, he calls it normal and insists that nobody was lying. Neither of you knew what was coming.

The change starts when the relationship begins to feel permanent. You start leaning on each other to stay steady, and each of you becomes the other's primary attachment figure, the place a parent once held.

That role wakes up old, wordless memory of what close relationships were like. Until then the fast brain mostly recognised the good parts. Now the painful parts come up too. He calls this the marriage monster, because a wedding or moving in together often flips the switch. Some people become low or ill, or lose interest in sex. The rougher someone's early attachments were, the bigger the change.

What to expect from an island

An island partner usually grows more distant as the bond grows more permanent: less affection, more guarding of time alone, more privacy, and a return to auto-regulation, which means calming and entertaining themselves on their own. Your approach can start to feel like a threat to their independence.

They may even lose sight of the fact that they chose you, and feel trapped, as if the relationship had been forced on them. Old feelings return: being swallowed up, being in trouble, having to perform.

Tatkin also warns about a drop in sexual interest. He links it to growing up with little touch, and to an aversion that can arise in what he calls the near senses: smell, touch, taste and seeing a face up close. Underneath sits an old fear that the person they depend on will use them or will not really be there.

Your partner cannot explain this, because they do not know it themselves. It will feel personal, but Tatkin says an island would behave this way with anyone who held your place.

What makes an island worse

Most of these come naturally to a partner who feels shut out. Each one lands on the island as pressure or as an attack.

• Asking why. A question such as “Why are you still at your desk?” takes effort to answer and stirs up guilt and shame, as if they had been caught at something.
• Calling their name from another room. Tatkin claims, without naming a study, that first names are stored deep in the amygdala, part of the brain's early warning system. A name shouted from a distance arrives as an alarm and gets a snappy reply. Walk over to them, or use another word.
• Unlimited time alone. Islands crave solitude and believe they do better alone. Tatkin disagrees. Solitude is also lonely, and what looks like independence is an adaptation to having been left to themselves. Give them time alone, just not all the time.
• Holding on too long. A long hug feeds the feeling of being caught. Now and then, end it yourself before they need to pull away.
• Pressing for feelings and thoughts. Often they do not know the answer, and the question feels like an attack.
• Taking the distance personally. It is a reflex from their first relationships, faster than thought and largely outside their control.

What helps an island

The helping moves share one idea: show that you know who they are, and do not make them wrong for it.

• Say what you see. Islands are poor at putting themselves into words, so do it for them, kindly. Tell them you can see they would like to be alone just now, or that this is becoming too much. Being read accurately, with no bad motive assumed, is a relief.
• Use few words. Tatkin is firm that extra words add stress when someone is already stressed. He recommends short, plain directions, which he calls commands.
• Give advance warning. Before they have to stop what they are doing, count it down as you might for a child: a quarter of an hour to go, then ten minutes, then five.
• Expect reluctance. Islands often balk when the moment comes, even at plans they made themselves. Once the mood has passed, the plan feels like a demand.
• Assume they miss you. They may look fine when you leave and unmoved when you return. Tell them they miss you anyway. The thought is not in their head until you put it there.
• Accept the need for distance. Tatkin calls this the key to the island. Much of the trouble is shame about needing protection and fearing dependence. When a partner leads with understanding, the urge to pull away often eases.

What to expect from a wave

A wave partner also looked like an anchor at first. As hope for a lasting bond grows, the body remembers disappointment: being left, being too much, having to look after the other person's moods. What you see is more negativity, a sense that something is always wrong.

Waves love to talk, and starting a fight is one way to engage. Out of fear, a wave may threaten the relationship itself, for instance by doubting aloud whether you are right for each other. In some couples this turns into slammed doors, breaking up and getting back together. Tatkin stresses that the fear is real and that none of it is deliberate.

A wave may also pull back from sex. Unlike the island's withdrawal, this is not lower desire. It is anger at feeling ignored or dismissed, and it can be meant as punishment. Waves notice the smallest sign of withdrawal, find partings and reunions hard, and respond even more to loving words than to loving acts.

At times a wave seems to have a need that nothing can fill. Tatkin rejects the idea of a bottomless pit outright. The need looks endless only while you keep signalling that they are too much, or that you may not be available. Every such signal increases the clinging.

Move toward a wave

A wave in distress relies on external regulation: they need another person in order to settle. That one fact explains both lists.

What makes it worse

• Dismissing or ignoring them. It confirms the fear of not mattering.
• Walking away. Leaving the room so that things can cool down takes away the one thing that calms them. Tatkin compares it to a red rag to a bull.
• Arguing with logic. It fails because the wave is speaking from feeling and meaning, not from reasoning.

What helps

• Go closer. It feels wrong when someone is being sharp with you. Tatkin says it calms a true wave almost at once.
• Use touch and warmth. Hold them or kiss them. Show a kind face and warm eyes, and soften your tone.
• Answer a rebuff with more kindness. If a compliment earns an eye roll or a sarcastic reply, say it again, more strongly, and add to it. Tatkin has never seen a true wave resist this. They laugh, let it in and soften.

Retreating is what the wave expects, because that is what happened to them before. Coming closer is the surprise that lets them calm down.

A note from us: This is advice for ordinary upset between partners who are safe with each other, not for a situation in which you are afraid of your partner.

No checklist for an anchor

Do not put anchors on a pedestal. Tatkin says they are as annoying as everyone else. What makes them anchors is that relationship matters to them, as it did in their family. Even so, they can look quite wave-like or quite island-like, depending on who they are with. If your anchor partner seems a little clingy, you may be acting a little distant, and the other way round.

As for lists, Tatkin admits he has none. An anchor is flexible, so what you get is less predictable than with the other two styles, and any list would be invented. What harms an anchor harms anyone: unfairness, insensitivity, feeling unloved, dismissed or attacked. What helps is what the second half of this course builds: a secure-functioning relationship, grounded in safety and in what works for both of you.