Healing Through Attachment in the Couple

Work, sex, money, kids, time, and mess. Surely if you and your partner could just agree, your relationship would be better. Not quite. 

Relationship difficulties aren’t about the logistics, but instead about how we relate to each other — how we connect to each other. PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) was founded by therapist and neuropsychologist Dr. Stan Tatkin. PACT helps couples: 

1) Understand the ways in which early childhood experiences shaped how our partner experiences him/herself, the world, and others, including us; 

2) Develop a user manual such that we know how to read and respond to our partner’s needs; 

3) Cultivate a “couple bubble” marked by secure functioning in which pro-relationship, rather than pro-self, choices meet the needs of each partner and the couple. 

PACT promotes loving, safe, and secure relationships through its use of attachment theory, affect regulation, and neurobiology. PACT sessions typically last between 2 to 3 hours and many couples notice rapid shifts in their relationship. Thus, only a few sessions are often all it takes. 

PACT is appropriate for couples at every stage of connection from newly dating through together for decades. PACT can also be used to help individuals who are single approach dating with mindfulness. 


Who among us doesn’t want to be loved? To be ourselves, to feel cherished.
— Dr. Stan Tatkin

A brief video that explains the complexity of attachment theory: how our relationships with caregivers very early in our lives shape the partners we choose.