Get Clear.

Become Wise.

Feel Secure.

Take the FREE LoveStyle™ Profile Quiz

 To Start Healing Your Relationship Today!

Receive a 6-page customized report on your unique Lovestyle, along with a detailed description of All 4 LoveStyles. Encourage your partner to take the Quiz as well (register separately), so you can compare results and learn together!

Our Services
Global Availability: In-Person, Phone, & Skype

Many people struggle in their relationships.

  • Do you know what healthy, secure love is… what it feels like… and how to create it?
  • Are you able to clearly request the affection you want from your partner, and receive it? Every day?
  • Do you understand precisely what turns your partner on – in body, mind, and spirit?
  • Do you know how to deepen your love-skills to co-create what you both yearn for in your relationship?

In our 40 years of working with couples, we’ve shown that partners can resolve their differences and be happy by learning how to:

  • Care about each other’s distress as a top priority.
  • Understand each others’ Lovestyle as a foundation of their bond.
  • Interact using specific skills that create a secure, intimate connection.
  • Learn each other’s primary love language.
  • Create an Operating Manual for each other’s needs and sensitivities.

If You Are…

  • Confused about how to create a secure, loving relationship…
  • Anxious about sharing your deepest needs and desires…
  • Uncertain how to sustain lasting intimacy that feels fulfilling and sacred…

You’re ready to move toward Healthy & Secure Love. Here’s the first step: take the LoveStyle Profile Quiz and if possible, have your partner take it, too.

What is Secure Love?

Creating “secure functioning” love can be simple to learn, if you and your partner want a strong, positive connection you can trust. There have been thousands of published scientific papers during the past 20 years that define the criteria for long-term relationships.

We’ve integrated this research from developmental psychology, neurobiology, attachment theory, and trauma healing – into a practical set of skills you can learn to shift your relationship into secure love –  that matures and deepens over time.  The key is that both partners continuously invest in the relationship’s “well being” as a high priority.

The experience of secure functioning is being in each other’s care. This points to how we hold, hear and see each other in our daily interactions. All couples share the core need to feel positively connected, appreciated and loved.

There are many skills to re-kindle and maintain your mutual attraction.  You can learn ways to lovingly influence each other:

  • Manage your energy and attention to feel connected
  • Avoid threats, fear and guilt.
  • Engage positively in your communications
  • Create quick repairs after triggering each other
  • And more…

We offer specific, step-by-step practices to take you from here to there. The results of these efforts are a deepening trust that you and your partner will care for each other’s needs in fulfilling ways. We show you how to reduce threatening behaviors and optimize daily pleasures. Greater passion follows naturally.

Understanding Love Blog
S- Building BLocks of Love

We yearn for love, and we need love. But what does healthy love look like? And how can we create it? Our confusion leads to all sorts of unconscious and irrational behavior, uncomfortable feelings, and reactivity in our relationships.

Read More..

Secrets to Great Sex article pic

Lion Goodman explores one of the most important but ignored keys to intimacy. I finally figured out something about my relationship with women that my Dad never taught me because he didn’t know it. It’s something my Mom didn’t know either because she likely didn’t understand it about herself.

Read More..

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Has this ever happened to you? While having a normal conversation with your partner, one of you gets triggered by a sudden extreme reaction. It may become a hot volcanic explosion, or a cold freeze when one person shuts the connection down completely.

Read More..

A couple sitting while arguing

I have been a relationship counselor for 44 years, specializing in how the bond with our primary attachment figures impacts our adult intimacy dynamics. Our childhood experiences and development define our capacity to know what Love IS (and is not).

Read More..

The Neuroscience of Relationship

We all react to each other from time to time. Research into the neuroscience of relationship gives us an understanding of how we get triggered, and why we react so quickly to our partner’s behavior. Specific brain regions are wired to be on alert for potential threats and danger. The brain responds to threats quickly, and seeks safety by any means necessary – which is usually fight or flight.

To the primitive brain, a “threat” can be physical, emotional, or mental. A roll of the eyes, a tone in the voice, a body movement, sharing your truth – any behavior can inflame you or your partner and spark a conflict – even if you had no intention of doing so. They could be falsely interpreting your behavior, but to the primitive brain, it doesn’t make any difference whether a threat is real or imagined. You can learn to soothe these overwhelming feelings and swiftly return to harmony.

Other brain regions are wired for establishing loving connections and mutual benefit. And some brain regions are driven by pleasure, lust and desire.

No wonder we’re so confused about love!

Good news!  You can learn to navigate the reactive triggers you have with each other.

True love feels sacred, safe and secure.  If you know how to nourish these qualities, deeper intimacy will flow and flourish.

Do You Feel Insecure in Your Relationship?

Threats and Mistrust

If your partner’s words or actions are threatening, it’s natural to feel insecure, and develop mistrust – which destabilizes any relationship.

These feelings are unnatural and can feel toxic over time. Healthy love feels secure, warm, and trustworthy. Join us to get clear how to nurture a powerful, exciting attraction with your partner – that matures and sustains.

Tolerating Distress

Many couples endure or hide their distress because they never learned how to resolve conflicts in a healthy way. The neuroscience of relationship reveals that if either of you feel threatened, you can’t bring out the best in each other. Subconscious defensive strategies hijack your best intentions. Feelings of shame, blame and judgment quickly close down an open heart. Secure love is dependable in keeping threats low and safety high.

Many of us never learned what healthy love is… or how to love in a wise way.  It’s likely that your parents and grandparents were not great role models. They may have had no clue how to love with mutual care and respect. It’s likely that their parents didn’t know, either. They all did the best they could with the awareness and skill they had at the time. It was simply ignorance – a lack of understanding how to love.

The Path Forward

Most of us are confused about love, so we cause each other pain. Why remain stuck in relentless narratives of emotional distress when you can create genuine understanding and healing between you?

The neuroscience of relationship illustrates that secure functioning is the key to all successful and loving relationships. There is a direct path to this shared reality – one in which you mend and revitalize your relationship. If you both choose to learn what sacred, secure love feels and looks like for you, you’re on your way.

You have the power to re-program your outdated beliefs about love – and release unhealthy habits you learned from your family and cultural conditioning. With inspiring heart-based practices, you can renew the love-bond that brought you together.

Are you tired of those endless, vicious processing cycles that never resolve the issues, with no relief from the upset?  Learn new ways to be in each other’s care – so you feel valued, accepted and connected.

We custom-design remedies for each couple we work with to repair past resentments, transgressions and hurts.  We guide you to rebuild trust and security, and discover the deeper purpose of being together.

Our step-by-step program – along with personalized support – allows you to swiftly shed the causes of disharmony and distress, and create a rich, loving, and playful connection.

Free yourself – and each other – from the painful patterns that keep you uncertain, on edge, and unhappy.

Life is extraordinary when there’s a warm flow of love between you… every day.  Choose to master the Wisdom of Love now.

We have cracked the code on how to rewire insecure patterns. We have counseled thousands of people to create fulfilling, passionate and sacred relationships. For more information on working with us, email Carista@ConfusedaboutLove.com

You Can Benefit If You Are…

A couple who wants to escape endless cycles of arguments or processing… and open to a new way of relating to each other.

  • A single person who wants to be in a secure, passionate relationship, but haven’t been able to create one.
  • A couple that is moving into new phase, such as marriage, parenting, empty nest, or retirement.
  • An estranged couple who wants to renew the spark and passion you had, but lost along the way.
  • A couple considering separation or divorce, but would prefer to find the keys to renewing your love bond.

A couple that has decided to uncouple, and wants to do so in a conscious, compassionate way.

Testimonials

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In-person in California  |  Sessions Via Phone, Skype or Zoom
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