How to Build Trust and Connection in Your Relationship

When couples lose trust and connection, they often stop being emotionally vulnerable with each other. Over months or years, minor disappointments and unexpressed resentments gradually build thick walls of emotional distance. Many individual adults and couples enter therapy to intentionally dismantle these walls and learn how to safely rebuild their bond.

Cultivating everyday moments of love and mutual support to deepen secure attachment. Adults and couples can schedule sessions at the Greenwich Village, NYC private practice of Josephine Ferraro, LCSW.

In some cases, a structural betrayal has occurred. Partners seek specialized help to determine if their relationship can be repaired after an extramarital affair, broken emotional boundaries, or financial infidelity. Rebuilding intimacy after a major breach of trust is challenging, but with the right clinical tools, true relational repair is entirely possible.

The Gottman Method: Building Trust in Small Moments

According to relationship expert Dr. John Gottman, trust and emotional connection are not built through grand, sweeping gestures. Instead, a secure attachment is forged over time through a series of micro-moments and small daily interactions. 

Through more than 40 years of empirical research on couple dynamics, the Gottman Institute has demonstrated that how you respond to your partner in routine, everyday moments dictates the long-term survival of your partnership.

Achieving Emotional Attunement

Deep relational healing requires a foundation of emotional attunement. Attunement is the capacity to exit your own defensive posture, emotionally enter your partner’s inner world, and validate their internal experience.

Dr. Gottman utilizes the acronym ATTUNE to outline the core components of secure communication:

• A – Awareness: Noticing your partner’s subtle emotional shifts, facial expressions, and somatic cues.
• T – Turning Toward: Making a conscious decision to engage with your partner's bids for connection rather than ignoring them.
• T – Tolerance: Accepting that you hold two different, valid points of view without needing to prove who is "right."
• U – Understanding: Practicing active listening to fully comprehend your partner's perspective before formulating a response.
• N – Non-defensive Responding: Pausing your internal critic so you can respond with calm clarity rather than counter-attacking.
• E – Empathy: Attuning to your partner’s vulnerability and sharing the emotional weight of their distress.

Two Divergent Paths: Turning Toward vs. Turning Away

Every day, your partner throws out subtle "bids" for attention, comfort, or conversation. In these exact moments, you face a critical behavioral choice that dictates the long-term survival of your partnership:

Path 1: Turning Toward Your Partner

• Core Actions: Prioritizing your partner’s vulnerability, putting down digital distractions, practicing active emotional listening, and offering immediate physical comfort or grounding touch.
• Communication Style: Leading with authentic "I" statements, validating your partner's internal state, and displaying a high tolerance for differing points of view.
• Long-Term Relational Impact: Builds a massive emotional bank account, strengthens your secure attachment blueprint, and fosters high resilience against external life stressors.
• Path 2: Turning Away From Your Partner
• Communication Style: Responding defensively, shifting blame, tuning out, or utilizing bitter sarcasm and passive-aggressive hinting.

• Long-Term Relational Impact: Sows deep seeds of mistrust, creates a profound sense of loneliness in a relationship, and triggers automated behavioral safety loops that lead to emotional detachment.

• Core Actions: Postponing difficult conversations indefinitely, ignoring somatic distress signals, hiding behind screens or work, and prioritizing personal hobbies over a partner's bids for connection.

Clinical Vignettes: The Power of Micro-Choices

The following clinical case studies are composites drawn from my private practice experience with all identifying details altered to protect client privacy. They illustrate how these small communication choices shape the trajectory of a relationship over time.

Vignette 1: The Erosion of Trust (Turning Away)

After 10 years of marriage, Alice asked Doug if they could sit down to talk about their relationship. Inwardly, Doug groaned because his favorite football game was starting. He told her the talk could wait until the game ended. Afterward, however, Doug claimed he was too tired, promising they would discuss it in the morning.

Over the following months, Alice made repeated bids to express that she felt lonely and taken for granted. Each time, Doug turned away by overworking, deflecting with humor, or launching into extreme defensiveness. When Alice requested they attend couples therapy, Doug flatly refused, stating he would not share their private life with a stranger.

Two years later, Alice calmly informed Doug that she wanted a separation. Despite her years of explicit warnings, Doug felt completely blindsided by the emotional distance. In a last-ditch effort to save the marriage, he promised to stop his avoidant habits and finally agreed to attend therapy. 

Because Alice felt she had invested a decade into the bond, she agreed to participate without expectation. In couples therapy, they finally began processing years of unaddressed resentment and learning the essential relationship skills required to rebuild their foundation.

Vignette 2: The Cultivation of Secure Attachment (Turning Toward)

Jane and Bill had been married for seven years. Early one morning, Bill noticed that Jane looked uncharacteristically quiet and sad as she sat at the breakfast table. Bill had already packed his clubs to leave for a long-awaited golf game with his close friends, but he chose not to ignore her somatic distress.

He set his clubs down, sat closely beside Jane, placed a supportive arm around her shoulders, and asked what was weighing on her mind. Jane, aware of his plans, told him the conversation could wait until he returned. Bill refused, reassuring her that her emotional well-being was far more important than any game.

Jane then opened up, sharing that she had just received distressing medical news regarding her best friend. Bill instantly called his group to cancel his slot. He spent the remainder of the day walking and talking with Jane in a quiet wooded area near their home, offering steady emotional validation. 

By prioritizing Jane during an unprompted moment of sadness, Bill reinforced a deep sense of safety and mutual trust that protected their bond for years to come.

Clinical Analysis: Breaking the Cycle of Detachment

As Vignette 1 demonstrates, a chronic pattern of turning away slowly destroys a couple's emotional life together. When a partner is repeatedly met with dismissal or stonewalling, their nervous system registers that it is unsafe to be vulnerable. This breeds a dynamic where one partner completely stops trying, leading to the "roommate syndrome" or an abrupt separation.

There are many reasons why individuals reflexively turn away. Often, it stems from childhood emotional neglect or growing up in a rigid family system where vulnerability was shamed or treated as a weakness. Without specialized intervention, individuals automatically bring these early attachment wounds into their adult partnerships.

Many couples wait until they are on the absolute brink of divorce before scheduling an appointment. While long-standing relational trauma can certainly be repaired if both partners are fully committed to the process, systemic intervention is infinitely more effective when initiated early—before defensive behaviors become biologically hardwired into your daily life.

Rebuild Your Bond with an NYC Couples Therapist

Learning to transition from defensive reacting to empathetic attunement is exceptionally difficult if you lack a secure blueprint for closeness. 

Utilizing evidence-based systems like Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT for couples) helps partners safely map their negative cycles, heal underlying attachment anxieties, and restore a deeply felt sense of relational security.

If you and your partner are trapped in repetitive conflict loops, struggling to recover from an affair, or coexisting life roommates, you don't have to navigate this transition on your own.

About Josephine Ferraro, LCSW

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, Couples Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist with over 25 years of clinical experience specializing in trauma recovery and relational health. 

I help individual adults and couples process developmental trauma, break high-functioning anxiety loops, and build sustainable emotional resilience.

My interactive approach moves past regular talk therapy to engage both the mind and body through specialized, experiential modalities, including:

• Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

• EFT for Couples

• Attachment-Focused EMDR

• Somatic Experiencing (SE)

• AEDP

• IFS Parts Work Therapy

• Clinical Hypnosis (Hypnotherapy)

Connect with Me in My Greenwich Village Psychotherapy Practice:

• 🌐 Website: Visit Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist to explore my clinical philosophies and read more relationship insights.
• 📞 Phone: Call (917) 742-2624 during standard business hours
• ✉️ Email: josephineferraro@iCloud.com
• 📍 Location: Conveniently located for in-person sessions at my private office in Greenwich Village, New York, NY 10011, and available for secure online teletherapy throughout NYS

What is the Connection Between Attachment Styles and Sexual Satisfaction?

In Dr. Emily Nagoski's book, Come As You Are, she discusses the connection between attachment styles and sexual satisfaction (see my article: Understanding the Impact of Early Attachment on Adult Relationships).

How Attachment Styles Develop Early in Life

Your attachment style is developed early in life with your primary caregiver (usually a mother). Attachment styles are broadly divided into secure and insecure attachment, and 50-60% of people develop secure attachment early in life.

Early Attachment Between Mother and Baby

People who develop a secure attachment style early in life might not have received "perfect" caregiving (nothing is perfect), but it was good enough to help them to grow up to be securely attached individuals.

Everyone else, who didn't develop a secure attachment style, is somewhere on the insecure attachment spectrum between anxious and avoidant attachment (see my articles: How an Avoidant Attachment Style Can Affect Your Sex Life and How an Anxious Attachment Style Can Affect Your Sex Life).

There is also an attachment style called disorganized attachment which is a combination of anxious and avoidant due to early experiences with highly inconsistent caregiving.  But for our purposes, I'll simplify this discussion by focusing on anxious and avoidant attachment.

Before I go further, I'd like to emphasize that if you have an insecure attachment style (either anxious or avoidant), you're not doomed to live with it for the rest of your life.  You can develop a secure attachment style by working on your early attachment wounds in therapy or over time by getting into a healthy relationship with someone who has a secure attachment style. 

Attachment Styles in Relationships

Attachment styles developed early in life have an impact on adult relationships and sexual well-being.  

Based on Dr. Nagoski's book, let's compare attachment styles in relationships in terms of emotional vulnerability, emotional security and an ability to allow a partner to meet emotional needs (see my articles:  Emotional Vulnerability as a Pathway to Greater Intimacy in a Relationship and Fear of Emotional Vulnerability).

Comfort With Showing Emotional Vulnerability:
Secure Attachment:       "I'm comfortable sharing my thoughts and feelings with my partner."

Anxious Attachment:    "If I share my thoughts and feelings with my partner, I'm afraid I'll lose my partner's love."

Avoidant Attachment:    "I prefer not to share my deepest emotions with my partner."

Feeling Emotionally Secure in a Relationship:

Secure Attachment:        "I hardly ever worry about my partner leaving me."

Anxious Attachment:     "I tend to worry that my partner will leave me."

Avoidant Attachment:    "I have a hard time relying emotionally on a romantic partner."

Ability to Turn to a Partner to Get Emotional Needs Met:

Secure Attachment:       "I feel comfortable turning to my partner in times of need."

Anxious Attachment:    "I worry I care more about my partner than they care about me."

Avoidant Attachment:    "I prefer not to get too close to a romantic partner."

Secure Attachment Style and Sexual Satisfaction

According to Dr. Nagoski, a 2012 sex research study revealed that people with secure attachment styles tend to have a healthier and a more satisfying sex life.

Secure Attachment and Sexual Satisfaction

In addition they tend to have:

• More positive feelings about sex
• More frequent sex
• Better experiences with sexual arousal and more frequent orgasms
• Better communication with their partner about sex
• The ability to give and receive sexual consent
• The ability to practice safer sex (such as using contraceptives)
• The ability to enjoy sex more
• The ability to be attentive to their partner's needs
• The ability to comfortably link sex and love
• The ability to have sex in a loving committed relationship
• More sexual self confidence (see my article: What is Sexual Self Esteem?)

Insecure/Anxious Attachment Style and Sexual Satisfaction

Compared to people with a secure attachment style, people with an anxious attachment style tend to have more anxiety-driven sex with their partner through solace sex, which is an emotionally unhealthy way to have sex and can make sex less satisfying (see my article: Anxious Attachment and Solace Sex to understand the concept of solace sex).  

Anxious Attachment and Sexual Satisfaction

In addition, they tend to: 

• Worry about sex
• Equate the quality of their sex life with the quality of the relationship
• Be more likely to experience pain during sexual intercourse (referring to women)
• Be more likely to experience erectile dysfunction (referring to men)
• Be less likely to practice safe sex (use of condoms)
• Be more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs before sex
• Have more sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies
• Be more likely to get involved in coercive relationships where they are emotionally, physically and/or sexually abused or bullied

Insecure/Avoidant Attachment Style and Sexual Satisfaction

Compared to people with a secure attachment style, people with an avoidant attachment style tend to have less satisfying sexual relationships.

Avoidant Attachment and Sexual Satisfaction

They tend to:

• Begin having sex later in life
• Have less frequent sex with less non-penetrative sex (e.g., oral sex)
• Have positive attitudes about casual sex outside a committed relationship so they have more one-night stands
• Be more likely to have sex just to fit in with social expectations rather than because they really want to have sex
• Experience sex as less connected to their personal lives and relationships

Conclusion

Overall, people with a secure attachment style tend to experience more relationship and sexual satisfaction.

In order to have more sexually satisfying relationships and overall sexual well-being, people with insecure attachment styles (whether it is anxious or avoidant) need to work on overcoming their early emotional attachment wounds so they can develop a secure attachment style.

Getting Help in Sex Therapy

Sex therapy is a form of talk therapy (see my articles: What is Sex Therapy?).

Getting Help in Sex Therapy

There is no physical exam, no nudity or sex during sex therapy sessions (see my article: What Are the Most Common Misconceptions About Sex Therapy?)

As I mentioned earlier, people who have an insecure attachment style, whether it's anxious or avoidant, can learn to develop a secure attachment style by working on their unresolved emotional attachment wounds in therapy (see my article: Developing a Secure Attachment Style: What is Earned Secure Attachment?).

You deserve to be in a fulfilling relationship with good sex.

If you would like to improve the quality of your relationship and sexual-welling, seek help from a skilled sex therapist who is also a trauma therapist.  

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

As a sex positive trauma and sex therapist, I have helped many clients to have better relationships and improve their overall sexual well-being (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

          

Understanding Women With Healthy High Sexual Desire - Part 1

In prior articles, I discussed sexual pursuers and sexual withdrawers in relationships (see my articles about this topic: Part 1 and Part 2).  In this article, which is another sex positive* article in a series about sexuality, I'm focusing on high desire women who approach sex in a healthy way (also known as female sexual pursuers).  

Understanding Women With Healthy High Sexual Desire

Understanding Women With Healthy High Sexual Desire

When high sexual desire is discussed, the narrow stereotype is often about men who have strong sexual desire and women with lower sexual libido.  

To complicate matters, a lot of the research focuses on women who have problems with low sexual desire (e.g., hypoactive sexual desire) or, on the other end of the spectrum, unhealthy, impulsive/compulsive sexual desire (e.g., impulsive and compulsive sexuality is often associated with the emotional insecurities of borderline personality).

Aside from the problems with research, there are also sexist cultural stereotypes that complicate matters, including portraying women with healthy high sexual desire as being "whores" and "sluts."  

Even women with healthy high libido can be denigrated in this sexist way.  This is in sharp contrast to stereotypes of men with high libido who are admired for being "manly" or "viral."

More recent research challenges these sexist stereotypes and reveals that women can have healthy high sexual libido.  

Their high libido doesn't emerge from emotional insecurity, impulsiveness or compulsivity. Instead, these women are confident in themselves and they enjoy sex.  And, contrary to sexist views of women, there are more women with healthy high sexual desire than is commonly thought.

Women With Healthy High Sexual Desire and a Secure Attachment Style

Women who have a healthy high libido usually have a secure attachment style (see my article: How Your Attachment Style Affects Your Relationship).

As children, they developed a secure attachment with one or both parents.  They received love and emotional mirroring from at least one parent that allowed them to feel loved and emotionally secure.

Often, as young girls, they experienced at least one parent who delighted in them.  At the age of four or five, these girls' parents delighted in their healthy behavior.  For instance, if the young girl happily twirled around while she was feeling good about herself, her parents encouraged her rather than telling her to "stop showing off."

These girls grew up seeing the gleam in their parents eyes reflected on them so, not only did they feel secure in their attachment to their parents, they also felt loved and lovable.  So, when these girls mature into women, they feel their desirability.  

Rather than being shamed or made to feel guilty for masturbating, their parents reinforced self pleasure as being healthy.  They grew to be women with a solid erotic core.

As I've mentioned in prior articles, these women often experience spontaneous sexual arousal (see my article: Spontaneous Sexual Arousal).  

According to Dr. Emily Nagoski in her book,  Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, women who experience spontaneous sexual desire (as opposed to context-dependent sexual desire) represent at least 16% of all women.

I'll be discussing this topic further in future articles.

Also, see my articles:

Who Says Older Women Don't Enjoy Sex?

What is the Difference Between Sex and Intimacy?

What is Good Sex?

*Sex positive refers to having or promoting an open, tolerant or progressive attitude towards sex and sexuality.

Getting Help in Therapy

If you have unresolved problems that you have been unable to work through on your own, you could benefit from seeing a licensed mental health professional.

Rather than struggling on your own, contact a skilled psychotherapist who can help you to overcome the obstacles that are keeping you from leading a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Relationships: What is Good Sex? Part 4: What is Synchrony Sex?

I've been focusing lately on the topic "What is Good Sex?" based on the work of psychologist Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT).  

What is Good Sex?

This article is the fourth in a series of articles on this topic, and the focus of this article is "Synchrony Sex".

What is Synchrony Sex?

With synchrony sex, each person is open and emotionally vulnerable to their partner. They are emotionally attuned to one another.  

Whereas solace sex and sealed off sex are based on insecure attachment (e.g., an anxious or avoidant attachment style), synchrony sex is based a secure attachment style between the two people in a relationship (see my article: How Your Attachment Style Affects Your Relationship).

Synchrony sex occurs between two people when the erotic and the emotional connection come together.  Generally, each person feels safe and secure so they can be open sexually and emotionally with one another.  

This openness allows the couple to bond with each other and opens up the possibility for sexual exploration and a tolerance for sexual differences that can often be negotiated (e.g., differences in terms of frequency of sex, sex acts, and so on).

Synchrony sex is associated with a healthy, committed relationship where emotional vulnerability between the two people increases the emotional intimacy in their relationship (see my article: Emotional Vulnerability as a Pathway to Emotional Intimacy and What is the Difference Between Sex and Intimacy?).

Even in a relationship with secure attachment, there can still be problems with sex. But these problems are generally more easily worked through, as compared to couples who experience an insecure attachment, because there is a healthy emotional foundation (see my article: How to Talk to Your Spouse About Sex).

Clinical Vignette: Relationships: Synchrony Sex: Working Out Differences in Sexual Arousal

One common problem in many relationships is a difference in sexual arousal, as will be illustrated in the vignette below, which is a composite of many different cases:

Jane and Mark

After 10 years of marriage, Jane and Mark, in their early 40s, sought help in EFT Couples Therapy to work out issues in their sex life.  Generally, aside from the problems in their sexual relationship, they were happily married with three children. 

Both of them described happy childhoods where they each felt loved and secure in their family of origin.  As a result, they both developed a secure attachment style, which allowed them to develop a healthy relationship with each other.

They told their couples therapist that they were devoted to each other and their children.  Jane told the story of how passionate their sex life had been in the early days of their relationship.  

She recounted how they couldn't keep their hands off each other during the first few years of their relationship, and they spent their weekends making love. But, she said, right after their first child, even though she loved Mark more than ever, she no longer felt as sexual.  She still felt sexually attracted to Mark, but she didn't feel as sexual as she did in the past.

Mark told the therapist that in the early days of their relationship Jane was always ready to have sex, but now he felt she was only having sex to please him, and this was hurtful to him.  

As Jane listened to him, she nodded her head in agreement and she admitted that she often had sex with Mark to satisfy him.  She said sometimes she got into having sex once they started, but just as often she felt too tired for sex.

Throughout the couples therapy consultation, Jane and Mark held hands and frequently looked at each other with affection.  It was apparent to the couples therapist that they loved each other and they experienced a secure attachment style, but they needed to work out the differences in sexual arousal that had developed over time between them.

Mark also talked about not wanting to always be the one who initiated sex between them.  As Jane listened carefully, Mark looked at her affectionately and said he would like her to initiate sex sometimes.  

In response, Jane said she didn't feel as sexually attracted now, at age 42, as she once did when she was younger.  She told Mark that she was very aware that she had gained some weight and her body had changed so much after the birth of their three children, "I just don't feel so attractive and sexy anymore to initiate sex now."

"I never knew you felt this way.  I think you're more beautiful now than when we first met," Mark responded by squeezing Jane's hand.

Jane also said, somewhat shyly, that she sometimes experienced vaginal dryness, which made sexual intercourse uncomfortable at times, especially if she wasn't sexually aroused.  

Hearing this, Mark seemed surprised and said Jane had never told him how she felt about her body before.  He was also surprised that, until now, she felt too embarrassed to talk about it.  

In response, the couples therapist normalized Jane's experience of vaginal dryness. She  recommended that Jane speak with her gynecologist to rule out a medical problem.  She also recommended that the couple experiment with different types of lubrication.

After Jane saw her gynecologist and learned that her vaginal dryness is normal for her age, she and Mark began to use lubrication so that sex wasn't uncomfortable for Jane.  Over time, Jane also accepted that the changes in her body were normal.  

During their couples therapy sessions, Mark and Jane learned that many factors were contributing to the change in their sex life, including stress. Their couples therapist told them that it was normal for couples to experience a change in their sex life, especially after they have children, more responsibilities to contend with and more stress.

Over time, Mark and Jane took steps to improve their sex life.  They both worked on reducing their stress by exercising and meditating.  

They also did things to increase sexual anticipation and arousal--planning a romantic evening while their children stayed with Jane's parents, reading erotic passages to each other, talking about their sexual fantasies, and so on (see my article: Sex Tips For Men: How Men Can Be Better Sex Partners in Their Relationship).

Jane developed more of a curiosity about what turned her. Specifically, she learned to be more comfortable masturbating alone as well as with Mark to find out more about what she liked sexually.  

On the advice of her couples therapist and her medical doctor, Jane began working out.  She realized, once she started exercising regularly, that she felt more sexually aroused after doing aerobic exercise.  All that heart pumping exercise translated into more sexual passionate.  She and Mark also got curious about using sex toys and used them to spice things up and add variety to their sex life.

During their couples therapy sessions, Mark and Jane opened up more to talk about what each of them found pleasurable.  This new sense of openness was exciting for them.  Jane said she felt more sexually confident about initiating sex, especially after a good workout, and this pleased both of them.

Both of them said they were happier with their sex life than they had been since the early stage of their relationship.  Since they were happy in the other areas of their marriage, they successfully terminated couples therapy.

Conclusion

Compared to solace sex and sealed off sex, synchrony sex involves both an emotional attachment and an erotic dynamic.  The vignette about Jane and Mark illustrate how a couple can develop a dynamic of synchrony sex.

Even when a couple experiences a secure attachment in an otherwise healthy relationship, there can still be problems that develop along the way.

Since a relationship based on a secure attachment style has a healthy foundation, these sexual differences, whether it's differences in how each person experiences sexual arousal or other differences, can be worked out in couples therapy.  

Getting Help in Therapy

If you and your partner need help to improve your sexual relationship, you could benefit from working with an experienced psychotherapist.

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional.  A skilled couples therapist can help you to develop a more satisfying sex life and a happier relationship.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, IFS Couples Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist 

I have helped many work individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

I offer a free 15 minute phone call before setting up an appointment.

I see clients in person in my Greenwich Village, New York City office and online.

Call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

What is Good Sex? Part 1

Part 2: Solace Sex

Part 3: Sealed Off Sex