In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes its partner. This astounding legacy of our combined status as mammals and neural being… - Thomas Lewis

Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.

Long-standing togetherness writes permanent changes into a brain's open book. In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes its partner. (144)

People who need regulation often leave therapy sessions feeling calmer, stronger, safer, more able to handle the world. Often they don't know why. Nothing obviously helpful happened - telling a stranger about your pain sounds nothing like a certain recipe for relief. And the feeling inevitably dwindles, sometimes within minutes, taking the warmth and security with it. But the longer a patient depends, the more his stability swells, expanding infinitesimally with ever session as length is added to a woven cloth with each pass of the shuttle, each contraction of the loom. And after he weaves enough of it, the day comes when the patient will unfurl his independence like a pair of spread wings. Free at last, he catches a wind and rides into other lands. (172)

On the other side of the aisle are evolutionary psychologists and cross-cultural sociologists, who point out that the American habit of sleeping separately is a global and historical singularity. Almost all the world’s parents sleep with their children, and until the last sliver of human history, separate sleep was surpassingly rare. The burden of proof thus falls upon our culture to justify its anomalous nighttime practices.

Total self-sufficiency turns out to be a daydream whose bubble is burst by the sharp edge of the limbic brain. Stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying near them.