Coaching practices for Couple Bubble Stan Tatkin

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Couple Bubble Stan Tatkin, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My partner sided with their family over me again, or didn’t back me up in front of others, and I’m left unsure whether they’ll actually put us first when it counts
• We used to have our own little language
• My partner and I have drifted into totally separate social lives
• We’re comfortable and we still do plenty together, but it’s the same loop every week
• We still love each other but every week is the same loop

Practices that may help

1. Create and protect the couple bubble
   Agree that you each put the relationship above any third party, including family of origin.
   Secure-Functioning Relationships
2. Secure-Functioning Relationships
   Secure functioning, as defined by Stan Tatkin’s PACT model, means both partners operate as a team that actively manages each other’s safety and security — rather than each person managing their own needs separately. The model has a strong mechanistic basis in attachment neuroscience; formal RCT evidence for PACT specifically is limited but growing.
3. Cultivating complicity: shared secret aliveness
   Build a private world of in-jokes, gestures, and references that only you two share.
   Mating in Captivity: Sustaining Desire in Long-Term Relationships
4. Invest in shared social networks
   Spend time with people who affirm and are connected to both of you as a couple.
   Relationship Maintenance Behaviors
5. Regularly share novel and enjoyable activities
   Do new things together — not only comfortable or habitual ones.
   Relationship Maintenance Behaviors
6. Do novel, moderately challenging activities together
   New and slightly difficult shared experiences restore the self-expansion that keeps closeness alive.
   Self-Expansion Model: How Relationships Grow (and Stagnate) Us
7. Recognize your demon dialogue -- the negative cycle running your relationship
   Every stuck couple has a predictable negative loop; naming it together is the first step out.
   Hold Me Tight: Sue Johnson's Seven Conversations for Lasting Love
8. Build rituals of connection and shared meaning
   Create repeatable rituals that signal the relationship is a priority.
   The 5-to-1 Positivity Ratio in Relationships
9. Create and protect rituals of connection
   Build small, consistent ceremonies that mark transitions and signal "we matter."
   The Shared Meaning System
10. Build shared rituals that update your map
    Create recurring moments designed to share inner worlds, not just coordinate schedules.
    Love Maps: Knowing Your Partner's Inner World

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