I have some reservations about sharing this story.
My wife and I are in Copenhagen this week, seeing it for the first time together. Sunday night, I discovered I'd booked our long-awaited seafood dinner for the wrong day — our table was actually for Monday. We stood in the hotel room at 5:30 — my mistake, no table, thirty minutes to decide, and a twenty-five minute walk ahead of us.
We decided to walk over and plead our case anyway.
Ten minutes in, the sky opened into a downpour — the kind that turns a sidewalk into a small, sock-soaking river. No umbrella, no plan B, and a growing certainty this night wasn't going the way either of us pictured. Five minutes from the restaurant, soaked through, my wife said the only complaint I heard all evening: "I am drenched to the bone. We may want to consider a different plan."
That was it. No blame, no recap of whose fault the reservation was — just calling it for what it was and an invitation to adjust together.
We got there. I confessed the mix-up to the hostess. In a charming Danish accent, she said, "Yeah, that's going to be a problem." Outside seating had been scrapped for the night because of the rain, so tables were tight. She walked quickly back to the kitchen, then, to our shock and delight, offered us the chef's table if we could come back in an hour. My wife's response: "Perfect — we can go back and get into dry clothes!" We did. We hailed a cab, came back dry, ate one of the best meals of the trip, and never once turned the evening into an argument.
None of that was a big moment — a wrong date, bad weather, a mildly awkward conversation with a hostess. But it's exactly the kind of small, disorienting failure that shows you something true about a relationship, because it's low stakes enough to be honest and real enough to matter.
Bowlby's idea of a secure base was about what a partner becomes when the ground underneath you is unfamiliar — a new city, a language you don't speak, a plan that just fell apart. Your partner becomes the one stable, known thing in an unstable place. Wuhether they function as a safe haven or rather a source of static tends to show up fastest in exactly this kind of low-grade chaos.
The unexpected seat at the chef's table might be seen as the thing that saved the night. But from the couples therapy perspective, it might have been the fact that neither of us was managing the other's reaction on top of the actual problem. My wife wasn't gauging whether I could handle her disappointment. I wasn't bracing for blame. There was just a shared problem and two people looking at it from the same side.
It's worth asking your clients this directly. Not "how do you handle conflict," but something smaller: think of a time a plan fell apart when you were somewhere unfamiliar together. What happened next — did you find each other, or did you lose each other? The answer usually tells you more about the attachment bond than an actual fight would.
We got a better dinner than the one we planned, and a good story out of it. Looking back through the lens of an EFT therapist, my favorite part of the night was the walk over — drenched, unsure, and never once alone in it.
Now on with this week's Ohio EFT Newsletter:
Is Your Therapist Biased? Personal Agendas Are Creeping Into the Therapy Room.
by Elizabeth Bernstein on August 31st, 2026
More mental-health professionals appear to be espousing their own ideology or adopting cultural trends, such as encouraging victimhood and estrangement.
Inside the World of High-End Matchmaking.
by Catherine Pearson on August 31st, 2026
As he looks for The One, Joseph Pascaretta is investing in pricey matchmaking services. Will it help him find love?
The A.I. Therapist: Are Mental Health Chatbots Safe? - Part 2.
by WSJ Podcast on August 31st, 2026
The promise for AI mental-health tools is clear: bringing support to people who need it, when they need it. But these chatbots can come with risks. How do they respond when someone is in crisis, or thinking about harming themselves? In Part Two of a three part special series “The AI Therapist,” WSJ What’s News host Alex Ossola digs into the guardrails that companies are installing in their AI tools—and the questions as to whether they’re enough. . Listen to Part 2 of this new podcast series about artificial intelligence and therapy produced by The Wall Street Journal.
I’m a Psychiatrist. I’m Hearing Something New From Young Women.
by Dr. Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell on August 31st, 2026
Teenage girls and young women are self-diagnosing psychiatric conditions, often from social media. Dr. Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell explains how to navigate your child’s therapy-speak.
The Next Ohio EFT Virtual Call Is Friday, September 25th.
by Ohio EFT on August 31st, 2026
Join us at 9:00am on Friday, September 25th as we continue our discussion series about Emotionally Focused Therapy.
This month we'll be discussing the foundations of EFT starting with the De-escalation process of Stage 1 and the very first step of the process: Creating a therapeutic alliance and assessing the couple's conflict.
We'll have the link for that call in the next edition of the newsletter.
Asking Eric: 40-Year Marriage Suddenly Sours.
by R. Eric Thomas on August 31st, 2026
Post-retirement life has made a previously good marriage unpleasant.
Couples Who Exercise Together Do Better.
by Ashlyn Mildenhall on August 31st, 2026
I ran across this recent study this month and thought it might be of interest. The study by the School of Family Life and Family Studies Center Endowments at BYU examined how individual and conjoint exercise are associated with marital communication, conflict resolution, and conflict among young married couples in the United States. Although exercise is widely recognized for its physical and mental health benefits, less is known about how exercising with a spouse may strengthen relationship processes. Conjoint behaviors, such as shared activities, often contribute to marital quality. Understanding whether conjoint exercise predicts marital outcomes can inform interventions aimed at strengthening couple functioning.
The Surprising Mental-Health Benefits of Getting Away.
by Heidi Mitchell on August 31st, 2026
Forget the staycation. Research reveals that travel can build stress resilience, sharpen cognitive health and ward off depression far better than staying home.
A Promise Fulfilled: Ohio Man Unearths His Father’s Lost Wedding Ring Decades Later.
by Alena Cerro on August 31st, 2026
Using a metal detector, Jeff Arnett honored a request from his father, who lost his band while washing his car more than 40 years ago.
