While the need for human connection appears to be innate, the ability to form quality, strong healthy, loving and compassionate relationships however, is learned.

The ability to form a stable relationship starts to form in infancy, in a child’s earliest experiences with a caregiver who reliably meets the infant’s needs for food, care, warmth, protection, stimulation, and social contact.

Such relationships establish deeply ingrained patterns of relating to others. These patterns continue over time, and even if they can change through personal growth, therapy, coaching and through relationships themselves, they are the base for people’s behaviors, relationship dynamics and communication patterns.

If quality relationships are essential for our health and wellbeing but they do not depend on Love, then, what are the true ingredients, for quality, compassionate and connected relationships?