The Heart Truth examines why we repeat painful relationship patterns and shows how attachment, self-awareness, communication, and intentional repair can help transform love from something we simply feel into something we actively practice. What inspired you to write The Heart Truth after more than twenty-five years of working with couples?

The roots of The Heart Truth are actually much more personal than professional. My curiosity about relationships began long before I became a therapist or an academic. It began with my own life, my experience as an immigrant, and my own journey of trying to understand love, belonging, identity, social justice, and what it means to build a life and a relationship with another person and within a community.

Growing up between American and Palestinian cultures, navigating different expectations about family, love, gender, and relationships, I became increasingly aware of how much of what we believe about love is inherited. We absorb messages from our families, our cultures, and our lived experiences, often without realizing how deeply they shape the way we connect with others. I found myself asking which parts of our relational lives are shaped by our histories, which are shaped by our biology, and which we can actually change.

If I’m being completely honest, some of those questions were initially quite selfish. I wanted answers for myself. I wanted to understand my own experiences, my own relationships, and my own trauma, and why love, something so fundamental to being human, could also be so complicated, both personally and collectively. I wanted to understand what makes relationships work, what gets in the way of connection, and why some relationships seem to bring out the best in us while others leave us feeling disconnected from ourselves and one another.

That personal curiosity eventually became an intellectual and professional pursuit. My work as a therapist, my academic training, and my deeper exploration of research gave me new ways of investigating questions I had been carrying for years. I became fascinated by the intersection of our relational histories, attachment, emotional development, the nervous system, and the ways we shape one another through our relationships.

After more than twenty-five years of clinical work, I realized that many of the questions I had initially asked for myself were questions so many other people were asking, too. I encountered couples who loved each other but struggled to understand one another, individuals who wanted deeper connection but found themselves repeating familiar patterns, and people who genuinely wanted to love well but had never really been taught how.

The Heart Truth is, in many ways, the culmination of that lifelong inquiry. It brings together my lived experience, clinical work, and engagement with relational research to explore what makes relationships thrive and how we can become more intentional in creating them.

I suppose the book began with a personal search for answers, but it grew into something much bigger: a desire to make what we know about human connection accessible and useful to others. Because I believe that understanding relationships is not just about helping couples stay together. It’s about helping people live fuller, healthier, more connected lives.

How can cultural expectations surrounding gender, marriage, family, and sacrifice influence what happens privately between partners, and how can couples honor their cultural or family histories while deciding which inherited expectations still belong in their relationship?

This question is particularly close to my heart because of my own undocumented immigrant experience. One of the things I’ve come to appreciate, both personally and professionally, is that we don’t enter relationships as individuals alone. We bring our families, our cultures, our histories, and often generations of expectations into the room with us.

Culture shapes so much of what we understand about love, marriage, gender, family, and responsibility. It influences how we express affection, how we handle conflict, what we consider appropriate emotional expression, and even what we believe we owe one another. Some of these expectations are beautiful. They give us a sense of belonging, connection, identity, and continuity. Others can become restrictive, particularly when they are inherited without ever being examined.

As an immigrant, I’ve often thought about what happens when the expectations we grew up with meet the realities of the lives we are building. We can find ourselves navigating different cultural worlds, sometimes trying to honor the values of our families while also developing our own understanding of what partnership, marriage, and family should look like. That negotiation can be complicated. And it doesn’t always happen consciously.

I think this is particularly important for couples because many of the things they argue about privately are not necessarily just about the immediate issue. They may be about deeply rooted beliefs concerning gender, sacrifice, loyalty, independence, family obligations, or what it means to be a good partner. One person may have learned that love means putting everyone else’s needs before their own. Another may have learned that a healthy relationship requires autonomy and shared responsibility. When these beliefs collide, couples can experience conflict without recognizing the deeper stories underneath it.

I don’t believe the answer is to reject our cultural histories or abandon the traditions that shaped us. There is tremendous wisdom in our families and communities, and there is something meaningful about carrying forward the values that connect us to previous generations. But honoring our history doesn’t mean we have to reproduce every part of it.

I often think about the importance of moving from inherited expectations to intentional choices. Couples need to become curious about the relational blueprints they bring into their partnerships. What did we learn about love? What did we observe about marriage? What did sacrifice look like in our families? What were we taught about gender, vulnerability, and emotional expression? And perhaps most importantly, which of these lessons do we want to preserve, and which do we want to transform?

I think there is something profoundly powerful about couples recognizing they can honor where they come from while creating something uniquely their own. We can hold gratitude for the generations before us without being bound by every expectation they carried.

Ultimately, building a healthy relationship requires more than learning how to communicate or resolve conflict. It requires understanding the histories we bring into the relationship and making conscious decisions about the future we want to create together.

What distinguishes healthy conflict from patterns that gradually damage connection, and how is trust rebuilt through everyday actions after it has been damaged?

I think one of the biggest misconceptions about healthy relationships is that couples who are doing well don’t have conflict. We’ve somehow come to associate relationship success with the absence of conflict. But I would argue that the ability to navigate conflict, or repair, is far more important than whether conflict exists in the first place.

When two people come together, they bring different histories, attachment experiences, emotional needs, expectations, and ways of making sense of the world. We are not always going to agree, and we are not always going to understand one another immediately. That’s part of being in a relationship.

What matters is what happens when we disagree. Can we remain curious about one another, even when we’re frustrated? Can we listen without immediately becoming defensive? Can we recognize when our emotions are taking over and find a way to regulate ourselves rather than making our partner responsible for them?

This is where I think understanding the nervous system becomes so important. When we feel threatened, misunderstood, rejected, or emotionally unsafe, our brains and bodies respond. We may become defensive, withdraw, shut down, or react in ways that make connection more difficult. Sometimes what looks like an argument about something relatively small is actually two nervous systems responding to a perceived threat. Understanding this doesn’t excuse hurtful behavior, but it helps us recognize what’s happening beneath the surface.

Conflict becomes damaging when couples get caught in repetitive patterns that leave little room for understanding or repair. Criticism, defensiveness, emotional withdrawal, and dismissiveness can gradually erode the emotional safety that relationships depend on. Over time, partners may begin to protect themselves rather than reach for one another. And that’s when disconnection becomes a pattern rather than an isolated experience.

I often tell couples that the ability to repair is one of the most important relational skills they can develop. Repair means being willing to acknowledge when we’ve caused hurt, take responsibility for our part, and try to understand our partner’s experience, even when it differs from our own. It requires us to move beyond being right and become more interested in understanding one another. My motto is: connection first, correction second.

Ultimately, healthy relationships aren’t relationships where people never hurt one another or get things wrong. They are relationships where both people are willing to take responsibility, learn, repair, and keep working toward connection. It’s not about getting it right all the time. It’s about developing the capacity to find your way back to each other.

When readers finish The Heart Truth, what do you hope they understand differently about love and their own ability to build, repair, and sustain meaningful relationships?

I hope readers finish the book with a deeper understanding of two things: themselves and the nature of love. I want them to recognize that relationships are not simply something that happen to us, or something we either get lucky enough to find or don’t. They are something we participate in creating, every single day.

I think we’ve spent a lot of time talking about finding the right person, but perhaps not enough time talking about becoming the person who can build and sustain a healthy relationship. We invest so much energy in understanding compatibility, chemistry, and attraction, which are all important, but we don’t always give the same attention to the skills, capacities, and emotional development that allow relationships to thrive.

One of the things I hope readers take away is that our relational histories matter, but they don’t have to become our destiny. The ways we learned to attach, communicate, manage emotions, navigate conflict, and experience intimacy are shaped by our early relationships and lived experiences. But we are not fixed. We have the capacity to develop new ways of relating. We can become more emotionally aware, more attuned to others, more capable of regulating ourselves, and more intentional about how we show up in our relationships.

I also want readers to understand that relational health is not about perfection. It’s not about never becoming frustrated, never hurting someone, or always knowing what to say. It’s about developing the capacity to recognize our patterns, take responsibility for our impact, repair disconnection, and remain open to growth. It’s about learning how to stay connected to ourselves while making room for another person.

And I hope they begin to appreciate just how consequential relationships are to our overall well-being. Our relationships influence how we experience the world, how we understand ourselves, how we regulate our emotions, and how we navigate life’s challenges. We are profoundly shaped by our connections with others. In many ways, our relationships are not just part of our lives; they help shape the lives we live.

Ultimately, I want readers to leave with a sense of possibility. Whether they are in a thriving relationship, struggling in one, healing from one, or hoping to find love, there is always an opportunity to grow in our capacity for connection.

If The Heart Truth can help people become a little more curious about themselves, a little more compassionate toward one another, and a little more intentional about how they love, then I will feel that I’ve accomplished what I set out to do.

Because ultimately, I don’t want people simply to find love. I want them to learn how to build a love that allows both people to thrive.

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