Narcissists

Avoidant: How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner

Negative Reactions to “Avoidant” and “Bad Boyfriends”

Most of the reviews of Avoidant and Bad Boyfriends are positive, some embarrassingly so (“You saved my life / marriage /sanity!”) — I read the reviews and the few really negative ones I ignore because they are vastly outweighed by 5-star reviews. But there are some common themes, so I’ll address the three latest one-star reviews here.

1.0 out of 5 stars
Reader Use Discretion and vet the author!
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2020
Format: Kindle Edition

I am a Licensed Therapist specializing in Attachment Injuries and Trauma this book can be damaging for anyone dealing with an attachment injury. Use discernment when reading.

It’s threatening for a professional (licensed!) therapist to have possible patients reading the truth and starting to heal themselves. In her world, each patient is to be swaddled in bubble wrap and gently coaxed back into healthy attachment patterns through her no-doubt-caring therapy. I get a lot of fan mail from therapists and marriage counsellors who direct their patients to my books to get a head start on understanding their issues, but perhaps they recommend it for only their most robust clients. This theme (Appeal to Authority) appears frequently. I can imagine there might be people triggered by some parts of the books, but it’s not nearly as triggering as real life in a relationship with a dismissive partner. Therapy is great for those who can afford the time and expense. My books are cheap and can be read anywhere.

Other outraged reviews go after the chapter on abusive relationships (see an early version here), citing the discussion of combative relationships where (typically) the unexpressive male strikes out physically while the female is psychologically and verbally goading him. Today’s presumption that the male is entirely at fault fails to consider all of the dynamics of these troubled couples. Would you rather be shoved or slapped in anger, or continuously sniped at and undermined by your partner? The stereotype of the abusive husband and the suffering victim is common but not every angry male is entirely in the wrong, or every battered wife a completely innocent victim. Abuse comes in all types, sizes, and sexes. The belief that only women are abused is semi-sacred, and the effort to squelch any contrary voices (“cancel culture”) is similar to the search for heretics.

Reactions from dismissives in denial (or their partners who want a cotton-candy solution to their problems) are also common. Our next one-star review is an example.

Facebook "I'm in this photo and I don't like it" text box.

You’re coming too close to describing how I contribute to my relationship problems…

1.0 out of 5 stars
Skip this one, not worth the read or money. Very biased and inaccurate.
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2020
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

Not worth the read. I would give it no stars if that was an option. It condemns avoidant attachment style people. It’s another “opinion” based dating book, which I should have realized by the name. I thought it would give more constructive insight to the underlying wounds which produce the avoidant attachment types and understanding of triggers for this attachment style. It’s very narrow minded and shames anyone with this attachment style. The author never guided his subjects to working with their own insecurities and understanding that any attachment dynamic is a result of their own inner needs of attachment that of which stem from the developmental stages in early childhood. He essentially said avoidant style people are hopeless and abusive. Which is in fact not a fact or truth at all. My opinion is you can chalk this one up to another bad advice book that is not based in any actual research or fact and dangerously compartmentalizes humans into a this or that category while damning them to a negative life sentence behavior. I wish I could return this book.

On the contrary, being partly dismissive myself, I understand and sympathize with those people who can’t form good attachment bonds in later life because their earlier experiences forced them to develop a defense mechanism to save themselves. This is described in great detail in the books, but this reader demands a presentation so tactful that avoidants will feel righteous in continuing to devalue and dismiss significant others to stay safe. Avoidant is a splash of cold water and describes the harm this defense mechanism does along with some practical methods for coping with it and learning to feel more secure with intimacy.

Our next one-star review is of the “I have my guru and you’re not as good!” variety. There are people emotionally invested in attachment books they’ve already read who find my presentation jarring. A book that is quite good and presented largely to soothe the anxious-preoccupied, Attached, is often cited as better, by those same people enabled by such kid-gloves treatment to avoid looking at their own need to become more secure in themselves. As for Gottman’s books, I plug them and excerpt from them a lot because they are very good. Gottman built on academic attachment experts and my books were substantially complete before I had read any of his books. He’s got a good cottage industry going, and I view his work as especially accessible and valuable for couples with problems. Avoidant is directed to the seeker of self-knowledge and the partner who is feeling alone in his/her concerns about living with an avoidant.

1.0 out of 5 stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2019

This book labels people and limits the mind of being open to possibility. HEAVILY referenced Gotman and inappropriately and without sound evidence attempts to build on Gotmans work.

Just read Gotman’s work which is based on sound evidence.

Lordy, lordy. These people can’t even spell the names of their gurus correctly. Attachment issues are complex and every individual is a different mix of reflexes and habits, a fact I made clear at several points. Everyone has modes of reaction that mimic the more extreme kinds of insecurity, but only in specific situations or with specific people that trigger them. But I discuss them as types because it’s fair to say most people exhibit a preferred attachment style under most conditions, and it’s very useful to recognize this.

Kramer vs Kramer, children of divorce.

Reader Mail: Recovering from Attachment Issues (and Helping Children!)

Interesting message from a reader who thoroughly absorbed the lessons of Avoidant and Bad Boyfriends.

I haven’t been able to reach her to get permission to quote her, so I’ll paraphrase and remove any distinctive information.

Thank you for setting out this masterpiece of attachment theory and its connection to the success or failure of relationships.

I feel deeply grateful for your work and I am, at the same time struggling with conflicting feelings of encouragement and also sadness at the reality of what I’m facing, and what my children are facing.

I’ve been working my entire life since a teenager when I read the works of Montessori… and determined that I would make my life better for my children….

I decided in my mid twenties, when I first started counselling, that “the buck stops here” and I started all of the work I could do, including EMDR, CBT; whatever was available on myself, so that my childhood would not be repeated in my innocent children’s lives.

However as your book illustrates so beautifully, the automatic attachment style that I had kept me at the fringes of healthy social relationships, and I have yet to learn how not to be a target for predators.

Your story about the owls gave me a metaphor for much of what has happened in my life. The abundance of untrained owls in the forest looking down and seeing a runner stimulates their automatic hunting instincts. The relationship that begins when there’s a pattern of being attacked and the fears that become programmed create a social structure that seems to be difficult to change… I now run through the forest of social gatherings, trying not to flinch when people approach, and it seems I just make myself more of a target.

I am 62 years old, I’m a Montessori preschool teacher, and I’ve raised my own five children from two different fathers, usually alone as a single mother. I’m still in counseling and I have made progress with my emotional regulation and a meaningful life, but not yet with a significant relationship.

All through my life, the rare men who do initiate relationships with me have each been human beings who were on the dark side pathologically, very good at appearances just like my father who was a well respected professional… and a pedophile.

Beyond my own personal struggle to find healthy attachment relationships, I am deeply concerned about the state of the culture. I researched ACES in my graduate program. I see the trend growing as each year more and more children in my work as a Montessori preschool teacher come in with serious dysregulation, much of which comes from attachment difficulties. Like your young Owls, they are untrained, and they seem to not know their own kind, attacking their peers and teachers and even parents, and are very distrusting.

My long-term goal is to create an organization that works to strengthen understanding of attachment, and to help parents and communities to increase their skills of attachment.

Do you think there is hope? What do you see? Do you have any suggestions, either personally, or for my work with children?

You have already accomplished a great deal in bringing up your children with a special effort to protect them from the consequences of absent fathers. I grew up unfathered, my mother worked hard to support us and I lacked a lot of skills and emotional support good parenting can provide. While a conscientious single parent can create a nurturing environment for children, having two parents gives a child a better chance of having at least one parent who can be relied upon as a safe emotional base. Notably, the absence of a father’s guidance can leave children to the mercies of peer groups and lacking self-confidence to grow into adulthood with a sense of responsibility and the tools to nurture their new relationships and children.

This post featuring a “Fiddler on the Roof” song gets at the responsibility we have to heal our own attachment issues or at least shield our children from them. You have chosen to work on yourself and work to limit the damage your own issues caused, and deserve to have all your work recognized. It’s hard to go through life, much less raise children, with absent or estranged partners. Your life has been meaningful and your work with children no doubt improved the lives of hundreds. Give yourself permission to feel proud of the good you have done in your life.

As I am near your age and was also raised by a single working mother, I thank you as I would my own mother, for all the toil and burden you shouldered. You took a problem and made it a mission!

As for relationships, some of my reviewers were appalled when I wrote about how the odds are stacked against you if you find yourself alone in later life. If you are aware of your own tendency to be attracted to Dark Triad types, you can learn to notice the less obvious, more reliable men who would make good partners — there are always people coming out of good relationships through death or divorce of their spouse, and late-life second, third, or fourth marriages can be the best — because both partners are wiser and often have learned from previous relationships how to be better partners. Resisting your attachment habits of gravitating to the most dashing and apparently capable men will serve you well.

It’s most important of all that you find your partner fun to talk to and be with — after all, the rest of life will be spent less driven by hormones and career, and more by companionship and cozy familiarity. Happiness is someone who understands you and will listen, while being there when you need him.

Your idea of an organization to raise awareness of attachment issues and promote healthier attachment among children and families is a good one, and please let me know if I can help. I and my partner are planning to have two kids by IVF (this late in life that’s safest, with youthful eggs from a donor.) I was one of the very few children in my generation who did not have two active parents, but by now divorce and migration are so common that the rate of underparented children has skyrocketed. And as parents themselves grow less responsible and take less time with their offspring, through economic stress and selfishness, the harm done grows. It only takes a few troubled children in a class to divert so much attention that the rest are neglected. Some inner-city schools that bear the brunt of this phenomenon are mainly run as daycare for children, with little education going on. The societal damage is enormous, with the well-off segregating themselves and their children in (sometimes literally) walled enclaves where public and private schools are still good.

Best of luck on your already-well-lived life. Be happy — you have better chapters ahead.

Harvey Weinstein: Abusive Attachment?

I’ve had a few questions about Harvey Weinstein — like, what is his attachment type? Are abusive Lotharios dismissive-avoidant, or what?

If you haven’t read them, here are a few background stories:

“From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories” – The New Yorker, Ronan Farrow

“The Human Stain: Why the Harvey Weinstein Story Is Worse Than You Think” – The Weekly Standard, Lee Smith

Because of his loss of power recently, he is no longer able to shield himself or punish accusers as he did when he was at the center of motion pictures and casting decisions. From Virginia Postrel’s Bloomberg story “Why Weinstein Held On For So Long and Fell So Fast”:

Communism was considered invincible. Then the fall of the Berlin Wall started a domino effect that brought down six Soviet satellites in quick succession, and soon after the Soviet Union itself. Though communism’s failures were widely understood, no one thought it vulnerable to street demonstrations. In East Berlin in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968, it had demonstrated a willingness to crush dissent brutally. Moreover, for decades on end, the members of communist-ruled societies had displayed a remarkable tolerance for tyranny and inefficiency. They remained docile and even outwardly supportive of the status quo.

For all this submissiveness, it turned out that millions had been willing to revolt all along — if enough others would also revolt and they felt sufficiently sure of escaping punishment. But no one knew exactly what needed to happen to set off a successful uprising. In retrospect, all it took was a few thousand demonstrators calling for more freedom and a regime that signaled that it was afraid of overreacting. People standing on the sidelines suddenly found the courage to join in, and the East German revolt started feeding on itself.

Before long, fear changed sides. People who had never criticized communism publicly were now afraid to be caught defending it. Genuine supporters of communism (they, too, numbered in the millions) joined the opposition. They took to pretending to have been falsifying their political preferences out of fear, like their compatriots who had genuinely felt oppressed.

Harvey Weinstein’s fall from grace fits the same pattern. Few Hollywood executives have been as powerful as he. His movies have earned hundreds of Oscar nominations. He was both admired and feared as someone who could make or break a career. As a major fundraiser for Democratic Party candidates, he had national political clout. Though he was rumored to be predator of young women, Hollywood insiders and many observers knew that he dealt ruthlessly with anyone who crossed him. Reporters who investigated his behavior found almost no one willing to speak honestly or on the record. Many people who were hurt by Weinstein suffered, we now know, for their own silence. They wanted to go public with their stories all along.

For his behavior to draw public criticism, it was not enough for Weinstein’s behavior to be widely known. Potential complainers needed to know that other victims and witnesses would back them up. They also needed to believe that Weinstein’s supporters or the press would not smear their reputations. It needed to be sufficiently likely that the early movers would be greeted with sympathy rather than condemnation.

A number of accusers are probably exaggerating or confabulating to pile on since a story of your encounter with him is now a net positive for your notice and career. But as with Bill Cosby, the numbers suggest many of the reports are true.

His “production line” for having starlets delivered into private situations so he could pressure them into sex had to have been enabled by helpful staff, agents, and others who could have blown the whistle, including a complicit media who were easily stopped from reporting stories as they came up. Weinstein controlled ad revenues, contacts both professional and political, and knowledge of others useful for blackmail. His participation in the corrupt Clinton-Democratic machine shielded him, as it did Bill Clinton, from the worst attacks by feminists and reporters. It has come out now because their power has waned, and the Clinton Foundation influence-peddling machine is dying.

This kind of methodical abuse is outside the usual attachment type considerations. Weinstein was closer to a psychopath-narcissist, with a special extra dash of sadism — he got off on the power to force beautiful young women to submit to his will, to degrade them with his sperm and get away with shaming them without consequence to himself. His insecurity was expressed differently than on the usual anxious-to-dismissive axis.

But this story shouldn’t produce a witch hunt to criminalize or punish anyone who commits an error in judgment.

If rude and clumsy approaches were crimes, we’d all be in jail (well, almost all.) When I was young and reasonably good-looking, I got hit on a lot in venues that invited that (bars, parties, etc.) It wouldn’t occur to me to think of myself as grievously wronged with the first grope — the offender gets rebuked and avoided, with a wagging finger and “tsk!”

One good example of a misdemeanor offense: one of the incidents being talked about has Philip K Dick’s daughter in a cab with the Amazon Films producer after a party going to another party. He’s aggressive and pushy and profane. So what? She knew there was no danger to her participation, he had clearly overdone the drinking, she immediately reported it, it didn’t happen again. That’s a common event for anyone who goes to mixed drinking/business/social events. Guy was presumably warned.

The workplaces where pressure is constant and one rebuke doesn’t stop the approaches are where the legally actionable stuff happens. Weinstein had a whole system and cooperative employees/agents/staff, quite a different thing from an occasional drunken mistake.

Which is where the neo-Puritan, fragile flowers of femininity problem shows up. You can‘t claim equality and go out in the world and then turn around and claim privilege to never be offended or crudely approached. Men tend to excuse one or even several offenses from their fellow employees before going on the warpath. Woman are being trained to claim a right to success and a right to special treatment beyond what others enjoy. “I am good and strong on a team” does not quite jibe with “Every offense to my dignity should be punished by expulsion of the offender.”

More reading:

A Clinton Christmas Carol
“High Tech Under Diversity Pressure
Ban the Box, Credit Scores, Current Salaries: The Road to Hiring Blind
HireVue, Video Interviews, and AI Job Searches
“Death by HR” – Diversity Programs Don’t Work

Trump World: Looking Backward
Cover: A Canticle for Leibowitz

Cover: A Canticle for Leibowitz

The children ask how we got here, and I try to explain, though so much has changed that my stories only lead to more questions — “What’s a news network?”, “How did people live without augments?”

We had a Republic, once, and it was wildly successful. That attracted more people from all over the world seeking freedom and work. It was freedom that let new industries grow unchecked by jealous rivals, but over time citizens sought shelter from the rigors of a free market and elected more regulation-prone politicians who tried to soften all the hard edges. Finally we reached a time so advanced that children were supposed to grow up without any challenges, to be deemed special and successful without any accomplishments, and the resulting adults became childlike in wanting to silence any voices that disagreed with them.

The world as a whole had benefitted from the opening of closed Communist countries and free trade, with the costs of transport and communication declining rapidly. The boom in emerging economies lifted billions of people out of grinding poverty, the greatest improvement in world living standards the world had ever seen, and increasing wealth and freedom defused the Malthusian fears of overpopulation and resource depletion of the previous decades. But the competition destroyed the protected world of US unskilled workers, who had gotten used to living well after WWII destroyed most of the manufacturing plants of Europe and Asia.

“The Sound of Silence” was a famous Simon and Garfunkel song, written in the 1960s to protest the conformity of an earlier era — the 1950s — when broad consensus and the limited number of mass media options stifled outlier opinions. Capitalism broke that mold, when “outrageous” ideas and lifestyles could be marketed and make money. Selling rebellion was big business.

The Internet seemed to end the constraints on opinion, but a new sound of silence appeared when its two-way nature allowed crowds to join together to silence expression of ideas they found threatening. People lost their jobs because of one errant tweet, and politicians found it useful to stoke the flames of envy and resentment to gain votes. A new victim cult appeared, seeing racism and sexism in every element of US life, and command of the cult’s lexicon enabled entry to academic and government positions.

The left-behind grew angry, and simmered in disability payments and painkilling drugs while they saw their children discriminated against by the gateway institutions built by their forebears. They had supported the growth of the Federal government through costly wars and the building of a social safety net, only to be left out and denigrated by their ruling class. Federal agencies were taken over by progressives and affirmative-action hires, and wasted time and resources shuffling reports and holding grand meetings to write about working toward solving problems that barely existed while neglecting their core functions. The levels of incompetence tolerated grew and grew, until civil service employees could hold their jobs after being absent for years or being discovered spending most of their time viewing Internet porn. Major new government programs and projects failed and billions of dollars were wasted without consequence, those responsible for the failures being promoted to further damage the private economy by ruling from Washington.

The new media were staffed by college graduates who had been subjected to progressive indoctrination, and rarely questioned what government sources told them. And how could they, since time had been sped up and in the Internet age, stopping to investigate original sources that might disagree would only bury their story in tomorrow’s old news?

Trump appeared after two decades of Washington-centered rule by two factions of the same technocratic party. He gained the support of the dispossessed by voicing their resentments, long suppressed by the bien pensant. His supporters were so tired of being told their feelings were incorrect and didn’t matter that they failed to notice that Trump had no fixed beliefs of his own, other than winning.

And win he did, up against Hillary Clinton, who everyone knew was a habitual liar and corrupt influence-peddler. After she was nearly indicted for her negligent handling of secret information, Trump the bully won the election handily despite the rioting in major cities and the crashing stock market.

Thoughtful observers saw this as a test of the Founders’ three-branch design. In theory, the checks and balances and separation of powers between the three branches of government would limit the damage he might do. In practice, previous administrations had accreted so much power in the office of President that Trump was able to run roughshod over good government concerns.

Trump terrorized the agencies and the civil service bureaucracy. His bully-boys formed a shadow organization which intimidated any civil servant who dared stand against him — his friends in the Mafia proved useful in extralegal persuasion. If regulations got in Trump’s way, they were rewritten. Favored people and corporations found their way smoothed, while others who failed to support him were blocked and gutted. In that, he was only a few degrees worse than his predecessor, but the collapsing private economy provided no alternative routes for survival. Almost everyone knuckled under to wait for better days.

The doctors grumbled when they were drafted to serve in the new Trump Medical Corps, but after their licenses were pulled when they refused, they fell into line. Trump took over hospital chains by eminent domain and staffed them with uniformed Corps personnel; he had personally overseen the design of the new uniforms, gold braid trim and all. Federal medical costs were cut by 50% as salaries fell and procedures deemed too costly were outlawed. The upper crustaceans, of course, joined new luxury practices and went to private hospitals, as they always had. Medical school enrollments dropped and quality of the applicants fell, as it became clear doctoring would no longer be a high-status occupation. Research on new drugs evaporated when the primary source of drug profits, the US, joined the rest of the world in controlling their prices.

Apple’s new iPhone assembly factory opened in south Texas, and their mostly-immigrant assemblers tried to duplicate the quality of the phones built by contractor facilities in China that had taken decades to develop. The US-assembled phones cost $200 more and failed more often, but Apple made the transition successfully since all of their competitors were similarly hobbled. And by opening their own manufacturing plant, they instantly reached the better employee diversity numbers they had been pretending to strive for for years.

The Chinese and Russians were relieved when Trump was elected — someone they could deal with without any unpredictable concerns with human rights to interfere. Deals were struck and trade managed. For awhile this seemed to work, though the people of Hong Kong and Ukraine felt abandoned as they lost their remaining independence. The EU collapsed in disorder as internal divisions and new migrations overwhelmed their governments.

And so it was that the opportunity society became the are-you-with-Trump society. Bribery came back with a vengeance. Inequality decreased, but only because more people were poor. The world economy had stalled, and grew worse as Trump’s new tariffs and trade barriers decreased world trade. The Chinese people grew restless when their standard of living began to drop, and the Chinese leadership started warring on neighbors to distract their people.

And that’s what I tell the kids. We came here to be safe, to guard our traditions, and to last through these times. The radiation is better now, and our growing huts get more sunlight than in those lean years right after. We have a good stock of electronics, drugs, and solar panels, and our store of knowledge and technology is intact. It’s safe enough to go outside for days at a time, and soon we will be able to travel to meet with others who survive.

We’ve had all the time in the world to teach our children where we went wrong. I’m hopeful that this time they’ll get it right.

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples OrganizationsDeath by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations,  available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

 

More reading on other topics:

Jane Jacobs’ Monstrous Hybrids: Guardians vs Commerce
The Great Progressive Stagnation vs. Dynamism
Death by HR: How Affirmative Action is Crippling America
Death by HR: The End of Merit in Civil Service
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Public Employee Unions
Death by HR: History and Practice of Affirmative Action and the EEOC
Civil Service: Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive Dream
Bootleggers and Baptists
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Justice Dept. Extortion
Corrupt Feedback Loops, Goldman Sachs: More Justice Dept. Extortion
Death by HR: The Birth and Evolution of the HR Department
Death by HR: The Simple Model of Project Labor
Levellers and Redistributionists: The Feudal Underpinnings of Socialism
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
Trump World: Looking Backward
Minimum Wage: The Parable of the Ladder
Selective Outrage
Culture Wars: Co-Existence Through Limited Government
Social Justice Warriors, Jihadists, and Neo-Nazis: Constructed Identities
Tuitions Inflated, Product Degraded, Student Debts Unsustainable
The Morality of Glamour

On Affirmative Action and Social Policy:

Affirmative Action: Chinese, Indian-Origin Citizens in Malaysia Oppressed
Affirmative Action: Caste Reservation in India
Diversity Hires: Pressure on High Tech<a
Title IX Totalitarianism is Gender-Neutral
Public Schools in Poor Districts: For Control Not Education
Real-Life “Hunger Games”: Soft Oppression Destroys the Poor
The Social Decay of Black Neighborhoods (And Yours!)
Child Welfare Ideas: Every Child Gets a Government Guardian!
“Income Inequality” Propaganda is Just Disguised Materialism

The greatest hits from SubstrateWars.com (Science Fiction topics):

Fear is the Mindkiller
Mirror Neurons and Irene Gallo
YA Dystopias vs Heinlein et al: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again
Selective Outrage
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
“Tomorrowland”: Tragic Misfire
The Death of “Wired”: Hugo Awards Edition
Hugos, Sad Puppies 3, and Direct Knowledge
Selective Outrage and Angry Tribes
Men of Honor vs Victim Culture
SFF, Hugos, Curating the Best
“Why Aren’t There More Women Futurists?”
Science Fiction Fandom and SJW warfare

More reading on the military:

US Military: From No Standing Armies to Permanent Global Power
US Military: The Desegration Experience
The VA Scandals: Death by Bureaucracy