unhappy marriage

55th Amazon Review of Avoidant – “The Most Helpful Book I Have Read in My Entire Life.”

Avoidant: How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner has sold tens of thousands of copies since it was published two years ago. I am gratified by the number of people who have written me to tell me it helped them, and the thriving community at the Jeb Kinnison Attachment Type Forum which discusses attachment issues and helps people who have been injured.

Today’s really good Amazon review:

on September 25, 2016

 

This book literally changed my life. I am a woman and always had an attachment style that is sometimes fearful avoidant sometimes dismissive avoidant. Everything the author describes about avoidant people matches perfectly what I am, what I did or do and how I feel. I stumbled across other avoidants in my life and like the author says the relationships between me and other avoidants were always short lived because the “why bother” factor was just too much.

This book is priceless both for avoidants like me and for non avoidants. I think almost everyone in their life will happen to date some avoidants, especially if you are still single above 30. This book gives you the tools you need to exactly understand where you stand. It saves you so much pain. For me, it has helped understand why I always feel caged when in a relationship, why I never seem to find the right person despite being very attractive and extremely fit. Also it allowed me to understand how poor my communication is and how out of touch with my emotions I am.

Many of the men I dated told me I behave like a man. I always act like I don’t give a damn about relationships (and in most cases I don’t give a damn for real). I could never figure out why they would say so and the book clarified that avoidants are more often men than women so now I also understand why my dates had that feeling that I behaved like a man.

I would seriously give this book 100 stars. So far I can honestly say it has been the most helpful book I have read in my entire life. I read many books about relationships but this went right to the core, the root reason, why my relationships were always disfunctional. As an avoidant, they were bound to be disfunctional because I made them so. Now with this awareness I think I can learn to be better and hopefully start a secure and mature relationship

Another Review: “Avoidant: How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner”

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

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

Avoidant: How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner got its second Amazon review a few hours after the first! Maybe the first reviewer suggested it for a friend? In any case, I love getting good reviews like this:

5.0 out of 5 stars If only this book came out sooner…
November 12, 2014
Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

This book saved my life. I’ve read nearly all the books out there on attachment theory — this one by far is one of the best. Similar to the previous review, I struggled for nearly a year in trying to understand why my relationship fell apart out of nowhere. It was the most painful and traumatic experience I ever had.

I’m grateful for Jeb Kinnison for writing this book and explaining in very clear, yet detailed terms, why avoidants act the way they do. The man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with turned out to be a fearful avoidant. Up until reading this book I thought our breakup was entirely my fault. This book turned out to be the only thing that gave me answers and ultimately true comfort. I really enjoyed how the author went into describing the many scenarios and/or conversations that are common with dating an avoidant — many of which I experienced first hand. This book is legit — it’s the real deal. Save yourself from heartache and pain. Read it again and again. You’ll be happy you did when you finally end up in the healthy and everlasting relationship you deserve.

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

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

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

Avoidant: How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner is selling well, about 200 copies in the month it’s been for sale, but I made no special effort to get people to review it–and not one of those 200 buyers did! Until today.

Apparently Amazon customers are no longer taking the time to review books–less than 1% do. This is bad, because Amazon reviews are one of the few indicators of quality left, and if there aren’t many, the ratings can easily be skewed by trolls who sadistically leave one-star reviews and trash your work.

Only a few newspapers and magazines still do book reviews, and those are almost entirely of the legacy-publisher-with-connections and PR variety. If a book becomes news itself after selling well, as 50 Shades of Grey and Wool did, then it will get coverage, otherwise not.

I was very pleased with this reader’s review:

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars easy to understand November 12, 2014
By Twixt
Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

I found this book to be tremendously helpful. It provided a level of insight into the dynamics of my relationship after nearly a year of struggling to find answers from my partner about behavior I found unsettling. At some point in my struggle I arrived at the word ‘dismissive’ in my google searches, and this book came onto my desk.

The subject matter is in depth, easy to understand, and provides an objective matter-of-fact perspective on what is certainly one of the foundations interpersonal dynamics. I strongly suggest this book for anyone that is struggling to find understanding and clarity in an otherwise confusing and/or frustrating relationship … especially one that seems to be conflicting, hypocritical and misleading. It’ll help you understand what is going on, how to manage through it or how to move on.

Subconscious Positivity Predicts Marriage Success…

Happy Couple - shutterstock

Happy Couple – shutterstock

..and conversely, negativity predicts turmoil and failure. In attachment type terms, both avoidant types (Dismissive-Avoidant and Fearful-Avoidant) have a negative view of attached others in general, while Secure and Anxious-Preoccupied types are positive about others.

The Wall Street Journal reports on an experiment which measures newlywed’s subconscious attitudes about their partners and found those with negative subconscious attitudes experienced a faster decline in marital satisfaction over time:

First off, they found that ratings of marital satisfaction declined over time, something reported previously. They also learned that the [written test] answers from newlyweds predicted nothing about marital satisfaction four years later.

But the scientists also measured something else in those newlyweds, using an “associative priming task.”

This involves briefly flashing a series of words like “wonderful” or “odious” on a screen; subjects have to quickly press one of two buttons, depending on whether the word has positive or negative connotations.

Now comes the subconscious manipulation.

Just before each word, the researchers flashed up a picture of a random face for an instant—300 milliseconds—too fast for people to be consciously certain about what they saw but enough time for our subconscious, emotional brain circuitry to be certain. If the face evokes positive feelings, the brain immediately takes on something akin to a positive mind-set; if the word flashed up an instant later is a positive one, the brain quickly detects it as such. But if the word is negative, there is an instant of subconscious dissonance—”I was feeling great, but now I have to think about that word that means ‘inconsiderate jerk who doesn’t replace the toilet paper.’ ” And it takes a few milliseconds longer to hit the “negative” key. Conversely, display faces with negative connotations, and there is that dissonance-induced minuscule delay in identifying positive terms.

So in the study, the rapid-fire sequence of faces/words included a picture of one’s new spouse, revealing automatic feelings about the person’s beloved. That led to the key finding: The more subconscious negativity in a newlywed, the larger the decline in marital satisfaction four years later.

Did subjects understand what the priming task was about? No, and people’s automatic responses were unrelated to their answers on the questionnaire. Was that discrepancy due to an unwillingness to answer honestly, or were people unaware of their automatic attitudes? It is impossible to tell. Did people with the most positive automatic feelings about their spouses subsequently develop fewer problems in their marriages, or were they less sensitive to the usual number of problems? Subtle data analysis suggested the latter.

What does this study tell us, beyond suggesting that lovebirds should probably take this nifty computerized test before marrying? It reminds us, like much we learn about the brain and behavior, that we are subject to endless, internal biological forces of which we are unaware.

The original Science writeup is here.


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