Emotionally focused couple therapy can help love last

No question.

// source: former serial co-founder

The description of the “types” (avoidant, secure, anxious) was very eye-opening, especially while scoring your own “traits” / tendencies / “patterns” for each type. You sorta know what it means when you answer “very likely” to many questions that point to the same type.

As far as I understand, the book is based on this same Attachment theory — it’s a lighter read / introduction to it, but still very good to get the point across. (I didn’t find it as useful to help deal with / compensate for the non-secure type’s thought patterns — not as much as David Burns’ wonderful Feeling Good, for instance)

[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Attached-Science-Attachment-Find-Keep/...

My go-to reference is

Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair by Daniel P. Brown PhD & David S. Elliott PhD. [0]

It's a dry academic text intended for therpists that details the development of therapeutic approaches based on attachment theory, as well as specific treatment protocols for various insecure attachment styles.

Change is possible, as is working with people who have attachment difficulties.

George Haas, a meditation teacher in LA, has developed a way of using Vipassana meditation as a method of self-therapy.[1]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Attachment-Disturbances-Adults-Treatm...

[1] https://www.mettagroup.org/classes#intensives

It's like they think that just because evolution itself is basically a status quo in the scientific community, then any other random preposterous bs argument that you make about it, or just use the evolutionary terms in, would somehow automatically by association have as much predictive power/internal coherence/pure basic connection to reality as the evolution itself. It's a disgrace this is so prevalent nowadays... It is a clear sign that whoever writes the content is no real scientist.

I don't necessarily accept this as science, but as way of analogize complex human behavior without being overwhelmed by variables and contradictions.

A framework will tend to pick what's important and be a way of handling signal:noise.

For example, you could take a more grim framework, like terror management theory will say we're all in fear of death and so society make rules, individuals focus on self-esteem, all to shake off the anxiety mortality gives us. It's hard to disprove that, but that's the point: it posits a core human motivation while willfully ignoring other things to get from Point A -> Point B (example: the motivation of Alexander the Great's military campaigns were to spread his cultural standards/law and ensure forces threatening those rules at home were contained / eliminated. Him naming cities after himself explains the self-esteem motive :P. Napoleon, Emperor Qin, all conquered and placed legal/regulatory systems in their wake)

Back to frameworks in general: It's built off observational anecdotes and if put to the rigors of say - a physics experiment - it'd be hard to give that kind control / certainty. We can't read minds, and various types of reporting methods may not pan out. Our whole lives we're forming object relations that have meanings/associations/intricacies on an individual basis. So to handle things, we pick a common denominator and use that to inspect the situation.

We have to look back into relationships and see conditions / cause / effect, rather than being able to simulate in a controlled setting.

> What about forager societies with loose sexual norms and cultures that did not emphasize monogamy or long-term partner bonding?

Attachment theory tries to be a theory of everything. It'd then be chalked up to difference in culture/customs, rather than the theory not fitting. If a monogamous relationship isn't there, some other bond likely will. Doesn't have to be romantic.

The relations between the hunting group, the teamwork and dynamics of the tribe. It could be argued the cooperation based on trust is what kept it together, so they could survive. It involved letting their guard down at times to trust someone else.

It could also explain betrayals, outcasts and desertion, longstanding protracted hostilities and alliances.

The author has perhaps unfortunately led you to fill in the blanks about what “this kind of connection” means, but the attachment science part has nothing to do with monogamy or sexual norms.

The statistics, obviously, bear out that a large number of, even happy, people cannot hack it under the constraints of monogamy. Either monogamy needs to be better defined or we need to drop it as a societal pressure/constraint on relationships. Probably a little bit of both is needed.

My own experience after 15 years of marriage is that attraction comes and goes for both me and my wife. But by not doing anything rash when that happens we have both discovered that it also comes back. Sure the first few times it happened it was quite scary, but then we've found a rhythm with the ebbs and floods.

Attachment Theory attempts to explain why certain relationships are better than others which is dependent on how secure or insecure each partner is with regard to attachment. For example, if both parties are classified as having “secure attachment”, they may feel distress when their partner leaves them for say a long work trip but they’re able to compose themselves and control those worries. That sort of relationship would be said to have a higher chance of survival than two partners who are both “anxious-ambivalent attached” because in this case, the parties would instead have strong fear or worry of rejection by their partner, higher dependency on each other, and less likely to be comfortable being alone. None of those elements rest solely on the basis of attraction. This type of behavior stems from being a witness to conflicting figures in their life (e.g. divorced parents, unsafe family habitat, etc.)