women in pop culture in the 90s and early 00s: ugh why won't men ever commit
me, an innocent who knew nothing: i literally would have proposed to my first girlfriend if i'd thought there was a chance she'd say yes 🥺
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there's this weird meta structure where securely attached people just have good relationships, avoidant people refuse to prioritize intimacy, and disorganized people are both rare and have a lot of problems
so most writing about relationships is done by anxious attachers
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and since men for various reasons write less about relationships than women, most writing about relationships is done specifically by anxiously attached women
and anxiously attached (straight) women attract and are attracted to avoidantly attached (straight) men
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when i was a tiny teenage baby the cultural messages i absorbed about What Was Wrong With Men were complaints about avoidant men: afraid of commitment, pump-and-dumpers, never listen
so i thought all i had to do was not do that stuff and i'd be set
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did not work like that. as an anxious attaching guy the girls i attracted and was attracted to were *avoidant*; opposite dynamics
my first gf broke up with me and pretended it was b/c she wasn't attracted to me; months later she admitted it was b/c she felt tied down
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this was shocking to me at the time. i literally had not considered the possibility that she could be the one who was afraid of commitment. it was in none of my cultural messaging. the love songs didn't talk about it y'know 🤔
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there are, to a first approximation, roughly three noninteracting reality tunnels when it comes to (straight) relationships:
1. securely attached couples
2. anxious women and avoidant men
3. avoidant women and anxious men
and most relationship stuff is only about #2
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anxious attaching men in particular i think are reluctant to talk about their experiences because their problems seem embarrassing and shameful compared to what's in the discourse; because the discourse mostly represents anxious women they seem like "feminine" problems
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as an anxiously attached guy who talks an unusual amount about his relationship stuff i get an unusual amount of guys in my DMs and elsewhere telling me variants of "bro thank you for writing about this oh my god" which is how i know i'm not the only one
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This was the book that smacked me right upside the head with "here’s why your relationships keep exploding" and it has helped a lot. I mean tons of things to work through still but at least I have words for it.
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Replying to
i was introduced to attachment theory through sue johnson's "hold me tight" and it blew my mind at the time but i think if i had to recommend a book rn it might be richard schwartz's "you are the one you've been waiting for":
amazon.com/Youve-Waiting-
it's not directly about attachment theory (i don't think, i haven't finished) but v relevant, here are some excerpts and a link to a free sample:
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Replying to @SpaceXponential @maybegray and @TylerAlterman
i was just reading the beginning of richard schwartz's "you are the one you've been waiting for" and he says some very relevant stuff, better than i could say it:
ifsca.ca/wp-content/upl
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This is an entire mood. Resonates with another book, Running On Empty: Overcoming your emotional childhood neglect where it's the things you didn't get that created that disconnect with ones emotions and create a sense of "something is wrong" w/o knowing what
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