Summary
Stefanie Stahl: The Fear of Attachment
There are many self-help books for couples, mostly offering advice on how to deal with relationship problems: how to talk differently and better, how to regain respect for your partner, how to rekindle passion. All these books are based on the assumption that people have found each other who are able and willing to live as a couple, but at some point the relationship "faltered". Fear of attachment is not another guide to relationship problems; this book sheds light on the deep and largely unconscious fears that make healthy, trusting relationships doomed from the start for some people. Which doesn't mean that these people don't get into relationships - mostly they do. But then they make sure, partly knowingly and partly unknowingly, that their relationship fails.
Some always seem to fall in love with the wrong person. For others, the relationship falls apart as soon as intimacy is established. And some live with a partner, but still feel lonely and isolated. What's wrong? Through vivid case histories, renowned German psychotherapist Stefanie Stahl shows the many ways in which the fear of attachment manifests itself. She details types of people such as "hunters," "princesses," and "masons," whose behavior, often unwittingly, sabotages their chances of happiness.
Fear of attachment illuminates the mechanisms that are always activated in people who crave closeness but cannot live with the closeness that exists in a relationship. The book also offers practical advice for overcoming or at least better controlling the fear of attachment, both for sufferers and their partners. After all, it is also a compass that will help you recognize people who avoid attachment in time, preferably before you fall hopelessly in love with them and thus almost inevitably rush into your own unhappiness.
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