How can it be that I’ve never done a post about attachment styles? I talk about it all the time with students – it’s useful stuff. It’s the kind of thing that makes people go, “Why did no one tell me that 10 years ago?” Some background: the attachment system, as I said previously, is [...]
Dear Homo sapiens, Douglas Adams, my authorial hero, said, “The thing about evolution is, if it hasn’t turned your brain inside out, you haven’t properly understood it.” Right on. I find it thrilling – I literally feel a physical thrill – when I consider what we are as a species, particularly what we are sexually. [...]
By request: Is there a honeymoon phase? Does it end? Yes. And yes. The honeymoon phase is made of attachment, the wildly powerful biological experience we tend to call “falling in love.” (I’m such a romantic, eh?) It can last, oh, maybe about 4 years, give or take. It has to end. That passionate phase [...]
Oh Guardian Science, you make me feel like a critical mother. I’m licking my thumb to smear dirt off your cheek, I’m poking you between the shoulder blades to make you stand up straight, I’m suggesting that maybe your recital would have gone better if you had just practiced more like I told you. I’m [...]
I just came across this and I had to share it. So, go download this brilliant Radiolab episode and fastforward to minute 52. There you’ll find the story of a wildlife photographer who fell in love with a leopard seal. You’ll notice him describing the symptoms of attachment – he can’t wait to see her [...]
This came up on three separate occasions today, so it seems the fates want me to post about it: To end a relationship, you really must have no contact. Because remember attachment? Breaking up is about breaking the attachment, which… well it hurts. That’s just true and there’s not a lot to do about it. [...]
I mentioned in a previous post that I’d tell you later about attachment. I had a conversation with a student today that made “later” now. So. Human infants are utterly dependent on their adult caregivers. They can’t run away from predators or wash themselves to prevent infection or even thermoregulate particularly well – leave a [...]
College students, man. They ask the best and the hardest questions. This is what they asked me yesterday: “When you’re really interested in someone and then you get into a relationship with them and all your interest just evaporates… why does that happen?” Dude, why not just ask me why we have to die, or [...]