For those of you who did not know, I went through a pretty bad breakup a few months ago (as evidenced by my breakup2015 hashtag and the breakup empoweFor those of you who did not know, I went through a pretty bad breakup a few months ago (as evidenced by my breakup2015 hashtag and the breakup empowerment CD sitting in my car right now). Things were pretty fucking miserable. It was the first time I had really allowed myself to trust in years, and as predicted, it blew up in my face.
This book has been sitting in my Audible library for years after getting it free one Valentine’s Day from the site. In an unbelievable serendipitous moment amid the emotional turmoil of my breakup, I happened to rediscover Attached and decided to listen. I was astounded. It literally felt like Levine and Heller stalked my ex and I and wrote a book about all of our dysfunctions, explaining how and why things went wrong between us. I felt validated, I felt understood, and I felt better.
Doctor Levine and other attachment theorists divide people into 3 categories when it comes to relationships: anxious, avoidant, and secure. If you’re anxious, you spend more time thinking about your relationship and value love more than others. If you’re avoidant, you like to use what my ex refers to as his “robot feelings” - keeping yourself removed from a person because you don’t like being close to someone or opening up at all. If you’re secure, like half the population allegedly is, you may have faults but are wisely considered stable, available, and the most dependable partner.
Apparently, anxious and avoidant personalities have a lot to do with human evolution. Back in the day, when there were so many threats to our safety as less evolved humans navigating a dangerous terrain, avoidants developed to keep people at bay - why get close to people when they could die at any moment and leave you all alone? Anxious personalities, however, also adapted from this treacherous situation but did so in the opposite direction, thinking that if one could die at any moment, the best thing to do would be to partner up with someone so you could have each other’s backs and fight for survival together. Obviously, today, these personalities manifest themselves in very incompatible ways: one wants to be closer while the other keeps pushing them away.
I could talk for an eternity about how insightful and relevant this book is, but I’ll wind things down. In short, Attached teaches singletons how to make better dating choices. It validates their feelings, informs them on who they would be happiest with, encourages open communication, tells them how to get over someone, etc, etc, etc. It also helps those already in anxious-avoidant relationships to find a common ground and make things work smoothly against the odds. To anyone struggling through a relationship with no idea why it isn’t working, or for anyone who is struggling to find someone out there, this book is worth a read....more
This is by far the best book I’ve read so far this year.
As a woman, I do sometimes feel like the fight for equality has been achieved. Feminism has dThis is by far the best book I’ve read so far this year.
As a woman, I do sometimes feel like the fight for equality has been achieved. Feminism has done its job - we have the right to vote, we now outnumber men when it comes to college attendance, and we have role models like Beyonce and Lady Gaga telling us that we can do anything.
But as Lean In tells us, the fight is far from over. Women are still underpaid and underrepresented in high-level positions and government, working mothers are still stereotyped as being frazzled, Type-A bitches, and women are still criticized for being “unlikeable" in the workplace simply because of their gender.
This book was a wake-up call to me, as a young woman finding my way in the business world. So many facts and figures really resonated with me, and I couldn’t help but share a few with my followers with hopes you’d be as inspired as I was: Unlike men, woman as a whole are unlikely to speak up and brag about their accomplishments, choosing instead to deflect praise and belittle their own contributions, sabotaging their own careers. When identical resumes are given to test subjects, one with a woman’s name at the top and one with a man’s, studies show that men are more likely to be chosen, with women coming across as someone that would be difficult to work with - just because they are women. Most women think about the problems having children will create for their career years before actually having them - and quite unnecessarily. When a big promotion comes up, many women say to themselves, “Will I be able to handle this when I have a baby?" and decline these promotions years before they even decide to start trying. Sheryl is an advocate for the power of the working mother and a true testament of how the ideal work-life balance can be. When childcare costs equal the amount a woman is bringing home with her weekly paycheck, most women decide to leave their career and stay home, thinking it’s not worth the time and effort of dragging themselves into work each day when the money is just going out the door to a babysitter. What many women fail to realize is that - just like a college degree, certification courses, etc - this is an investment in their future career. Instead of comparing childcare costs with their current salaries, women should compare it to their future salaries to get an accurate picture of how much childcare really costs in the grand scheme of things. Sheryl Sandberg shares advice from her careers at Google, Starbucks, and Facebook, describes the trade-offs many women make between motherhood and a career, and revitalizes the feminist movement for a new generation. She is intelligent, relatable, and such an inspiration.
Far from sounding preach-y and demanding that all women rise to the top of the food chain in their industries, Sandberg tells women its okay to be stay-at-home moms. It’s okay to be a teacher, it’s okay to be a volunteer - as long as it’s a choice you make and not one you’re forced to make by society or a husband who doesn’t want to split childcare duties. Working women shouldn’t criticize full-time mothers and vice versa. As long as we’re all given an equal opportunity to choose what we want to do with our lives, feminism is working.
I have already recommended this book to all of my friends, and I’d recommend it for any woman in the working world or even at home. Though the advice is more suited for women seeking careers outside the home, its support of homemakers is encouraging, as well. ...more
When I graduated from college a year and a half ago, I knew I was entering a job force that was exhausted and hoping to break into a field that was doWhen I graduated from college a year and a half ago, I knew I was entering a job force that was exhausted and hoping to break into a field that was downsizing dramatically. I found a job in a completely unrelated field, and while I still try (in vain) to get my dream job, in short, I have given up in a lot of ways. My career. My friends. My family. My love life. My future. I feel like a failure in a lot of ways. I guess you can call it a quarter-life crisis, but whatever it is, it’s pretty freaking depressing.
The Defining Decade taught me that my feelings are not unusual. I took a really long time to read this book and a long time to post about it; not because it was long or difficult to read, but because there was a lot of information to absorb and transmit.
Discussing twenty-something careers, families, romances, and mental development, The Defining Decade covers some of the common pitfalls young people encounter when they’re on their own. Acknowledging these feelings and giving the Y2K generation advice on how to rise above these speedbumps, Jay’s book is a great read for anyone in their 20’s. It’s definitely a book to hold onto and consult.
I can list a lot of interesting tidbits I learned from her book, but instead I’m going to ask that you read it. It’s a fantastically interesting and relevant book to a lot of 20-somethings out there. ...more
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