WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FOLLOW COMMON
DATING ADVICE?
Say you decide to follow the advice of many popular relationship books.
They offer guidelines to help you “land” a partner, such as: Don’t make
yourself too available, say you’re busy even when you’re not, don’t call him
—wait for him to call you, don’t appear to care too much, act mysterious.
Presumably, you preserve your dignity and independence in this way and
gain your partner’s respect. But in fact, what you are doing is behaving in a
way that is not true to your genuine needs and feelings. You wave these
aside to appear strong and self-sufficient. And indeed, these books and the
advice they give are right; these behaviors may indeed make you seem
more attractive. What they don’t mention, because they are unaware of
attachment science, is that they will make you seem more attractive to a
very particular kind of partner—an avoidant one. Why? Because, in
essence, what they are advocating is that you ignore your needs and let the
other person determine the amount of closeness/distance in the relationship.
The avoidant person can have his/her cake and eat it too, so to speak—s/he