Can anyone suggest any blogs giving advice for serious romantic relationships? I think a lot of my problems come from a poor theory of mind for my partner, so stuff like 5 love languages and stuff on attachment styles has been useful.
I have two suggestions, which are not so much about romantic relationships as they are about communicating clearly; given your example and the comments below, though, I think they’re the kind of thing you’re looking for.
The Usual Error is a free ebook (or nonfree dead-tree book) about common communication errors and how to avoid them. (The “usual error” of the title is assuming by default that other people are wired like you—basically the same as the typical psyche fallacy. It has a blog as well, although it doesn’t seem to be updated much; my recommendation is for the book.
If you’re a fan of the direct practical style of something like LW, steel yourself for a bit of touchy-feeliness in UE, but I’ve found the actual advice very useful. In particular, the page about the biochemistry of anger has been really helpful for me in recognizing when and why my emotional response is out of whack with the reality of the situation, and not just that I should back off and cool down, but why it helps to do so. I can give you an example of how this has been useful for me if you like, but I expect you can imagine.
A related book I’m a big fan of is Nonviolent Communication (no link because its website isn’t of any particular use; you can find it at your favorite book purveyor or library). Again, the style is a bit cloying, but the advice is sound. What this book does is lay out an algorithm for talking about how you feel and what you need in a situation of conflict with another person (where “conflict” ranges from “you hurt my feelings” to gang war).
I think it’s noteworthy that following the NVC algorithm is difficult. It requires finding specific words to describe emotions, phrasing them in a very particular way, connecting them to a real need, and making a specific, positive, productive request for something to change. For people who are accustomed to expressing an idea by using the first words which occur to them to do so (almost everyone), this requires flexing mental muscles which don’t see much use. I think of myself as a good communicator, and it’s still hard for me to follow NVC when I’m upset. But the difficulty is part of the point—by forcing you to stop and rethink how you talk about the conflict, it forces you see it in a way that’s less hindered by emotional reflex and more productive towards understanding what’s going on and finding a solution.
Neither of these suggestions requires that your partner also read them, but it would probably help. (It just keeps you from having to explain a method you’re using.)
If you find a good resource for this which is a blog, I’d be interested in it as well. Maybe obviously, this topic is something I think a lot about.
You’re welcome! Glad you like it. I’m a fan of that particular page as well—it’s probably the technique I refer to/think about explicitly from that book second most, after the usual error itself. It’s valuable to be able to separate the utility of hearing something to gain knowledge and that of hearing something you already know to gain reassurance—it just bypasses a whole bunch of defensiveness, misunderstanding, or insecurity that doesn’t need to be there.
I could point to some blogs whose advice seems good to me, but I won’t because I think I can help you best by pointing only to material (alas no blogs though) that has actually helped me in a serious relationship—there being a huge difference in quality between advice of the form “this seems true to me” and advice of the form “this actually helped me”.
What has helped me more in my relationships than any other information has is
the non-speculative parts of the consensus among evolutionary psychologists on sexuality because they provide a vocabulary for me to express hypotheses (about particular situations I was facing) and a way for me to winnow the field of prospective hypotheses and bits of advice I get online from which I choose hypotheses and bits of advice to test. In other words, ev psy allows me to dismiss many ideas so that I do not incur the expense of testing them.
I needed a lot of free time however to master that material. Probably the best way to acquire the material is to read the chapters on sex in Robert Wright’s Moral Animal. I read that book slowly and carefully over 12 months or so, and it was definitely worth the time and energy. Well, actually the material in Moral Animal on friendship (reciprocal altruism) is very much applicable to serious relationships, too, and the stuff on sex and friendship together form about half the book.
Before I decided to master basic evolutionary psychology in 2000, the advice that helped me the most was from John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.
Analytic types will mistrust author and speaker John Gray because he is glib and charismatic (the Maharishi or such who founded Transcendental Meditation once offered to make Gray his successor and the inheritor of his organization) but his pre-year-2000 advice is an accurate map of reality IMHO. (I probably only skimmed Mars and Venus, but I watched long televised lectures on public broadcasting that probably covered the same material.)
Our partners are not a foreign species. Communicate lots in an open and honest manner with hir and try to understand what makes that particular person click.
Yes, you do. Many people who have highly developed theories of mind seem to underestimate how much unconscious processing they are doing that is profoundly difficult for people to do who don’t have as developed theories of mind. People who are mildly on the autism spectrum in particular (generally below the threshold of diagnosis) often have a lot of difficulty with this sort of unconscious processing but can if given a lot of explicit rules or heuristics do a much better job.
Can anyone suggest any blogs giving advice for serious romantic relationships? I think a lot of my problems come from a poor theory of mind for my partner, so stuff like 5 love languages and stuff on attachment styles has been useful.
Thanks.
I have two suggestions, which are not so much about romantic relationships as they are about communicating clearly; given your example and the comments below, though, I think they’re the kind of thing you’re looking for.
The Usual Error is a free ebook (or nonfree dead-tree book) about common communication errors and how to avoid them. (The “usual error” of the title is assuming by default that other people are wired like you—basically the same as the typical psyche fallacy. It has a blog as well, although it doesn’t seem to be updated much; my recommendation is for the book.
If you’re a fan of the direct practical style of something like LW, steel yourself for a bit of touchy-feeliness in UE, but I’ve found the actual advice very useful. In particular, the page about the biochemistry of anger has been really helpful for me in recognizing when and why my emotional response is out of whack with the reality of the situation, and not just that I should back off and cool down, but why it helps to do so. I can give you an example of how this has been useful for me if you like, but I expect you can imagine.
A related book I’m a big fan of is Nonviolent Communication (no link because its website isn’t of any particular use; you can find it at your favorite book purveyor or library). Again, the style is a bit cloying, but the advice is sound. What this book does is lay out an algorithm for talking about how you feel and what you need in a situation of conflict with another person (where “conflict” ranges from “you hurt my feelings” to gang war).
I think it’s noteworthy that following the NVC algorithm is difficult. It requires finding specific words to describe emotions, phrasing them in a very particular way, connecting them to a real need, and making a specific, positive, productive request for something to change. For people who are accustomed to expressing an idea by using the first words which occur to them to do so (almost everyone), this requires flexing mental muscles which don’t see much use. I think of myself as a good communicator, and it’s still hard for me to follow NVC when I’m upset. But the difficulty is part of the point—by forcing you to stop and rethink how you talk about the conflict, it forces you see it in a way that’s less hindered by emotional reflex and more productive towards understanding what’s going on and finding a solution.
Neither of these suggestions requires that your partner also read them, but it would probably help. (It just keeps you from having to explain a method you’re using.)
If you find a good resource for this which is a blog, I’d be interested in it as well. Maybe obviously, this topic is something I think a lot about.
Both look rather useful, thanks for the suggestions. Also, Google Books has Nonviolent Communication.
You’re welcome, and thanks—that’s good to know. I’ll bookmark it for when it comes up again.
I rather liked the page about how we’re made of meat.
Thanks for the cool link!
You’re welcome! Glad you like it. I’m a fan of that particular page as well—it’s probably the technique I refer to/think about explicitly from that book second most, after the usual error itself. It’s valuable to be able to separate the utility of hearing something to gain knowledge and that of hearing something you already know to gain reassurance—it just bypasses a whole bunch of defensiveness, misunderstanding, or insecurity that doesn’t need to be there.
I could point to some blogs whose advice seems good to me, but I won’t because I think I can help you best by pointing only to material (alas no blogs though) that has actually helped me in a serious relationship—there being a huge difference in quality between advice of the form “this seems true to me” and advice of the form “this actually helped me”.
What has helped me more in my relationships than any other information has is the non-speculative parts of the consensus among evolutionary psychologists on sexuality because they provide a vocabulary for me to express hypotheses (about particular situations I was facing) and a way for me to winnow the field of prospective hypotheses and bits of advice I get online from which I choose hypotheses and bits of advice to test. In other words, ev psy allows me to dismiss many ideas so that I do not incur the expense of testing them.
I needed a lot of free time however to master that material. Probably the best way to acquire the material is to read the chapters on sex in Robert Wright’s Moral Animal. I read that book slowly and carefully over 12 months or so, and it was definitely worth the time and energy. Well, actually the material in Moral Animal on friendship (reciprocal altruism) is very much applicable to serious relationships, too, and the stuff on sex and friendship together form about half the book.
Before I decided to master basic evolutionary psychology in 2000, the advice that helped me the most was from John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.
Analytic types will mistrust author and speaker John Gray because he is glib and charismatic (the Maharishi or such who founded Transcendental Meditation once offered to make Gray his successor and the inheritor of his organization) but his pre-year-2000 advice is an accurate map of reality IMHO. (I probably only skimmed Mars and Venus, but I watched long televised lectures on public broadcasting that probably covered the same material.)
Do you really need a “theory of mind” for that?
Our partners are not a foreign species. Communicate lots in an open and honest manner with hir and try to understand what makes that particular person click.
Yes, you do. Many people who have highly developed theories of mind seem to underestimate how much unconscious processing they are doing that is profoundly difficult for people to do who don’t have as developed theories of mind. People who are mildly on the autism spectrum in particular (generally below the threshold of diagnosis) often have a lot of difficulty with this sort of unconscious processing but can if given a lot of explicit rules or heuristics do a much better job.
Thank you. I believe I may fall in this category. I am highly quantitative and analytical, often to my detriment.
Yes. You are assuming ze has a high level of introspection which would facilitate communication. This isn’t always the case.