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A review by irreverentreader
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Sue Johnson
2.5
Take my review with a grain of salt: I was led to believe this book was going to focus on attachment styles: anxious/ambivalent/avoidant/secure and how to work on navigating them with your partner. While it certainly is about attachment in romantic relationships, it more so focused on the how attachment theory changed from its origin point of just being thought of as child/parent issue, and how Sue Johnson developed a new couple's therapy from the theory change.
The best and most helpful part of this book took place in the first half. There, it focused on where relationships can break down and how, if we don't have secure attachments to the ones we love, it can spiral out of control and effectively kill the relationship through repeated hurtful patterns. She calls these the "demon dialogues". She shares a lot of how that can look for different couples and how that dialogue, or lack there of, can lead to defensiveness, pointing fingers, isolation, and ultimately a lack of safety. Without that safety, one cannot engage in vulnerability and therefore has no way out of this circuitous hole.
I think all the above is very valid and true, and I found myself highlighting the passages that resonated to me. However, once Sue laid that all out in the first 100 pages, I found myself hit over the head with lots of repetition, wayyyyy too many client/patient examples, and very simplistic examples of marriages/relationships that I couldn't identify with at all. I personally don't think this book should have been much more than 150 pages and could have been put together in a more cohesive way. Ultimately, I found myself skimming A LOT in the latter half.
The best and most helpful part of this book took place in the first half. There, it focused on where relationships can break down and how, if we don't have secure attachments to the ones we love, it can spiral out of control and effectively kill the relationship through repeated hurtful patterns. She calls these the "demon dialogues". She shares a lot of how that can look for different couples and how that dialogue, or lack there of, can lead to defensiveness, pointing fingers, isolation, and ultimately a lack of safety. Without that safety, one cannot engage in vulnerability and therefore has no way out of this circuitous hole.
I think all the above is very valid and true, and I found myself highlighting the passages that resonated to me. However, once Sue laid that all out in the first 100 pages, I found myself hit over the head with lots of repetition, wayyyyy too many client/patient examples, and very simplistic examples of marriages/relationships that I couldn't identify with at all. I personally don't think this book should have been much more than 150 pages and could have been put together in a more cohesive way. Ultimately, I found myself skimming A LOT in the latter half.