Reddit reviews Hold Me Tight

You have gotten a lot of great responses and I don’t have much advice to add, but maybe some encouragement.

As others have suggested, both of the books “How to Help your Spouse...” by MacDonald and “Not Just Friends” by Glass are very helpful in helping both the BS and WS understand some of the dynamics of an extramarital relationship, but IMO they both fall short in helping us to understand how in the hell the people we love the most could make such baffling decisions without regarding or even understanding the damage that would come from those choices.

In order to really understand the “why” for us we needed to understand our own history and how we developed our adult attachment systems and conflict management strategies. Our MC made some great recommendations that helped us get there:

Attached by Levine

And

“Hold Me Tight” by Johnson

These both went beyond just the affair and helped us understand how our dynamic over the course of our relationship contributed to the state of relationship at the time. They helped us get to the real “why”, which was much deeper than “I liked the attention” or “I felt isolated”. Those were part of it for sure, but it was really much deeper.

HMU in chat or PM if you’d like more details about our process, I’d rather not get too specific in public comments.

I wish you peace on this terrible journey.

So, in terms of attachment theory (this book is great: https://www.amazon.com/Hold-Me-Tight-Conversations-Lifetime/dp/1491513810) he -needs- attachment and connection with his spouse, so there's more of a cost of lashing out on her. He doesn't need you in the same basic, core way. I had assumed you were his roommate but I guess you didn't specify the relationships involved here.


In my case, as the spouse of the 1w2 I feel like I get the brunt of it because she can unload on me and I'm not going to leave. She has to manage/withhold her criticisms of others or they'll leave her and not want to be her friend anymore. They don't have to have her in their lives if they don't want to, so on some level she's motivated to restrain herself in order to preserve those relationships. Because I'm committed to her and won't leave her it's safe to be her real self toward me, even if it's damaging to me and to our overall relationship.