If This Is Love, Why Do I Feel So Insecure?
Why does it hurt to be in love? What makes otherwise accomplished, confident people anxious, fearful, and insecure in their romantic involvements? What are the dynamics and symptoms of insecure love--the anxious, obsessive quest for the perfect romantic fulfillment that is always just out of reach--and what are some of the successful, pattern-breaking strategies?
What is Obsessive Love?
Obsessive Love, Love Obsession, Love Addiction, or Relationship Addiction are all common terms when referring to "Obsessive Love."
The experience of insecure love has two main components. One is anxiety. This is the "he loves me, he loves me not" sensation of being kept constantly on edge by a fickle lover. Anxious lovers feel as volatile as the stock market - up one day, down the next. Their passion rages all the more intensely when they are least sure that it is reciprocated.
The second component of insecure love is obsession with the loved one. Love at first sight, longing to see the loved one every day, wanting to go off and live on a deserted island together - these are the signs of romantic obsession. To the obsessed lover, the possibility of rejection feels like the end of the world.
A person who experiences romantic insecurity tends to be both anxious and obsessed. For such a person, love is a tempestuous experience.
THE FIRST MAJOR COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF LOVE: New book by psychologists reveal what causes anxiety, obsession, jealousy, and depression in romantic relationships.
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Fawcett Crest / Ballantine
22nd printing
448 pages
$7.99
IF THIS IS LOVE... Now can be purchased on-line at our Featured Bookseller:
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Also available in Italian as Se questo e amore.
While many pop-psych books prescribe band-aids for emotional ills, this one not only offers corrective surgery, but also diligently defines the disease itself. Through intriguing anecdotes, well-explained psychological methodology and clear charts, this comprehensive book offers solace and new paths leading out of our romantic cul-de-sacs.
-Kirkus Reviews
Impressive... Readers suffering from fear of rejection will find numerous parallels to their own experiences in the depictions of ways people drive away those they love.-Publishers Weekly
Deals with the fascinating and compelling topic: insecure love, which combines obsessiveness with anxiety - the kind of love in Fatal Attraction... skillful blending of case histories with scientific research...-Dr. Steven Duck, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
...the perfect book for those in or out of love who are trapped by their past and whose only path to freedom is the rather painful one of self-recognition. They show how we can trace and define, even modify, the complex and invisible behavior patterns that govern our daily lives and relationships. It's an impressive work that offers hope to us all.-Stuart Dodds, Chronicle Features Syndicate
Opens possibilities for the insecure lover--to find and keep love in a mutual companionship rather than the repetitive and unsatisfactory insecure relationship of the past.-Susan Kohl, Co-author, Have A Love Affair With Your Husband (Before Someone Else Does)
Atlantic Monthly Press published the original hard cover edition of IF THIS IS LOVE, WHY DO I FEEL SO INSECURE? by Carl G. Hindy, Ph.D., J. Conrad Schwarz, Ph.D., and Archie Brodsky. The publishers saw it as one of the first books applicable to the dilemmas of both men and women. Clinical psychologists Hindy and Schwarz had conducted a 10-year research project, the largest and most comprehensive study on the subject ever. Over 2400 people participated in well-established reliable psychological tests. They answered hundreds of questions about their four most important relationships and their family histories. In addition, family members and friends of respondents were polled to help round out these individual portraits.
What resulted was a vastly comprehensive compilation of dramatic case histories and detailed anecdotes. Combined with clinical experience and in-depth interviews, the study illuminates patterns of behavior and common childhood experiences that make some people more prone to searching for love in self-defeating ways:
People who are habitually insecure in love relationships (have perhaps found that) the struggle, having begun in childhood, is so familiar that it has become easier than more risky alternatives. (They confirm) repeatedly their negative view of themselves and their experience. Or perhaps there is some promise of ultimate resolution and mastery that the never-ending struggle falsely holds out.
-IF THIS IS LOVE, WHY DO I FEEL SO INSECURE
The findings from the Hindy-Schwarz study show that those who were especially prone to insecurity in their love relationships were usually the product of one or both parents who were rejecting, indifferent, or inconsistent in their demonstrations of affection. Hindy and Schwarz maintain that both men and women feel the extreme highs and lows of "anxious romantic attachments."
IF THIS IS LOVE, WHY DO I FEEL SO INSECURE? further explores the common elements of insecure love. It helps the reader recognize and diagnose his or her symptoms by explaining:
THE SYMPTOMS OF ROMANTIC ANXIETY
THE SIGNS OF OBSESSION / OBSESSIVE LOVE
HOW JEALOUSY & DEPRESSION ARE NATURAL OUTGROWTHS OF INSECURE LOVE
WHY WE CHOOSE PARTNERS WHO MAKE US FEEL INSECURE
ROMANTIC LOVE
IF THIS IS LOVE, WHY DO I FEEL SO INSECURE? unearths causes, effects, and cures for obsessive romantic attachments and how they prevent romantic fulfillment. It helps the reader, both lay person and professional, discover how to:
RECOGNIZE AND DIAGNOSE THE SYMPTOMS OF INSECURE LOVE
COPE WITH THE UNCERTAINTIES OF BEING A FICKLE LOVER
OVERCOME OBSESSION WITH THE LOVER ALONG WITH DEPRESSION & JEALOUSY
EXAMINE ONE'S PARENTS' INFLUENCE ON EXPERIENCES OF ROMANTIC LOVE
CHOOSE PARTNERS WHO WON'T MAKE ONE FEEL INSECURE
Questionnaires used in the study are provided in the book to examine one's own four most important love relationships and one's family background, just as he research participants did. Based on the circumstances of these relationships, the authors give guidance on customizing personal therapeutic approaches and offer self-help examples to enable one to overcome romantic anxiety.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Carl G. Hindy, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Nashua, New Hampshire, whose work focuses on love relationships and problems of attachment, separation and loss.
J. Conrad Schwarz, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, has been practicing psychotherapy and training clinical psychologists for more than thirty years.
Archie Brodsky is co-author of the pioneering classic Love and Addiction.
~ Carl G. Hindy, Ph.D. & Associates ~
120 Main Street, Suite 103
Nashua, NH 03060 (603) 880-8773
