Dating From the Inside Out

Is finding love on your top 10 for 2016?  I have the book for you, due out on January 1, 2016!  Wired for Dating is Stan Tatkin’s, PSYD, MFT, great follow-up to Wired for Love.

The inside-out approach or “psychobiological approach” gives you the whys driving romantic relationships and how to use this information to create “secure” relationships.  Tatkin uses neuroscience and attachment theory to show how our biology and attachment style facilitate attraction, but can lead us to make impulsive buying decisions.

Wired for Dating covers the entire cycle of romantic relationships, with each chapter demystifying the whys and providing concrete examples, then finishing with intuitive exercises that will prepare you for dating.

I love this book!   In Chapter 1, “Before You Date”, Stan starts slow and easy taking a pulse point, then gives you a primer on the bioscience and then BAM!  straight into the myths about dating.  He challenges the logic surrounding the conventional relationship dogma such as “You Have To Love Yourself Before You Can Love 
Someone Else.”  I do not want to give away too much, 
but he totally tears that one up! 

Tatkin keeps the train moving from vetting dates using your social network to deciphering clues on your dating partner.  All throughout the book, he teaches you how to mitigate biological rush with a number exercises such as A Mindful Dinner and Safe Talk (first date practice).  Chapters Seeing Clearly Through the Fog of Infatuation and Dealing with the Dating Jitters are steeped with the best teaching examples. 

The second half of the book slows down a bit because it is devoted to the attachment styles and how they relate to each other during the dating process.  You may already be familiar with attachment theory from my previous post.  In a nutshell, IMAGO theory, originated by Harville Hendrix, says we are attracted to the same type of people over and over again.  This explains why sometimes a person may seem like a great fit on paper, but we just not attracted to them.

A person could be a perfect match on paper, but if your body says no, it’s a no.

The best thing about this book is Tatkin’s ability to address the totality of the dating cycle from the inside-out.  Sometimes you have to end things or sometimes things end for you.  This chapter is so well-written.  It is full of empathy and encouragement along with nuts and bolts of should you say goodbye and how you say goodbye. 

He winds things on a positive note in the final chapter, “Dating is Forever”.  I love this book!  It isn’t often you get the science explained without boring you to death and the exercises are doable without being wacky.  Reading and applying the concepts in the book will make help you in whatever part of the dating cycle you are in, a solid well-written book.

Happy Loving!