5 Books that Make You Attractive AF (Best Relationship Advice)

About this video

Kegley presents five relationship books with his favourite point from each, opening with a warning against toxic advice about making someone chase or obsess over you. An opening book — whose title is not named in the transcript, by an author he calls a cult leader — gives a breeze analogy: trying to trap a breeze in a Hawaii house by shutting every window and door kills the breeze, just as controlling and clinging kills love. Attached covers attachment styles, which he says come mainly from childhood and parenting but can be reprogrammed: secure (about 50% of the population), anxious (about 20%, driven by fear of losing the partner), avoidant (about 25%, one foot out with replacements on standby), and fearful (unable to live alone or with someone). The Way of the Superior Man, which he says he read a dozen times from age 18 and handed out from his car trunk, introduces polarity: masculine energy grows through challenge, while feminine energy responds to praise and affirmation, so men should not challenge a partner the way they challenge friends. Crucial Conversations returns with its model of drifting from the pool of shared meaning into silence (withdrawing, avoiding, masking) or violence (controlling, labelling, attacking). Finally, John Gottman’s The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, backed, he says, by 50-plus years of marriage research, counters the mindset that any problem means you are in the wrong relationship: ‘I do’ differs from ‘I’ll try,’ and the work is becoming the right person rather than searching for the right person. He closes by promoting a 10-week coaching programme.

Key takeaways

• Trying to control, cling to or manipulate a partner kills love, like shutting every window to trap a breeze kills the breeze.
• Attachment styles — secure, anxious, avoidant and fearful — are programmed, mostly in childhood, and can be reprogrammed.
• The Way of the Superior Man teaches polarity: masculine energy grows through challenge, feminine energy through praise and affirmation.
• In crucial conversations, return from silence or violence to the pool of shared meaning to solve problems and preserve the relationship.
• Gottman’s lesson: stop treating problems as proof you chose the wrong person; focus on becoming the right person.

Episode details: published May 11, 2022 · 8:24 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Clark Kegley’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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