The Highly Sensitive Person in Love: Understanding and Managing Relationships When the World Overwhelms You

Description

Do you fall in love hard, but fear intimacy? Are you sick of being told that you are “too sensitive”? Do you struggle to respect a less-sensitive partner? Or have you given up on love, afraid of being too sensitive or shy to endure its wounds?

Statistics show that 50 percent of what determines divorce is genetic temperament. And, if you are one of the vital 20 percent of people who are born highly sensitive, the risk of an unhappy relationship is especially high. Your finely tuned nervous system, which picks up on subtleties and reflects deeply, would be a romantic asset if both you and your partner understood you better. But without that understanding, your sensitivity is likely to be making your close relationships painful and complicated.

Based on Elaine N. Aron’s groundbreaking research on temperament and intimacy, The Highly Sensitive Person in Love offers practical help for highly sensitive people seeking happier, healthier romantic relationships. From low-stress fighting to sensitive sexuality, the book offers a wealth of practical advice on making the most of all personality combinations. Complete with illuminating self-tests and the results of the first survey ever done on sex and temperament, The Highly Sensitive Person in Love will help you discover a better way of living and loving.
Picking up where The Highly Sensitive Person left off, The Highly Sensitive Person in Love explores the on occasion bumpy but ultimately rewarding terrain that love relationships have to offer this group of people. HSPs, as they are known, make up the estimated 15 to 20 percent of the population that have very sensitive nervous system and are prone to deep reflection and feelings of being overwhelmed by the world. These special characteristics, which have a tendency to be misunderstood as shyness and dismissed as signs of weakness in our highly competitive society, inevitably bring interesting challenges to all kinds of love relationships for HSPs. Author Elaine Aron–who’s a psychotherapist, researcher, and an HSP–delves deep to into the subject and surfaces with detailed, helpful, wise advice for HSPs and their partners, be they fellow HSPs or non-HSPs.

Aron details the positive and negative sides to such relationships, including how the HSP benefits, how both members of the relationship benefit, the typical challenges that arise, and solutions to those challenges. For instance, a relationship made up of two HSPs may engender low levels of arousal, or awareness, which means that both of you’re going to avoid doing the same things that make you uncomfortable, such as shopping, dealing with conflict, and being in crowds. Solution? Simplify your life, see if you’ll hire someone to take care of the tasks neither of you wants to do–but don’t omit that doing such tasks is also a way to grow personally–and divvy up the tasks according to preference. As for conflict, Aron says that having a plan of action is the best route–make a decision how to handle conflict in the relationship before the conflict flares up. Another reality of an HSP-HSP union is that neither person will be able to max out on work and expect to have a decent home life, so at least one of you’ll have to limit activities. So, plan not to have more than one child if you both work (it may be too late for some couples to put this one into action; if this is the case, Aron advises that one parent stay at home).

During the book, Aron stresses that being in a relationship is a “package deal”; neither the HSP nor the non-HSP is perfect, so she urges readers to appreciate the positive aspects of their sensitivity, be it highly sensitive or not, and not to dwell on its drawbacks. But she does urge HSPs who are unhappy with their trait to work on coming to terms with it–through inner work, counseling, or medication if needed–as its qualities, when properly appreciated, can be life enhancing and beneficial to HSPs as well as to their relationship partners. –Stefanie Durbin