I picked up this book last month during a rain storm from the Barnes and Noble accross the street from one of the apartments I lived in during High School. I’d been looking around for it for a while, and the fact that they had it in stock was a happy coincidence. I’ve liked just about everything that I’ve picked up from Branden, and seeing how love is just about my favorite topic, I figured that nothing could go wrong.
I felt shocked to find it a slow read relative to his self-esteem series and some of his others. For those looking for actionable advice on relationships, Stefan Molyneux’s Real Time Relationships remains the best volume on the topic.
Unlike most of his other books, there are no actionable exercises to perform either for single people or couples. This doesn’t make it a useless book by any means, but it did disappoint me. The most attractive aspect of the work is its dogged insistance on defining romance as a heroic adventure requiring extreme courage from both parties. This begs the question of Branden of where that courage is supposed to come from.
Branden doesn’t get too into it, but in most cases, it can only be found after each individual at least achieving a partial resolution of primary relationships. I know that he knows this – self-esteem cannot just be bootstrapped into existance, but it can be built through learning and action.
1 Comment
May 26, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Highly recommend Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix and John Gottman is worth looking into as well. Not surprised Branden fell short on this considering his personal history. Thanks for the review!