I'd like to chime in with a strong un-recommendation of "Survivors of an Open Marriage" book. I really found the book to be unpleasant and toxic.
It is a book about unlikable people making glaringly stupid mistakes, and then analyzing those mistakes to come to even worse conclusions.
I'd much rather see books about people who make mistakes and then learn from them, and grow in positive directions.
There is great value in a guide of "what not to do", but in this case the analysis does not offer up any alternatives of ways that things could have gone differently or better. In the author's opinion, open relationships are 100% doomed to fail spectacularly - and of course that must be true because she can't even begin to imagine anyone else making things work any better than she did.
The entire structure of the Survivors book seems to be written to justify the final conclusion of the author - that it is impossible to love multiple people at one time, it is impossible to have a healthy secondary relationship without emotional involvement cropping up and thus threatening the primary, and in the end only monogamy and God can lead you to happiness.
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Date: 9/26/08 07:09 pm (UTC)From:It is a book about unlikable people making glaringly stupid mistakes, and then analyzing those mistakes to come to even worse conclusions.
I'd much rather see books about people who make mistakes and then learn from them, and grow in positive directions.
There is great value in a guide of "what not to do", but in this case the analysis does not offer up any alternatives of ways that things could have gone differently or better. In the author's opinion, open relationships are 100% doomed to fail spectacularly - and of course that must be true because she can't even begin to imagine anyone else making things work any better than she did.
The entire structure of the Survivors book seems to be written to justify the final conclusion of the author - that it is impossible to love multiple people at one time, it is impossible to have a healthy secondary relationship without emotional involvement cropping up and thus threatening the primary, and in the end only monogamy and God can lead you to happiness.
*ugh*
- Chris