Book Review: The Dating Queen’s Favorite Books for Understanding and Loving Yourself (… and Men)
The first task of any woman seeking to find a true partner in life is to (you guessed it) find herself. You've probably heard it a million times: love yourself first. But the thing is, it's true.
Thankfully, there are some great resources for making the whole understanding yourself/loving yourself thing fun! Here are some of my faves.
Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts: Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way with the World
by Regena Tomashauer
I love Mama Gena. If you haven't heard of her, do yourself a favor and check out this book. You, it turns out, are a Sister Goddess, and your desires, your passions, your appetites, are not to be ignored. Quite the contrary! They are, in fact, critical to helping you reach your goals.
As the "Product Description" says on Amazon.com, "Relationship expert Regena Thomashauer teaches the lost 'womanly arts' of identifying your desires, having fun no matter where you are, knowing sensual pleasure, befriending your inner bitch, flirting (in a way that makes your day, not just his), and more -- because making pleasure your priority can actually help you reach your goals. So if you need a refresher course in fun -- and you know you do -- come to Mama."
(I've given this book to a couple of girlfriends, who loved it as well.)
Mama Gena's Owner's and Operator's Guide to Men
by Regena Tomashauer
Okay, this book may be better suited to the Understanding Men book review, but you really should read the School of Womanly Arts first, so it goes here.
If you like Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts, you'll probably also enjoy her Owner's and Operator's Guide to Men. Using the man-as-car metaphor, Mama Gena offers her inimitable advice on such matters as:
• Taking Control of the Wheel (if you want a great man, you're going to have to train him)
• Enjoying the Ride (the importance of paying attention to your own desires and pleasure)
• What's Under His Hood (a guided tour of the inner workings of a man's mind, which boils down to this: men live to serve women)
Mama Gena is saucy and sexy, and riding with her is a whole lot of fun. She presents a provocative paradigm that's totally foreign for many women: celebrate your passion and indulge your appetites to love your life!
A Fine Romance: The Passage of Courtship from Meeting to Marriage
by Judith Sills
It seems like all of the best books come to me through Fawn. Usually after the end of a relationship. This is one of those.
If you've ever wondered what the hell is going on when two people connect and fall in love (or connect, fall in love, then split apart), grab a copy of this book. Sills approaches the human mating ritual like a naturalist observing birds on the tundra.
It's fascinating!
One of the points that stuck with me the most is the idea of readiness as an essential ingredient for a relationship. I mean, duh, but how many times have I pined for someone who just wasn't ready? The fact is, he could be a great guy for you, the perfect guy for you, but if he's not ready, he's not the right guy for you. And of course it goes both ways: if he's ready and you're not, it's a no-go.
But Sills has a lot more to say than that. She breaks relationships into five stages: The Selection, The Seduction, The Switch, The Negotiation and The Commitment. She explains each stage, and offers examples of couples going through it to demonstrate variations in how it might play out.
Fawn loaned me this book right after the guy who had just won me promptly dropped me because he felt too strongly for me. (Huh?) Turns out this is classic (though rather extreme) Switch behavior: when the pursuer backs off just as their partner responds. (Joy of joys.)
Seriously, understanding what had happened didn't stop the heartache, but it did help.
I'd keep this one on your shelf as a reference to turn to again and again.
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What are your favorite books for understanding and loving yourself (and men)?
© 2010, The Dating Queen. All rights reserved. Please provide link back to original post.
Tip for Saving 50% on Match.com
Here's a sweet little deal for getting 4 months of match.com for the price of two.
How? Sign up for one month on match.com. Then, before your subscription automatically renews, go into your account to cancel it.
You'll be taken to a page that looks like this:
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||||||||||||||||||||||
Check off "I can't afford a subscription right now."
Then click either answer to the next question that appears.
You'll now be given the option of continuing with your cancellation, or signing up for three more months at the one month price ($34.99 at the time of this writing).
Voilá! You just got yourself 4 months of match.com for the price of two – a 50% savings.
© 2010, The Dating Queen. All rights reserved. Please provide link back to original post.
Book Review: The Dating Queen’s Recommendations for Books to Help Understand Men (as if that’s possible…)
One of the great challenges of dating is that men are just so... confusing! Does he like me? Why didn't he call? Should I ask him out?
It's enough to drive a girl crazy.
Thankfully, there's help. The two books in this section offer some insight into what the heck a guy is thinking, and what to do – or not do – about it.
He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys
by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
Authors Behrendt and Tuccillo took the core of a Sex and the City episode and spun it into a highly entertaining, and eminently sensible self-help book. Written in a fun, easy-to-read Q&A format, the book's main theme is that if a guy is really into you, he'll make sure you know it, and if you're tying yourself in knots trying to figure out whether he is into you, you're wasting your time, so move on!
Some women I know find this notion depressing. Personally, I found it hugely liberating. Although I don't necessarily agree with both authors all the time (and they don't always agree with each other – they engage in a back-and-forth dialogue throughout the book), the general thrust is something all women would benefit from wrapping their heads around: you are an awesome super-fox, and you deserve someone who will recognize that and treat you like a queen. Stop wasting time chasing after or pining for men who aren't interested or are toying with you!
HJNTIY is the book that launched my personal exploration into the world of men and relationships. As women, we need to respect ourselves enough to not waste time and energy on men who make us crazy. This book is a great guidebook for pointing out the myriad ways we get caught in that trap, and for helping to avoid said traps in the future.
(Also see the original song and video inspired by the book.)
Mars and Venus On A Date: A Guide for Navigating the 5 Stages of Dating to Create a Loving and Lasting Relationship
by John Gray
I'll admit it: I never took the whole Mars & Venus concept seriously. The metaphor irritated me (come on, we're all human beings here!), and I just found it all so cheesy that I avoided the books with a sneer.
Then, one day, while I was in a bookstore on a date, I came back from the info desk to find my date with Mars & Venus On A Date in his hands.
Cute. Ironic. Hahaha.
But when I asked him (rather scornfully, as I recall) if he'd learned anything, he said that in fact he had: women love a man with a plan.
Hmm... In my case, at least, this is definitely true, so I thought if John Gray understands this much about women, perhaps he might have something to teach me about men. God knows I sure didn't have the answers myself!
I never saw the guy again (amusingly, after assuring me that he'd have a plan for our next date, when he called to set it up, his plan was "Um.. I dunno, what do you want to do?"), but I went back to the bookstore the next day and bought a used copy of the book.
Although I have to stress that I don't agree with everything Gray writes (and some things I vehemently disagree with), I still found his book incredibly useful.
One of the most important lessons I learned from Gray is that men really like to do things for women. In previous relationships I'd always been afraid of making my guy feel exploited. I was perfectly capable of doing stuff myself, after all, so I declined a lot of offers of assistance. Only when I read Mars & Venus On A Date did I get it why this response only irritated my guy and made him feel rebuffed. (Okay, I'm kind of dense, but hell, that's the truth.) Gray's advice helped me learn to receive, and to let the men in my life be heroes. Definitely a good thing.
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Next up: books to help you understand yourself!
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What books have you read that helped you understand men better?
© 2010, The Dating Queen. All rights reserved. Please provide link back to original post.
Book Review: The Dating Queen’s Must-Read Breakup Books for Single Women
Okay, you may think it odd that I'm reviewing books about breakups. You're looking to start a relationship, not end one, right? But here's the thing: until you clean up your breakup baggage, it will continue to weigh down any subsequent relationships (and we're talking weighing them down like that old, heavy, wheel-less suitcase set your grandma had, not a spiffy gore-tex carry-on with inline skate wheels and extensible handle).
These two books (+ blog) will help you understand why you operate the way you do, and even more to the point, they'll help you avoid repeating the same mistakes again.
Coming Apart: Why Relationships End and How to Live Through the Ending of Yours
by Daphne Rose Kingma
Required reading for the savvy single, Daphne Rose Kingma's thesis is that people are drawn to each other to accomplish certain "developmental tasks." When those tasks are complete, sometimes the relationship has served its purpose and is no longer useful. We've been programmed to view a break-up as the failure of a relationship, but Kingma shifts the paradigm.
Sometimes a relationship is genuinely beneficial for both parties, but only for a limited time. Yet our cultural fantasy of Prince Charmings, soul mates and "happily ever after leads us to feel that there's something wrong with us when a relationship doesn't last forever.
Kingma shifts attention away from blame, and toward healing and self-awareness. If you can figure out your developmental tasks, you'll have a better chance of entering your next relationship with a clear head, unmuddied by unconscious drives. Especially recommended are the extensive exercises, which can help you suss out your inner workings and avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future.
Getting Past Your Breakup: How to Turn a Devastating Loss into the Best Thing That Ever Happened To You
by Susan Elliott
Another book aimed at the recently heartbroken, Elliott's compilation of writings from her blog (see #3 below) offers sensible advice and exercises for dealing with pain and loss, along with tools for developing self-esteem, setting boundaries, and generally becoming happy with yourself and your life.
(My favorite Elliott axiom: maintain No Contact with your ex, including staying OFF your ex's Facebook, MySpace, Blog, etc. Why? Ask yourself: "Does it hurt when you do that?" If so, the answer is clear: "Don't do that!")
Elliott focuses on how to move on and be content on your own, reasoning that when you put time and effort into building your own life and being happy alone, you'll attract similar people, both friends and lovers. "On the flip side, if you can't stand the aloneness or think you have to be in a relationship to be socially accepted, you are always going to settle for less." Indeed, if you can't tolerate being single, it's just a matter of time before you end up in another lousy relationship.
Elliott gives directions for taking care of yourself – setting goals, affirmations, journaling, gratitude lists – and for making things easier for your children. The Relationship and Life Inventories are especially recommended as tools to help understand why you may be falling for clones of the same jerk over and over. Throughout, she uses her own story as an example of how it is indeed possible to rise up from the pit of despair to create a healthy, joyful life, and yes, to find love again.
Getting Past Your Past: Getting Past Your Breakup and Becoming the Best Person You Can Be! (gettingpastyourpast.wordpress.org)
by Susan Elliott
If you'd like to check out Susan Elliott's writing before buying the book, or just as an ongoing support tool, visit her blog. Many of the sections in the book started out as blog posts, and Elliott writes new (or recycles popular old) posts daily. There are also check-in threads every few days, where readers can post how they're doing and reply to others.
(It's rather cumbersome, being in a blog post/comment format and not actual forum software, but dialogues do occur, and insights from other readers can be quite useful.)
Elliott also offers one-on-one therapy as well as GPYP bootcamps in her hometown of New York.
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Did you take time to process your last relationship after it ended? What did you learn?
© 2010, The Dating Queen. All rights reserved. Please provide link back to original post.
Book Review: The Four Man Plan by Cindy Lu
The Four Man Plan: The Book
I stumbled upon The Four Man Plan while cruising online dating sites one night. "Are you single?" the banner ad flashed, "Very, very single? If you want to find the ONE man... You need to be dating FOUR men!"
Huh?
I clicked through, read a bit more, and watched video excerpts from the one-woman show that inspired the book.
The author/actress was a crack-up, and while I didn't expect to really learn anything useful from the book, I figured the $16 cover price would be worth it for the entertainment value alone, so I handed over my credit card.
The Four Man Plan did, indeed prove to be highly entertaining, but what really surprised me was how brilliant Lu's system turned out to be. I've never been the evangelizing type, but I have to admit I've told more women about this book than I can count. It's not for everyone, but if what you've been doing to find a mate hasn't been working for you, and if you're ready and willing to try something new, I highly recommend opening your mind and reading this book.
In a nutshell, Lu offers a system that looks remarkably like the way my mom dated in the 50s: spend time getting to know lots of different men at the same time. There's much more to it than that, but that's the core of the Plan. I'll elaborate in a moment, but let's first address this key concept.
Having grown up post-Sexual Revolution, the idea of dating more than one guy at a time was completely foreign to me. Anathema, even. My mom now tells me that she thought my friends and I were all nuts, trying to partner up with one person right away without first "shopping around" and dating several.
But in my generation, dating implied sex, even if you weren't actually having any, and anything that smacked remotely of "sleeping around" would get you labeled as a slut so fast it would make your head spin.
One of the things Lu discovered in her own journey (which she shares in the first section of the book) was that, contrary to her belief that the way to snare a man is to throw your ankles behind your ears at the earliest opportunity, in fact, waiting for sex actually made men respect her more and treat her better.
Wow!
And sleeping around made men disrespect her (she calls it having "penis cooties"), plus it did not make her feel good about herself.
So Lu set out to codify the lessons she was learning into a system, the Four Man Plan (or 4MP), based on honesty, open-mindedness and respect. As she said in an interview with Singles365,
The Four Man Plan changes your perspective and turns dating into an absolute soul searching pleasure, because it takes the focus away from finding a lifelong partner to deciding what it is you really want.
When you start the Four Man Plan, you’ll find your perspective changes. Dating isn’t about the hunt for one incredible man, it’s about being the most amazing woman that you are in any situation and falling in love with yourself.
On page 6 of the book Lu outlines reasonable expectations for any gal who gives the 4MP a college try:
- Raise your self-esteem
- Choose and encourage men of quality and honor
- Become the selector, not the selectee
- Find emotional balance
- Update a long-malfunctioning system of love
- Make single life way more fun
The 4MP is based on the idea that men are wired to compete for mates, whereas women... well, although competition brings out a man's inner chivalry, competition for men turns us into obsessive raving maniacs.
Look at the animal kingdom: it's always the males who are fighting and preening, trying to atract the females. Somehow in our species the mating ritual has been turned on on its head, with women out-sleezing each other to try and snag a guy, and men becoming lazy mofos, like zoo lions feasting on prepackaged meat.
What they want is the thrill of the hunt!
To that end, one of the rules of the Plan is that every man you're dating must know, by the end of the 2nd date at the latest, that you're also dating other people.
This is the hardest aspect of the Plan for most women to put into action, but in my personal experience (and honey, I dated 57 men in a 2 1/2 year period), most guys don't even flinch. In fact, knowing that you're also seeing other guys takes the pressure off, because they don't expect you to "poke them with your ring finger or fallopian tube," as Lu puts it. What a relief!
Lu again:
Letting men know that you’re dating but not sleeping with other men does a number of critical things. It lets the men know they are competing and if there is one thing men know how to do, it’s compete!
Suddenly, armed with the knowledge that they are one of a number of choices, they become more chivalrous, more interested and more honest about their own situation.
If they aren’t interested, they simply fall away with no drama – but if they are keen, it makes it crucial that at some point they will have to request, rather than assume exclusivity.
These days, in the world of internet dating, it’s almost assumed that all parties are “shopping.” But serial monogamy, indiscriminate sex and obsessive husband hunting has gotten more and more common, so it’s important to let your men know that you aren’t that kind of girl!
The 4MP is filled with all sorts of math-related hypotheses and postulates, and I found the tongue-in-cheek "scientific" metaphor a hoot. Lu's writing style is raunchy and sharp, filled with laugh-out-loud humor. It's a quick read (I read the entire book in a couple of hours during one insomniac night), but don't let its breeziness fool you: the system Lu offers is sound, and could transform dating for you from a dreaded exercise into a fun way to find yourself while looking for love.
It sure did for me!
The Four Man Plan: The Fourum
The Four Man Plan Forum (www.thefourmanplan.com)
To really get the most out of the 4MP, I recommend getting involved on the 4MP forum (Fourum), where women of all ages and backgrounds share their dating adventures, fears and concerns. Insights gleaned from other 4MPlanners can be invaluable, and sometimes Cindy Lu herself pops in with advice or encouragement.
For me, the Fourum was like a journal that talked back. The Plan on its own is great, but combined with the support and feedback from the Fourum it was turbocharged growth.
Tell 'em I sent you!
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You may also like:
Author Interview: Cindy Lu of The Four Man Plan
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Have you ever dated more than one guy at a time?
Were you honest about it with them, or did you hide it?
What was that experience like for you?
© 2010, The Dating Queen. All rights reserved. Please provide link back to original post.
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