Getting to 'I Do' by Pat Allen, Sandra Harmon Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Getting to 'I Do'
Book Review: Getting To I Do
Summary: 1 Stars
I wish I could give negative stars to this book. However, if you are a "player" you will love it. It will teach you the basics of manipulation and control and how not to be yourself as a means to get what you want out of your partner. It does provide balance for all of the "male player" books out there, but it certainly doesn't do much to provide for an up front, honest, healthy relationship that is based upon being yourself. It couches standing up for yourself with manipulative techniques and I can best reqard it as a trash read. The idea of choosing a feminine or masculine role in a relationship and then play that role to get what you want is the basic theme. Why not just find someone who has the balance of feminine and masculine qualities that are compatible with yours and then live your life openly and honestly, rather than a life of manipulation and dishonesty? Here's one idea: "continue to magnetize him toward you by looking good, sounding good, smelling good, tasting good, being lovable and responsive..." and never give until you receive and then always to a lesser degree. Great advice for control freaks.Or on the sexual front: "Sperm is cheap; eggs are precious." Also, I learned that all sexual hangups are on the man's side. Women don't have any. Or if they do, they were caused by men and a women's lack of sexual response is just a response "to be ready to defend myself against [mens] insensitivity, rather than surrender my body to you".
On the positive side, this book gives a new low point to trash which few others will achieve. A definite "don't read".
Book Review: Getting to "I Do"
Summary: 5 Stars
I was extremely happy with the product. I got it 5 days earlier than expected. THis is my 2nd copy of this book because I love it so much.Book Review: Getting to "I Do"
Summary: 1 Stars
This book was recommended to me by an acquaintance. I really wish this acquaintance luck in relationships because she absolutely loved this book. I can't place my finger on specifics, but while reading the book, I got a bad, sinking feeling. I understand the whole female & male energies, yes, but I feel that what the author tells "feminine" women to do is inauthentic. A lot of the examples and stories rang false and I was taken aback. I thought, "Really? that's what she considers narcisistic or female or male? Wow." Nothing jived with common sense. I wouldn't recommend this book to anybody.Book Review: Getting to I do
Summary: 5 Stars
I love this book. It was a quick read for me although much of what is written in the book I already knew and I was putting into practice. I still think that it is a great book for women who eventually want to get married. They can follow the principles in the book. I know from experience it works.Book Review: Good practical advice
Summary: 5 Stars
Since the classic self-improvement and self-esteem books of the 60s and 70s came out, I haven't read much applied psychology, my interests being more in the neurobiology area, but this book was recommended to me, so I ended up reading it.Besides the practical advice the book gives, it's interesting in that it seems to have aroused some controversy. Several reviewers said they were insulted by the more traditional woman's role and behavior that it represents, but the vast majority of the other women here, of which there were at least a couple of dozen, found it to be very useful and many gave it virtually rave reviews.
What this says about the number of women who ascribe to modern feminist beliefs I'm not certain. Does this mean that most women are uncomfortable with them and that your typical feminist is the minority of women who are college-educated professionals, or at least well-read and literate?
Based on my own experience, I would have to say there is some truth to this. As I am a college-educated professonal man myself, most of the women I know seem to be feminists of some sort, and will tell you as much. When I ask them what books they've read on the subject, they can't seem to name any, however, not even The Feminine Mystique, which was the book that started it all, but anyway, I accept that they are feminists, whatever that might mean to them. I also understand that feminism is supposed to be currently undergoing its third revolution, revision, reconstruction, or whatever the current term for it is, so there may be some confusion about what feminism is even to those who are actively following the controversy.
Anyway, among the non-college educated, non-professional, housewives, and more blue-collar women that I know, there seem to be fewer self-professed feminists.
I realize that the casual survey I've done is limited to the observations of one person's admittedly limited experience, but it would be interesting to find out what a larger survey would turn up along these lines. Is it true that feminism is largely an upper-middle class, or at least, college-educated woman's ideology?
But getting back to the book. The book itself is packed with lots of practical advice on how women should play the dating and mating game in these difficult times. As I said, it's written from the more traditional point of view, but then, this seems to be the kind of advice the women who've read it, and who wrote reviews here, are looking for.
Speaking as a man who has dated women of both types, I don't think most men will be offended if you act this way. I have had the interesting experience several times of dating truly rabid, apparently man-hating feminists who spent the entire dinner carrying on about what louses men were, and the venom with which they hurled these pronouncements my way made it clear that I was in no way exempted from their ire and contempt for the entire vicious lot of us male humans. It was a little like having dinner with a combination of Jonathan Edwards and "Mommy Dearest."
For my part, I sat calmly throughout all of this, not taking it too personally, and then when it was over, I said, "Well, this is all very interesting, and I can certainly see that you know a lot about this subject, but the simple fact is, I asked you out to dinner--and I don't ask that many women out (which was true)--because I thought you were the cutest thing I'd seen in a long time (which was also true), and I was hoping we might go back to my place or your place after dinner and do something other than talk about sexual politics, feminist or otherwise (which was also true)."
Well, at that point, one of them was insulted and got up and walked off. The other one, however, couldn't wait to get back to her place. So what does that tell you about feminists?
Anyway, I can tell you from personal experience that after a few of those, a man does not mind at all a women with a less vitriolic dinner-table discussion agenda, and who might even be a more "traditionally feminine" woman.
I realize, of course, that feminists run the entire gamut from very moderate to very extreme points of view, but for a while there, some years ago, all I could seem to find was the really rabid ones.
But getting back to the book, one interesting thing the author does is to divide men into masculine and feminine types, and how to deal with each type. Well, most men are actually more of a combination of the two, since men have both female and male hormones. Also, men have one X as well as the Y chromosome, so they are at least partly female genetically, whereas women have only the two X chromosomes, and so are totally female. But I didn't mind that too much. What's important is how the man typically acts, more masculine or feminine, and what your strategy should be based on that.
It seems likely that there has been a progressive feminization of the male role over the last 10,000 years--since the advent of the Neolithic Revolution--when men became more settled, unglamorous farmers rather than macho, studly hunter-gatherers chasing woolly rhinos through the brush with fire-hardened wooden, or flint-arrowhead tipped, spears. (Personally, although I am outwardly a typical professional type, an engineer, in fact, I can't imagine anything more fun and interesting to do. The heck with this computer, desk-job stuff. Modern society and modern jobs bite. I'll take being a Neolithic hunter anyday).
But returning to the feminization issue, despite that fact, and the advent of modern feminism which has further decreased the distance between the traditional male and traditional female roles, the basic process of finding a mate probably hasn't changed that much since prehistoric times.
That being the case, this seemed to be a book with many good, practical strategies and much detailed, good advice. It is aimed at those women who are looking for a more committed, long-term relationship, or marriage, and who have more "traditional" values perhaps, than most feminists. But based on my reading of all the customer reviews here, this is what most women seem to be seeking.