<p>i can’t urge you strongly enough to get this book</p>
<p>the author talks about the “addiction” of trying to fix the wrong guys, and it is never just one, the pattern repeats itself</p>
<p>the book is just a book, but almost every person can either see themselves or someone they careabout in it, some say it was pop physcology, but so what…it helped many, and your D fits the profile, as did I years ago
a reivew</p>
<p>Women Who Love Too Much
…being the book that explained why relationships can be addictive</p>
<p>‘When we read a self-help book and underline all the passages we think would help him… we are loving too much.’</p>
<p>I first approached Robin Norwood’s best-selling pop psychology book, Women Who Love Too Much with the scepticism I always reserve for self-help material that appears to offer an easy answer to complex psychological distress. However, I was soon completely hooked on this analysis of relationships for women (and sometimes men) as an addictive process - a strategy of focussing on the short-comings and excesses of someone else in order to avoid confronting internal problems. Robin Norwood defines women ‘who love too much’ as being ‘attracted not to what a man is but to his potential’; they fall into ‘a pattern of picking men whom they see as needing their help’.</p>
<p>Ironically, in traditional ‘loving too much’ fashion, before I started to read the book properly for myself I gave away two copies to women friends whom I judged to be in worse straits than me. Soon, however, the book became my bible. Its clear and straightforward prose was as comforting as its analyses were painfully honest. I cannot say that it singlehandedly solved my problems but it was certainly a turning-point in my approach to relationships, sexual or otherwise. And it has played the same role for many other women.</p>
<p>Robin Norwood runs through a collection of sad case histories of women (and some men) who have been or are still ‘loving too much’ and she includes herself among them. These women are stuck in relationships that are clearly bad for them, and range from the proverbial battered wife who keeps going back for more to the woman who allows her self-confidence to be gradually annihilated by an insidious verbal cruelty.</p>
<p>Norwood draws from her experience as a therapist in the US to observe that women ‘who love too much’ have invariably grown up in disfunctional families: families where there is a shared denial of reality; where for one reason or another the children are forced to draw on their own resources far too young, before they are really ready for such a responsibility. She observes that under these conditions women tend to become overly dependent on a person or relationship, whereas men are more often drawn to addictive substances or workaholism.</p>
<p>In either case they are unable to realize fully their own potential as human beings and develop in adulthood an unhealthy dependency which in some way mirrors the conditions present in their childhood. Placed in a more healthy situation or relationship they feel uncomfortable, threatened, bored or restless and will inevitably return to the less beneficial relationships or addictions when the opportunity occurs. The book contains a stringent programme for rehabilitation of a woman who loves too much’ in which her symptoms are paralleled with those of an alcoholic. Achieving the main objective of the programme - raising the woman’s self-esteem - is a mammoth task as it entails confrontation with feelings that stem from deeply buried childhood experiences.</p>
<p>The book’s focus leaves no room for analysis of gay, lesbian or bisexual experiences. Also, perhaps inevitably, bulimia, anorexia and alcoholism are portrayed as secondary addictions to that of ‘loving too much’. But this concentrated approach does allow the author to unveil the incredibly powerful myth of romantic love that permeates our culture, whether it be in women’s magazines, soap operas, advertisements, music, film or social expectations - and to set out squarely and clearly the damage that this myth has done.</p>
<p>Her reading of the Beauty and the Beast folk tale is particularly telling. In the story Beauty agrees to live with the Beast, a terrifying monster, in order to save her father from his wrath. At first she finds the Beast abhorrent but when she gets to know him she grows to love him. At this point the Beast is magically transformed into a handsome prince with whom she lives happily ever after.</p>
<p>Our cultural bias leads us to interpret this story as showing that a woman can change a man if she loves him enough. But, as the book shows again and again, this does not happen in reality. Robin Norwood believes the tale shows something more positive. Beauty has no need for the beast to change. She loves him as he is, and because of this he is freed to become his best self.</p>
<p>In many ways Women Who Love Too Much is everywoman’s story. It is a modern classic because it shows, in everyday rather than ‘feminist’ language, the devious sexist nature of contemporary Western culture with which all women - however healthy their family background - have to contend.</p>
<p>Judy Kendall</p>
<p>Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood (Arrow/Random Century).</p>