Book Review: HE’S SCARED, SHE’S SCARED, by Michael Carter and Julia Sokol
After writing “Men Who Can’t Love” about commitment-phobia (I can never figure out if that’s two words or one so I take the easy way out and use the hyphen), enough complaints about it being biased against men prompted the author(s) to do a follow-up book to fill some holes. I suspect that probably making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of the first book was another good reason for this follow-up. Let’s see if the sequel is as good as the original.
This book is very similar to Men Who Can’t Love and uses many interviews and studies of many men and women who have been screwed, both literally and figuratively in relationships. Some of my favorite stories include the lady who was engaged to be married, had a wedding date set, and then her fiance joined the Peace Corps and left the country two days before the wedding…without her! This is a fun, and great book once again explaining the crazy thought processes of commitment-phobes (there’s that hyphen again) and how they disqualify and run away from great partners. Her Mom is fat so maybe she’ll be fat – write off. I don’t like the way she holds a fork – write off. She’s too short, she’s too rich, she’s too…you name it. I’ve been doing it my whole life.
I liked this book a lot. It was pretty much the same as the first one, but better organized. It didn’t go so much into how to fix the problem other than to recognize it, and seek a therapist! But that’s fine because just reading it made me feel less crazy and will likely make you feel like you’re more normal than not since other people experience or behave the same.. I could have sworn I saw myself on many of the pages and felt comforted that I was not the only one who has acted weird in the past. The part where he talked about how the more you love a guy the more he resents you for loving him hit a good chord with me since years ago I went through that. Thank the Universe for progress!
Again, I highly recommend the book, even though it is repetitive. Even though the book was supposed to address how women are also phobic, I think the author just sprinkled in a couple of female cases just to appease some critics – the book is really about how crazy we guys are. Besides, naturally speaking it’s mostly us men who are programmed to spread our seed among many and in this way it’s harder for many of us to make a commitment to just one person. If you liked Men Who Can’t Love, you’ll like this one as well.
