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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Trying to make the agonizing decision whether to get out of a troubled, potentially life-wrecking relationship is the specific ambivalence this book addresses. The reader is offered a focused way to deal with one critical issue at a time rather than sort endlessly through the whole messy bundle of emotional pros and cons. Kirshenbaum's expertise allows her to pinpoint the pertinent questions. The Boston psychotherapist, who does relationship counseling, offers a series of them, amplified with guidelines: "Power people poison passion"; "If your partner can't even see what it is about him that makes you want to get out, it's time to get out"; "If it never was very good, it'll never be very good." And threaded through the book, which is written in a sympathetic, chatty, accessible style, are validating anecdotes that dramatize how other people have experienced and responded to the same problems the reader is going through.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
For those struggling to decide if a relationship is worth trying to save, Kirshenbaum (clinical director, Chestnut Hill Inst.) knows the issues and explains them clearly, presenting 36 well-phrased and well-ordered diagnostic questions, giving examples, and then succinctly offering guidelines to follow. Those who give certain answers to the diagnostic questions will be faced not only with a realization of how deep the problems may be but also with Kirshenbaum's repeated admonitions that "most people who answered the question the way you did were happy they left and unhappy they stayed." Her emphatic prescriptions for such nuanced problems, as well as her promise that "new hope is now entirely realistic for you" and assurance that "there are definite answers for you here," should make most readers wary. But Kirshenbaum does caution that "nothing in the book overrules what a good therapist...might tell you," and she will help readers sort out ambivalent feelings about relationships. For larger public library collections.?Susan E. Burdick, Reading, Pa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Be Very Cautious About This Book,
By "jim-in-dc" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship (Paperback)
My wife and I have been married six years and have had marital troubles for nearly a year. However, we are taking very concrete steps to try to address them and we're making good progress. We're learning a lot more about ourselves and each other, about personalities and temperaments and what influences them. Now we are better able to appreciate how those factors manifest in our day-to-day behavior. It is hard work, but we both agree that in the end it's worth it -- regardless of the eventual outcome of our marriage. This book was recommended to me by a person that I have generally known to have good judgement, so I took a look. I can say without a doubt that if I had read this book a year ago, my wife and I would now be divorced and that decision would have been the biggest mistake of our lives. Several of the so-called guidelines pointed to behavior on my wife's part AND others on my own part that would have caused each of us to conclude that we would be more happy if we left than stayed. The method of decisionmaking suggested by this book is bereft of the kind of hard work it really takes to evaluate the future of a relationship and the behavior of people in relationships. It fails to explore personality types -- a cornerstone to understanding why your partner may behave the way he or she behaves. It also assumes the problem MUST reside within your partner, not within yourself. In my relationship, the problem was 80% of my own creation. But, through self-evaluation and study we have been able to LEARN more about our own personalities so that now we can better appreciate our differences and give our love for one another a chance to flourish. Unfortunately, this book rests on the premise that people are inflexible, cannot observe themselves and that their mates cannot change themselves, and therefore, whatever you've got is as good as it will get. I disagree and urge anyone who reads this to use great caution. Mira Kirshenbaum has attempted to boil life and relatinships into a simplicity that belittles the capacity of humans to love and change.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scary - in the best sense,
By A Customer
This review is from: Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship (Paperback)
My husband & I have had our share of ups & downs over 20 years; 10 years ago we did marriage counseling for 2 years, and just started up agin. We're in the middle of a nasty, passive-aggressive fight right now, so I bought this book yesterday when I was in the bookstore for something else (also reading Goleman's Emotional Intelligence - enlightening stuff). I'm about half-way through, and I want to buy a copy for my husband to read. I'm afraid that I recognized myself in some of the chapters, here I'm thinking I might want to leave - what if he wants to leave me? MK's questions are truly helping me to focus on what issues are important, and I believe will help us focus our discussions with our counselor to be more productive. If I'm doing destructive things, and this relationship has value to me, then I need to work on changing those behaviors. We have lots to work on, but I suspect this book has articulated something for me that my husband has never been able to, and it feels at the moment like this has the potential to turn things around for me (and, I hope, us).The concepts are very clearly communicated, with examples, which always helps me to really "get" concepts. It's an easy read, though I recommend keeping a box of tissues nearby. Obviously it's very thought-provoking. As other reviewers have said (often more eloquently) - MK is gentle but very very direct. She will support your quest for honest answers, and in my mind has been careful to leave the ultimate decision in the readers' hands. That said, it is SO helpful to have feedback from other people who've had the same questions I do. I wasn't going to give the book 5 stars because I don't want to give the impression that it has all the answers - but I've changed my mind, because I think that a book that points you at your own answers is probably superior.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clarity,
By A Customer
This review is from: Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship (Paperback)
I am a cynical, over-educated kind of person who has read a few self-help books before, including a few "classics", and generally been unimpressed. But this one is completely different. I picked it up in the bookstore and read it right through there in the store. I had been wasting my life (and someone else's) by being on-the-fence for let's say several years. But Mira Kirshenbaum's honest, down-to-earth, and really smart book made me realize that I knew the answer all along. I'm not telling what my decision was, this is an online review after all, not a group therapy session, but I know that it was the right decision. It is a beautiful book, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone facing the excruciating dilemma "too good to leave, too bad to stay"...
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