Description:
Author Casey Maxwell Clair lays it out in the introduction: she's not a therapist or counselor, just a woman who spent a few long years figuring things out. What she has found is that bad relationships vary in the details, but are all grounded in the concept of availability, or a lack thereof. Still Single explores a variety of reasons that may lie behind your unavailability. Clair isn't talking about not returning messages, but larger issues like dating married men, falling into teacher/pupil-type relationships, and tolerating substance abuse or infidelity. Each chapter contains personal stories for illustration and is fairly dense with information. Each ends with a short review and stands on its own without your having to read the entire book, but in general this is not a typical self-help book full of short lists and blocks of text. It reads more like a textbook, piling a tremendous amount of thought and exploration into each page. The book starts off by teaching you to identify your issues clearly, and then later chapters help you take decisive steps toward positive change--boosting self-esteem, ending negative relationships, and visualizing desired outcomes. If you haven't found what you're looking for in a dating manual or "follow the rules" approach, Clair's stern-but-friendly advice may allow you to discover what's keeping you from finding love, and thereby help you open yourself to it. --Jill Lightner
| 
