Why Can't I Fall in Love? A 12-Step Program [Hardcover]

Shmuley Boteach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2001

If any of this sounds familiar, you're not alone. We've become a nation of lonely serial daters, consumed by work, suspicious of romance, so unsure of finding lasting love that we settle for dispiriting blind dates and the company of friends. In short, we've forgotten how to fall in love.

But help is on the way. In Why Can't I Pall in Love? Shmuley Boteach, author of the international bestseller Kosher Sex, offers hope for anyone who wonders why love is so hard to find. Bringing love into your life, he counsels, is about more than just sizing up candidates and waiting for a ring. It's about finding your way back to innocence -- back to the Garden, where Adam and Eve invented romance.

Combining anecdotes with practical tips, Boteach proposes a radical new approach to love, an approach designed to help singles and those in long-term relationships alike. And his Twelve LoveSteps program describes measures anyone can take to make the dream of love a reality, including:Heal your love woundCall a moratorium on datingLet go of people who are wasting your timeRecapture your mental virginity

Filled with helpful exercises -- including a Declaration of Dependence to be signed and shared with potential mates -- Why Can't I Fall in Love? offers a refreshingly positive strategy to help you embrace love...and change your life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After a long, preachy start denouncing contemporary society with its high divorce rate and "commitment-phobic" singles, idealizing marriages of the past and articulating some gender stereotypes that may turn off some readers the author of Kosher Sex ends up delivering a wealth of solid, specific and practical advice for the lonely. Refusing to accept protestations of contentment from singles, Rabbi Boteach insists that commitment to a loving relationship is fundamental to human well-being and happiness. He blames the widespread inability to find long-lasting love on consumer habits that have crept into current dating mores (e.g., waiting for the "best" person to marry), and spending too much time on love-substitutes (work, friends, sex, independence) that prevent love from entering the lives of men and women alike. With his usual sprinkling of religious references (Adam and Eve are used as relationship role models), Boteach encourages singles to acknowledge their loneliness and work on their own behaviors and choices instead of merely lamenting the lack of worthy mates or lauding the joys of the single life. He recommends "emotional nakedness" before the other kind, and a complete shift from "dating for sport" to dating for love and marriage. An enthusiastic advocate for marriage, although (or perhaps because) his own parents were unhappily married and ultimately divorced, Boteach firmly places responsibility for finding and maintaining love on the shoulders of each reader. (May)Forecast: A lively and popular talk-show guest, Rabbi Boteach will make appearances on a 25-city radio campaign and a five-city author tour, though his target audience of singles may not be as likely to buy this type of dating/marriage book as they would a book on Kosher Sex.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Presents a thorough , grounded discussion...(on) the current context of the problem...and offers some interesting solutions." (Dr. Drew Pinsky, tv and radio co-host of Loveline )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (May 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060393467
• ISBN-13: 978-0060393465
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,843,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is one of the world's leading relationship experts and spiritual authorities. His twenty-one books have been bestsellers in seventeen languages, and his award winning syndicated column is read by a global audience of millions. He is the host of TLC's award-winning Shalom in the Home and was Oprah Winfrey's love, marriage, and parenting expert on Oprah and Friends. He served for eleven years as rabbi at Oxford University, where he built the Oxford L'Chaim Society into the University's second largest student organization. Today, Newsweek calls him the most famous rabbi in America. The winner of the highly prestigious London Times Preacher of the Year award, Rabbi Shmuley is also the recipient of the National Fatherhood Award and the American Jewish Press Association's Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Debbie, and their nine children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable Guide for those seeking real love, June 20, 2001

By 

S. Shiebler (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why Can't I Fall in Love? A 12-Step Program (Hardcover)

Author Shmuley Boteach creates a much needed and long overdue "user friendly" guide for singles caught in the often frustrating and unpredictable maelstrom known as the dating world.

By extending compassion and offering tools for honest self-examination, Boteach takes the reader on a witty and yet serious journey into the necessary introspection required for every single who is serious about finding a soul mate. The author is never stuffy or preachy but always extremely down to earth. Clearly an amazingly experienced and reputed relationship expert, Boteach writes confidently, with a distinctive and deserved authority. Without apology, he brazenly addresses the issues at hand, incorporating a no nonsense approach, going straight to the heart of the dating matter. He evidently has an uncanny understanding of the pitfalls associated with dating as mere sport and how many singles unconsciously get caught in a cycle of self-pity leading to inevitable self-defeat.

Being single myself and considering the observably downtrodden and discouraged state of many of my single contemporaries, I found this book to be extremely practical and generously offering surprisingly sound advice rather than just expounding upon the lamenting title, "Why Can't I Fall in Love?" In purchasing this book, I was at first rather tentative. The title deceptively fooled me into believing that it was a book in which I would find my self diagnosed among those singles now labeled as, "helpless and hopeless." Much to the contrary, I have come away with a book which I am now reading for the second time, wanting to further absorb it's remarkable tenets. Many other singles have shared with me their using, "Why Can't I Fall in Love?" as a reference guide for deciphering the baffling world of their emotions as single men and women.

Considering the self-admitted, quasi-closet-dysfunctional state of many singles, the book is ingeniously written in classic, "Twelve Step" format. Once the challenging quizzes throughout and adventurous exercises are completed, poor and addictive dating habits are no longer viable and productive healing is offered as in any other "Twelve Step Program." The reader is now able to understand common dating myths and albeit reluctantly, also identify with the hidden fears which plague many singles. Through this thought-training process, Boteach paradoxically creates a greater vulnerability in the heart of a single person as he prepares them for big event, the pursuit of real love.

"Why Can't I Fall in Love" is similar to Boteach's previous and not surprisingly, bestseller, "Kosher Sex." Both works reflect Boteach's profound commitment to romantic love as key to reaching the highest state of human happiness. The difference in these two works is that this new manual for finding love will appeal to a much larger reading audience as it is comprised of the rising numbers of those marrying later and those suddenly divorced and finding themselves back in the field. My only critique is that this book should have anteceded "Kosher Sex" in laying the groundwork for the foundations of the ultimate goal which is of course, unbreakable monogamy.

Despite the change in the dating scene in the past few decades, the author addresses those very dynamics, all the while maintaining the fundamental principles of dating and marriage, thus preventing the book itself from ever becoming "dated." With Boteach's gift of storytelling and matchless wit, the reader becomes so relaxed that they suddenly feel as if they are in private and on going counseling sessions, being given free of charge.

Boteach has saved the day here for wayward singles. "Why Can't I Fall in Love?" offers a map to navigate the fearful and unchartered course towards finding a soul mate. Boteach's merciless call to honesty, challenges even the most hardened skeptic about the deep and abiding human need for romantic love. The value of his insights for lonely and searching singles cannot be overstated.

To say that this book is a "must have" for every single is rather cliche' and yet "mandatory" is even more apropos. "Why Can't I Fall in Love?, A 12-step program, is truly an invaluable tool for healing, survival and ultimately prospering, in the quest for true love.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Incredibly Powerful Book!, August 10, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Why Can't I Fall in Love? A 12-Step Program (Hardcover)

This book was such a pleasure to read! Once I picked up, "Why Can't I Fall in Love," I couldn't put it down! This book made me laugh while seriously wanting to face the stagnant state of my singlehood. As each compelling chapter unfolded, I began understanding the common mistakes singles make which lead to an inevitable downward spiral straight into the dating doldrums.

Shmuley Boteach guides and leads you beyond the myths and the delusions, into an Eden of new thinking. Boteach also impressively "practices what he preaches," Clearly a serious family man, and unashamedly still in love with his wife of many years, the reader starts to realize that this author must have some secret and thankfully, he more than gladly shares it. I was also impressed by his respect for women which is extremely profound and so welcome in a society where women still often tend to be viewed as mere sex-objects.

Although the author's reputation as a controversial figure often precedes him, give him his due, Boteach knows relationship and love like no other author on the market. His penchant for complacency is never to be taken seriously as it is always in the name of humor and is offset by the humility found in his endearing, and when required, self-deprecating style. I'm convinced that through this extraordinary book, the average, lovelorn single could even find a way to meet someone despite being stranded alone on a desert island! I have personally applied his innovative yet simple concepts and have finally found the relationship I have always been in search of! Without this book and it's stimulating and enriching "love lessons," I would certainly still be alone. S. Boteach ventures out with such concern for the lonely at heart that you can't come away without being moved and transformed. For those of any age who dread remaining terminally single, "Why Can't I Fall in Love" has the cure!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It offers a different perspective..., November 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Why Can't I Fall in Love? A 12-Step Program (Hardcover)

I have to agree with many of the other reviewers...this was a provoking book. Rabbi Boteach's humor makes this rather insightful and "heavy" book an easier read. His focus on relationships as something sacred is refreshing...the idea that you are on your search for your "true love," rather than just "dating."