Customer Reviews

Finding Your Leading Man: How to Create Male-to-Male Intimacy and Make Your Relationship a Blockbuster

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Book review for Jon

Jon Bloch's new book, "Finding Your Leading Man", is a must-read for all gay men. Finally a gay man who openly admits that, after all is said and done, gay men are MEN! I was able to review my past relationships and see where mistakes were made based on Jon's analysis of the various types of personalities. His eye-opening insight into the core paradigms we hold for ourselves and others will now enable me to avoid costly mistakes in my own life in the future. I am recommending this book to all my gay male clients as well as colleagues of all orientations who work with the gay community.

Terry Drew Karanen, DD, LhD, Support Services Unlimited, Atlanta, GA

This book does a great, funny job of making sense of the world of gay male dating. It's straightforward enough for ANYONE to understand it, and see himself in one of the sometimes-tough-to-admit-but-always-fun personality types. It will change the way you think about yourself--and romance and love. And it will do it in way that makes you laugh and think. Even though I SHOULD have bought them copies, LOL, I showed this book to several friends - and they enjoyed it as much as I did. Don't be as cheap as me! - LOL - makes a great gift!!!

Here we have yet another example of a self-help book that divides gay men into a low number of personality types and tries to explain everything in terms of those personality types. If there were any science involved in determining these personality types, you'd think that the self-help authors would eventually agree on what they are or even how many there are. But no.

The author tells us that there are twelve types, just as there are twelve signs in astrology, and I'm sure they're just as accurate. I went over them with my boyfriend, and we agreed that each of us sounded like two or three of them. Even aside from that, the characterizations aren't convincing. For instance, it's hard to draw a bright line between the Misfit and the Shy Snob, and yet the two are supposed to be complete opposites in their interactions with the Blue-Collar Guy.

The book goes downhill from there. After having explained the twelve types in detail, the book synopsizes them in a way that makes them all sound dreadful. Then, to see how unrealistic it is when we act in certain ways, we are asked to consider how we would react if straight men acted in those same ways. That's fair as far as it goes, but all of the author's examples seem strained, and a few seem to have it exactly backwards.

This book is moderately amusing, and some things in it even ring true, but ultimately, it seems like The Rules for gay men.