112 of 117 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good for some, not for most, May 20, 2005
This review is from: How to Get Your Lover Back: Successful Strategies for Starting Over (& Making It Better Than It Was Before) (Paperback)
This book would be very helpful if YOU were the one who left your mate, or possibly if your mate left because he/she felt unappreciated.
For those of us who were dumped, (which is probably most people looking at the book) I would recommend searching for other books about moving on and getting on with your life, even though I'm sure that's not what you want to hear. But often the best way to get someone back is to get over them.
Women should be especially careful with the ideas in the book, since men often feel smothered and trapped in relationships. (Sending him roses every day = bad idea!) Remember, you don't want him to be glad you're gone, you want him to be surprised at how well you're doing without him! This will make him wonder if he made a mistake, versus confirming in his mind that you are needy/clingy, etc.
The book also lacks specifics. It appears to be written for married couples or people living together, since it seems to suggest that you will be seeing your ex daily, which isn't true in my case. There is really no advice on how to contact your ex if you didn't live together, and therefore have no reason to talk to him/her anymore.
It does have some good relationship advice in general, but overall it left me still wondering what to do. Instead of obsessing over it, I bought "How to Heal a Broken Heart in 30 Days," which is more helpful.
I figure if you move on and eventually start to date other people and then your ex comes back, it will be a nice surprise (or you will realize that the spell is broken and maybe you don't want them back anymore). Either way you win.
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42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
State of the art Spirituality, January 1, 2002
This review is from: How to Get Your Lover Back: Successful Strategies for Starting Over (& Making It Better Than It Was Before) (Paperback)
When my relationship soured, I was very frustrated trying to get help from counselors (influenced by 12 step programs) who only talked to me about my co-dependency, and "What was wrong with me that I wanted my partner back?" When I was really in a lot of pain, I could hear them thinking "Oh no!, Not another couple who got together without realizing how screwed up they were! Got to get them apart!" Although it's true that both my lover and I had plenty of areas to where we need to grow, we had a lot of good things going for us too, and I was pleased to find an approach which allowed me to use my strengths to improve the areas where I was weak in the relationship. I've never been convinced that wanting to work on a relationship always co-dependency. Stephan Levine, John Welwood, Gail and Hugh Prather, Barry and Joyce Vissel and others all speak of a relationship can be a path of awakening, and all would agree, I think, that there are times when one person has to carry the relationship. This book shows how to do that.
What I liked best about this book is that the author's ideas allowed me to take an *active* approach to untangling the knots in my relationship. The approach gave me something to do -- internal work on myself which made a difference in my relationship. It was not about bugging my partner.
I bought the book when I read in chapter 1 where the author wrote "A lost relationship may be a lost opportunity for growth." You don't hear that much from anyone. (And that's the way I felt, not that I just wanted to cling to my lover.If I was clinging, I wanted to stop.) And in chapter 2, "Loving 100% to Get Your Lover Back," I really enjoyed reading the author's working definition of love: "the active care and concern for the life and growth of another human being." And yes, my favorite chapter was chapter 9, "Dealing with the Resistant Lover," where the author use of many real life examples seems to bring the writing alive. Yes, my lover was resistant, and yes, I do think this chapter would be good to expand.
I don't fully agree with the March 29, 1999 reader from Irving, Texas. He says the book advises practicing "positive visualization." No. It doesn't say visualization. It says practice creating positive moments. Visualization is only one technique which might help, and the book mentions that only briefly. It rather says work on creating loving moments with your beloved, even if your beloved hates you right now. It may be true that this book doesn't tell you specifically what to do when your partner gets involved in a long term relationship with someone else and they can't or won't tell you what's going on, but I felt that the books encouragement to create positive moments covered that scenario by extension. In other words, you could, if you really wanted to, try to get your lover back if they are in a long term relationship with someone else, it would just be a matter of being very careful to maximize your opportunities to create positive moments. (But if your partner was really happy in that relationship, does loving them 100% include trying to pry them out of a situation they are happy with? That's the question.)
The July 22, 2000 reader from USA might be right when she says that the book will attract love addicts, but one of the major points of the book is to show that "addiction" to love (is addiction to Love really possible? - Charlotte Kasl, a major figure in the co-dependency movement, refutes that idea in her book Woman, Sex, and Addiction) really doesn't work. Making a pest of your self doesn't work. Smothering doesn't work. Failing to love your own self and failing keeping your energy up doesn't work. Love is defined in this book as showing your partner "active care and concern" and keeping your neediness out of the way while you try to create positive, intimate moments. Only 100% pure love, including loving your self, allows you to create such moments.
I feel it is one of the few books which has some practical techniques about how to prevent your relationship from becoming another statistic in the 50%+ divorce rate. (I don't object to divorce necessarily, by why is it so many of us are getting up and saying "`til death do us part," when we can't seem to live up to it?) This book helped me understand what goes wrong when people get intimate and gave me ideas about what "one person can do to get the two of you back together." Maybe you can't change your partner, but you can keep an eye out for your own reactive patterns. (Watching out that you don't step into your partner's stuff doesn't hurt neither.)
Amazon has an interview with the author at .....
I've heard that this author is working on several other books, including one called Radical Intimacy: How to Dance in Tune with Your Own Life Force, and also that he has recently recorded a "book on tape" version of How to Get Your Lover Back.
I found a web site about this book, ...... Apparently the author also runs a retreat or something someplace in Hawaii where he helps people with their relationships.
- ....
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45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Stuff Really Works!, July 5, 2005
This review is from: How to Get Your Lover Back: Successful Strategies for Starting Over (& Making It Better Than It Was Before) (Paperback)
The best thing about this book is that it helps you gain some control over what seems to be an experience much like driving a car over a cliff at 100 mph while wearing a blindfold.
I first read How to Get Your Lover Back at the on-set of a doomed relationship. It worked then, though I eventually realized that I didn't want the relationship. I read it again a few years later to save a relationship that very well feels like it will be a forever one. Both times, the guidance provided in this book prevailed.
Not only is it a book about how to regain your loved one's affection, but also provides guidance on how to truly develop as a person capable of a long-term relationship. It helped me understand how my behavior needed to change in order to gain what I wanted in myself and for my relationship.
Instead of begging and pleading, Harris coaches the reader to modify destructive behavior patterns, those typical "needy," co-dependent behaviors that only push your loved one further away--like competing with a new person in your intended's life, caving in to calling or contacting your loved one, and creating negative experiences when you do communicate, to name a few topics discussed.
Instead of making those common mistakes, you will evaluate the healthfulness of the relationship, grow to understand the concept of giving 100% love, and gain a perspective on how to modify your behavior so that you are a stable, secure person who is the picture of what your lover wants and needs.
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