Mama Gena's Marriage Manual: Stop Being a Good Wife, Start Being a Sister Goddess [Hardcover]

Regena Thomashauer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

So, you found yourself a man. You owned him, you operated him, you dragged him back to your cave and married him -- and now you can't remember why you wanted him! Not to fear, because celebrated relationship expert Regena Thomashauer has returned, ready to turn the walking, talking, care-taking coma that is your marriage into a hot, juicy celebration of love and life

Have you ever felt that your daily responsibilities are taking a toll on your general enthusiasm, your desire for intimacy? Or that you need to ask your husband for permission before you go somewhere or do something? Or that you find yourself angry at him for no real reason? You may be suffering from the Good Wife Syndrome. The Good Wife Syndrome is a common malady characterized by an unnatural drive to sacrifice yourself, organize your married life around your husband's needs, and then blame your bewildered husband for your profound unhappiness.

Mama Gena's Marriage Manual is here to remedy your condition by administering a simple yet tremendously effective antidote: fun. Yes, that's right, fun. Mama Gena wants you to throw out your preconceived notions of what marriage should be and allow yourself to construct a marriage based on your own personal gratification. Because whether it's enjoying a great cup of coffee, taking the day off work, or having great sex, when a woman indulges her desires she inflates her feminine power and has an uplifting effect on everything and everyone around her.

To help you on your quest to revive your marriage, Mama Gena suggests a radical idea: that the community of women around us (the support system she calls our Sister Goddesses) has a greater influence on the outcome of our relationships than the partners we choose. Women's desires can turn dreams into reality, and when women get together, their power multiplies exponentially. Mama shows you how to harness that power and channel it into the daily acts that benefit your love life. She includes dozens of exercises to help you and your Sister Goddess girlfriends focus on fun, praise yourself daily, let go of anger, and learn to appreciate the men you have. Then once you've started practicing these new behaviors, Mama trains you to train your husband -- to communicate without rancor, to welcome his point of view, to reinstate the practice of lust, and much more.

Mama Gena wants you to throw off the shackles of the Good Wife Syndrome and enjoy a marriage that's free of guilt, blame, and obligation. Mama Gena's Marriage Manual will help you craft a partnership that enables you to do more, have more, and be more than you could ever be on your own.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With her usual brash sass, Mama Gena (Mama Gena’s Owner’s and Operator’s Guide to Men) preaches to her fellow Sister Goddesses (women who have joined her School of Womanly Arts or read previous books) about how to achieve a happy marriage. The secret, she says, is learning to create constant "fun" in wedlock. By contrast, traditional preoccupations-with commitment, say, or with being a good wife-are the surest way to douse marital flames. "Commitment means absolutely nothing without fun," she reasons, and the "Good Wife Syndrome" is an "insidious poison that seeps into many relationships" when a woman shelves her desires and happiness to serve her husband. "The world exists to serve you, to celebrate you, to fulfill you," she declares. A partner, therefore, should be a trained pamperer and an accessory to pleasure-in short, a "best friend that you have sex with." Mama Gena hits on a golden truism when she prescribes that women (or anyone really) must cultivate happiness in the rest of their lives and let it radiate into love relationships. She takes this idea to a hedonistic extreme, though, when she encourages followers to discover their sensuality-even through extra-marital affairs if necessary. Based on her own "research" as wife and mother, and peppered with anecdotes from other Sister Goddesses, her gospel of self only occasionally breaks from its solipsistic celebration to remind readers to "take a moment...and notice how they the husbands are feeling." Otherwise, men take a back seat, for better or for worse, in Mama Gena’s irreverent guide to marital bliss.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Mama knows best."

-- New York Post

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743261097
• ISBN-13: 978-0743261098
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #491,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Regena Thomashauer is also the author of Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts and Mama Gena's Marriage Manual. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally - a way out of the pit of despair!, June 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Mama Gena's Marriage Manual: Stop Being a Good Wife, Start Being a Sister Goddess (Hardcover)

I have read nearly every book around trying to figure out how to fix my husband to have a better time in my marriage, and to get over my resentment. Mama Gena actually has created a deceptively simple-looking how-to manual for what works. It is definitely much easier said than done, but if you follow her tips and do the exercises, they can get you over your ego and help you communicate what you want versus silently fume over what you wanted but are not getting. Your husband will be much happier for it - and so will you. I totally recommend this book as a plan of action. And I still pick it up and reread when I'm cranky. I do still slip into the fuming thing, but I know, at least, that it's my responsibility if I want to have a better time or if I choose to suffer. As Mama implies - Thank Goddess for Sister Goddess girlfriends, and I say Thanks to Mama Gena!!

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kir royale for the soul . . ., June 7, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Mama Gena's Marriage Manual: Stop Being a Good Wife, Start Being a Sister Goddess (Hardcover)

About 10 years ago, author Dalma Heyn did a survey finding that the very happiest marriages - a tiny minority - were based on fun, rather than shared goals or values or anything like that. Who knew? More important, what to do about it?

This is the first book I've read that addresses this issue. It's not about "making your marriage work" (frankly, I work hard enough already) so much as changing your perspective to a pleasure-oriented point of view.

To that end, the book is just a delicious read, witty, generous and ebullient; I felt happier simply by reading it, without doing another thing! (There are exercises, but the ones I've tried so far are fun.) It's also very man-friendly; I found myself reading whole sections out loud to my husband, and he got all perky and happy too.

There are also explicit instructions on how to create a "sister goddess" support network, if you don't already have one.

If "Against Love" made you want to put your head in the oven, do consider reading this!

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Wonderful, July 8, 2006

By 

Ashwagandah (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mama Gena's Marriage Manual : Stop Being a Good Wife, Start Being a Sister Goddess (Hardcover)

Mama Gena is not the blanket cure for marriage problems, but she is honest in her beliefs about how joy affects the lives of everyone. She believes in living in the moment, and to learn to accept responsibilty for the joy in your own life. She never claims to be a marriage band-aid. Yes, she is getting a divorce, but that has no bearing on her books.
Some marriages have to end for the benefit of both partners, and she is a human being and therefore subject to the whims of life, just like we all are. I think it's sad whenever a relationship of so many years ends, but obviously it was in the best interest of the two people involved.
What the rest of us believe about them and their relationship, has nothing to do with the fact that she is a good writer. She has helped thousands of couples, and that there is a possibility that she is just what you have been looking for. She helped me realize that I cannot sit and wait for my husband to make me happy when I have never even tried to do that myself. That I cannot expect him to read my mind when I don't even know what I want. Sound obvious? When you become a wife, its amazing the logic that you allow to become fuzzy. Its sad that they are breaking up, but there is perfection in everything, she will find it in this. She never claimed to have a perfect relationship with her hubby. What do you think started her off on this course of marriage guidance. I'll bet she and her hubby had a wild ride before thy decided to part ways. She doesn't have all the answers, but she is a very intelligent lady.