Customer Reviews

Moving On: The Gay Man's Guide for Coping When a Relationship Ends

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I bought this book about 5 months after my breakup with my ex. I was dealing with it very badly and needed some comfort, support, and, most importantly, information about what was going on. This book provided all of that and more. In addition to being a great book for dealing with the loss of a relationship, it also gives great advice on how to know if you need to break up, how to make future relationships work, and how to "move on".

I found this book so helpful that I bought copies for a number of friends as gifts. Even if you aren't going through a breakup, this book is interesting and very insightful. I highly recommend it.

The most useful aspect of Dann Hazel's book is his many individual testimonies. I am trying to deal with a long-term relationship that has suddenly turned very long-distance. I found the testimonies he recounts very helpful in giving a sense of the endless variety of arrangements and issues that couples deal with. This widened my ideas of what's possible and acceptable. His sections on dealing with being alone have helped me deal with suddenly living alone, while my partner is in another country for a year. But I found his exercises after each chapter superficial, and his habit of always talking in terms of "we", rather than "I", "you," or "they," as appropriate became so irritating I almost didn't read the book.

It's hard to go back to being a "you" after being an "us" for so long. After the fifteen years of being a "team" existence, I felt like the cellophane wrapper on Dann's dreams. I had lost myself; mainly my own doing. I had reached my cliff and it was time to jump or drown. Dann's book has given me insight into why we broke up and how to find myself again. We remain good friends, both discovering ourselves a little more each day. Moving On a universal view of relationships and the warning signs of trouble and directions to correct the problems, or if that's not possible, move on without self destructing. Thank you, Dann. I'm your biggest fan. Godspeed on this continuing Journey. I'm so grateful for being a part of the first leg....may we all move on together.......

MR. HAZEL DOES NOT EQUIVOCATE. HE WROTE THIS BOOK IN PART TO HEAL HIS OWN HURT. AS A THERAPIST IT IS ALWAYS PAINFUL TO SEE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING SUFFERING FROM PSYCHIC PAIN ESPECIALLY WHEN SUCH SUFFERING CAN BE REMEDIED. I HOPE MANY WILL READ "MOVING ON", AND TAKE THE TOUR THROUGH PAIN TOWARD RECOVCERY AND GROWTH THAT IT OFFERS. AND IF THEY NEED SOME HELP WITH THE PROCESS I HOPE THEY HAVE THE GOOD FORTUNE TO FIND A THERAPIST AS COMMITTED TO HEALING AS DANN HAZEL APPEARS TO BE. I THANK MR. HJAZEL FOR HIS BOOK AND FOR PACKING SO MUCH USEFU9L INFORMATION INTO LESS THAN 300PAGES.

I was hoping that I would be able to identify with the stories and feel less alone in what I am going through, but there was very little in this book that I could identify with. His writing style is stilted and does not speak to the emotions. And he is very short on any useful advice. For example, for people who are feeling a high level of insecurity after a breakup (according to a quiz), he has this nugget of genius to offer: "Dangerously insecure. Don't worry. Everything's going to be all right. Pull yourself together. Things aren't that bad."

If you were to try a soup that has a very obvious flavor that you can't identify, and then when you are told what it is you say, "Aha, that's it!" in instant recognition, then you have an idea of how denial, cultural blindness, and lack of clinical depth limit this book.

The real issues involved in many gay men's breakups begin way back at the expectations the men had before going into the relationship, and those occur within the context of the extremes of gay culture and the psychic backdrop of the often traumatic experience of growing up in a homophobic society. To ask a gay man in many parts of the world what it means to grow up without homophobia, fear, humiliation, and the stamp they leave on the psyche is like asking a fish to describe growing up and living on land. To the author's credit, it can be difficult to see beyond something that is yet beyond one's own experience or recovery process to have identified. As mentioned in previous reviews, this book was written as part of the author's own healing process. In that respect, the personal stories are better reserved for memoir than for self-help. The author cannot see past himself, and actually salutes some of gay men's most tragic pitfalls in bonding, such as dating based on "woundology," the boundaryless continual talking about past relationships that often replaces healthy bonding among gay men while dating, and often keeps them stuck in self-defeating patterns. The book evades effective therapies and resolutions. The small handful of quizzes are handy for establishing the obvious: that many gay men (and others, for that matter) experience loneliness and insecurity after a breakup. But chances are that the loneliness, insecurity, and problems with intimacy were present and contributing factors as the relationship began.

One suggestion for background information: it is an essay titled, "Illusions of Intimacy" by Don Wright, and it can be found in the book, "Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma" edited by James Cassese, MSW, CSW, available on Amazon.com. It is copyrighted just one year after the release of the book being reviewed here. The article itself should be available through academic research databases. In about ten pages, Wright delves more deeply into the issues specifically affecting gay men in intimacy than "Moving On" does in almost 300 pages. Part of Wright's contribution in this article is his concise explanation of the consequences of growing up gay in a homophobic society as "sexuality abuse," and how many of the after-effects of this mirror those of sexual abuse. A lack of early boundary development, fears of abandonment, and low self-esteem stemming from the shame associated with abuse all contribute to problems with intimacy, according to Wright. Wright also provides useful, precise information about the effects of sexual abuse.

The advantage here is that most of the copies of "Moving On" that are currently listed on Amazon.com are as inexpensive as one penny plus shipping. As lightweight as it is for delving into the real issues affecting gay men's issues after breakups, the cost of obtaining the book is slight. For all the hard work that apparently went into its creation, it is a vapid work that avoids and propagates the festering of the psychic wounds it attempts to bandage. He talks about the problem and doesn't lance it. The author did not access enough contextual information and was not objective enough to make this book ultimately effective.

Another suggestion is the book "Breaking Free of the Codependency Trap" by Janae B. Weinhold Ph.D., Barry K. Weinhold Ph.D., and John Bradshaw. The Weinholds also authored "The Flight from Intimacy: Healing Your Relationship of Counter-dependence - The Other Side of Co-dependency." Both of these books are available on Amazon.com.

Unfortunately, when I purchased this book, it was the second time I was needing to read it. Although it really helped me recognize many things from my previous relationship, I remained a little hard headed and allowed myself to fall back into the previously mentioned relationship for yet a 3rd time. Although this time was different. I was able to deal with the situation a lot better than I had in the past. I didn't feel this overwhelming emptiness I had once felt. A lot of that was due to what I had remembered reading in this book. I guess I had remembered a whole lot more from the first time I read it than I realized and once I began to read it again, it all made so much more sense. For any guys out there who seek some comfort and reassurance that life does go on I highly suggest taking your time and really reading this book.

After my partner suddenly ended our relationship I was devestated and had a very difficult time moving forward without him. This book was recommended by a friend. I found the excercises at the end of each chapter helped give me a better understanding of what happened, and tools to help me move forward. Had I not read this book I feel I would still have many unanswered questions about the relationship and what went wrong.
I would recommend this to anyone going thru the pain of a terminated relationship.
Greg in New Orleans