Customer Reviews

Odyssey of the Heart: Close Relationships in the 21st Century

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This book has the same problem that many books on close relationships have: Part of its title is missing.

The subtitle "close Relationships in the 21st Century" implies a progressive study of close relationships, however it would be more aptly subtitled "close relationships BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN in the 21st Century," because like most books of its nature it implies without directly stating it that the only important close relationships worth studying are fine, traditional Christian relationships between MEN and WOMEN.

Every point, every example, every quotation from every author pertains to the study of close relationships as institutionalized by the warped looking glass of monotheistic America.

Homosexuality and relationships between men are touched on only briefly and in a hypothetical sense.

While many of the points presented and examined can pertain to both homosexual and heterosexual relationships, the effort of sorting out which parts can be applied to non-traditional relationships is too much effort to justify using this book as a frame of reference on the topic of close relationships. The bias impedes learning on the subject matter so much that one would be better off with one's own observations on close relationships than by having their judgment clouded by reading this title.

The authors go on for chapters about interpersonal relationships between married men and women and make such bold statements as a man can only be truly happy and productive when he is married to a woman: "...marriage is, indeed, the best state for a man in general, and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state."

As an unmarried, bisexual male in committed relationship with another male, who has a successful career and is generally happy in life, I find this assessment to be offensive and the general viewpoints of the authors to be unacceptably derisive toward alternative relationships to the point of being bunk.

Pages and pages discuss the problems that exist in households where children of divorced parents live with a single mother. I don't understand what this has to do with close relationships in general at all.

This book is more of a discussion of the interpersonal relations of married men and women than a discussion of close relationships.

If you want to learn all about traditional heterosexual marriages this book is a good starting point. However there are some functional problems with the material as well.

For one, rather than discussing source material as most authors would do, the authors merely dump long tables of data out for the reader to assemble and consume themselves.

Another problem is that the authors frequently criticize and even insult other professionals in the field outright in a childish and unproductive manner.

After reading the first two chapters and the introduction it was clear the direction the book was taking was entirely biased and so as learning material for the study of close relationships I highly recommend looking elsewhere.