Reading Your Male: An Invitation to Understand and Influence Your Man's Sexuality [Paperback]

Mary Farrar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2009

There is a crisis today among Christian men in the area of sexual sin. Wives, girlfriends, and mothers know this and want to help - they just don't know how. Mary Farrar illuminates to women men's innermost feelings, exposes the dichotomy in male/female communication, and shows that women can play an active role in this ongoing battle. There's also advice for single women who want to relate to single men, and mothers of boys will find a strong chapter about the role they play in the healthy sexual development of their sons. With up-to-date psychological research, Reading Your Male is an indispensable resource, equipping a woman to fight wisely and effectively alongside her man in the ongoing struggle against sexual sin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: David C. Cook; New edition (February 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1434768716
• ISBN-13: 978-1434768711
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #803,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm a female who loved this book..., April 9, 2009

By 

Janine Cave "music lover" (colorado springs, co) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reading Your Male: An Invitation to Understand and Influence Your Man's Sexuality (Paperback)

I loved this book. I'm a woman who just got married later in life for the first time...I'm 42. My mother has passed away and I have NO ONE to talk to about several of these issues. The Bible does instruct the older women to educate the younger ones. I feel that I've missed out on a lot of that - this book helps give me an understanding that I didn't have before.

I so appreciated her guidelines. In our society where we have no guidelines, this book helps give us some. Of course she paints men with a broad brush and I totally get that not all men are like that. But it does give me tools in my toolbox to help understand my new husband.

And to the men who don't like this book - this book isn't for you anyway!

This is a great book for WOMEN who need basic understanding in the area of men's sexuality, pornography and the marriage relationship.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Every Christian couple, especially new ones should read this book!, April 23, 2009

By 

Russ Emrick (Monument, CO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Reading Your Male: An Invitation to Understand and Influence Your Man's Sexuality (Paperback)

(What's this?)

I would give this to every young Christian couple, every couple in counseling, and every believer considering marriage. This is a rare attempt at trying to understand male sexuality by woman - without the vitriol or feminist assumptions of the current culture.

The struggle Christian men have with sexuality and sexual purity is very difficult. Paul commands us to have "NO sexual impurity among us." Men fight daily, perhaps even hourly or minute-by-minute, with thoughts, visual stimulation and a cultural onslaught of pornographic and sexually charged influences. Our wives can help us with our struggle or become part of the problem. Mrs. Farrar has written a book to help woman of all ages understand men better and be our helpmates in this very critical area.

"Men are from earth and woman are from earth" points us back to the truth that we are all humans, actually designed to get along and enhance each others lives. This book is a genuine attempt to better the relationship between a wife and her husband through understanding male sexuality - a core component of the male psyche.

This book has terrible flaws as other reviewers point out. The book places far too much emphasis on the problem, overwhelms the reader with a verbose treatise on pornography, and often looses its way. The author thinks that young virgin male's discussions about sex are profound - revealing her own initial ignorance on the subject. However that is the genius - most woman, especially Christian woman are incredibility naïve about male sexuality.

Please don't be influenced by the negative reviews which are more about their aversion to Christianity and sexual purity than this book. Mrs. Farrar NEVER advocates submission or stereotyped male/female roles. Mrs. Farrar is not perfect, her opinions aren't always correct (are anyone's?). However she gets it right far more often than wrong. The book doesn't promote going back to Mrs. Clever of the 50's or any such nonsense.

There are some truths, truths that have been historically accurate for thousands of years. Unfortunately such truths conflict with modern thinking, modern values and Mrs. Farrar has had the temerity to point out some of these aberrant ideas. Men have been feminized, that is looking at the world "through the eyes of woman." Masculinity is thought of in terms of Homer Simpson, instead of chivalry, duty, and stewardship.

Want to be a better spouse? Read this book. Want to be part of the solution for a struggling partner with sexual addiction or tests? Read this book. Want some information and the tools to turn back the assault on the entire body of Christ (sexual sin)? Read this book. Ignore the bad reviews; to them a sexually pure, sexually supportive heterosexual married relationship is outdated. To them restricting sex to marriage - heterosexual marriage - is puritanical.. I hope to you, a believer, it isn't.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hard to read, could not finish. Many unsubstantiated claims., June 19, 2009

By 

Rachel Himes (Indiana, Pennsylvania USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reading Your Male: An Invitation to Understand and Influence Your Man's Sexuality (Paperback)

(What's this?)

The author of this book obviously has a great deal of life-experience and a willingness to learn from those around her. She is also a very educated woman, but her perspective is limited. Mrs. Farrar makes a few good points, but takes a long time getting to them. She cites some interesting facts and research, but little of it is actually pertinent to the subject she is dealing with. Most is relevent to a platform on which she makes a parallel case to the subject. It would have been better to print more research of direct correlation to the subject at hand.

She makes some good suggestions about helping men to be "men" and delineates some God-given differences in male and female behavior and how to address those differences in raising children. She makes an excellent point about the need to raise boys to be men, rather than "feminizing" them and teaching them to be more like women. That particular chapter was fascinating. The one factor that I found repeatedly annoying was that few of her points were based on fact, research or scripture, but the majority of it was based upon converstations with people in her immediate circle of influence and her own husband and sons. Many young women reading this books would not be able to related to Mrs. Farrar because of some generational differences in sexual perspective.

Some have said that she discouraged women from "initiating" because it was the "man's role" to do so. This is not accurate. She makes a very good case that the man is God-wired to be more sexually driven and that he should be the primary initator in most cases, but she does not state that a woman should never initiate. Some other Christian authors on the same subject have stated differently, that a woman taking the initiative is an excellent way to make a husband feel that the interest is mutual rather than tolerated. However, I would add to this that lighting candles or wearing an intriguing piece of lingerie would communicate interest rather clearly. Overall, she does make a few good points, but I would not recommend this as a first read on Christian sexuality. There are many better books out there that draw more heavily on fact than experience and relate a little more closely to younger readers. That said, I hope that Mrs. Farrar takes another chance as an author because she obviously has potential.