The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

Product Information

The amazing thing is, all of the introspection Neil does, actually teaches you alot about how we think about love, sex, and relationships. How our culture views those things, and if there may possibly be a better choice than an archaic system of monogamous marriage. I leave the reader to make their own conclusion on that one, but if you make it to the end of the book, you will find out what Neil discovered in all his adventures over the past two years. Si comincia dalla versione B: B nel senso di biografia. La biografia di Andrew Bevel scritta da Harold Vanner. I mean, this was valuable reading material for me in that I meet guys like this so often that I constantly need new ways to purge all their flailing insecure nonsense by trying to understand them better.

I used to think that intelligence came from books and knowledge and rational thought. But that's not intelligence, that's just information and interpretation. Real intelligence is when your mind and heart connect. That's when you see the truth so clearly and unmistakably that you don't have to think about it. In fact, all thinking will do is lead you away from the truth. Neil takes us in great depth, detail, and humor through his experiences in sex rehab, in open relationships, with sexual adventures and fantasies of kinds I didn't even know EXISTED! And he does it in a way that makes you laugh out loud the ENTIRE way through the book. This is easily one of the funniest books I have ever read. Neil is honest and blunt to a fault. I am not going to go into the specifics of what he talks about, but it has alot to do with threesomes, orgys, drugs, more orgys, open relationships, girls of a type I never knew existed, and again, more orgys. It is a brutally honest look at life, love, sex, and relationships. I love narratives about narratives, stories within stories, and TRUST is an excellent example of the genre that is also one of the most straightforward. I know some readers dislike a feeling of manipulation or bait and switch when they find one narrative to contradict the other, but while those things happen in this book, the book also isn't interested in pulling the rug. It is quite clear about what each section is, and it illuminates as you go.As I take her hand in mine, I realize that before trauma healing, I always wanted more—more women, more success, more money, more space, more experience, more possessions. Not once did I stop and say, as I do now, “I have enough.”

This is a very American perspective. Not only is “The Game”, Neil’s most famous book, the embodiment of a certain pervasive male culture and perception of women that, sometimes, feels very alien to me, but also his whole journey through the sex addiction therapy, the sex positive sub-culture, his thoughts on the needs of men and (especially) women in relationships – everything is thoroughly colored by this very particular American brand of sexism and sexualized misogyny. The 'Rashomon' structure is neither executed well, nor particularly revelatory of any major surprises - it goes pretty much where you expect it to - and necessitated that long sections of the book were written in substandard prose to carry out the conceit. I cared not a whit for ANY of the characters, and the subsidiary ones who disappeared all too soon were far more interesting than any of the major players. I'd have loved to hear more of 'tieless man in suit'. This insight made him understand how the power of early life experience set a template upon which later experiences and behaviour is built. So far so good, but then his narrative gets too neat and tidy when he implies he is now in happily ever after mode. I accept that this is his interpretative reality and he is trying to instill hope but I don't feel he is being completely honest with his readers because recovery and restoration from the kind of attachment trauma and childhood wounding he describes is very difficult to overcome, as is learning new relationship behaviour.

I went into the novel with huge stores of leftover goodwill from reading In the Distance. I also loved the idea of reading multiple rashomon-like reveals and revelations, and I read along in the beginning with great anticipation, and tried to retain my interest long enough to get to the next passage or sentence or anything at all that might remind me of how much I loved Díaz's debut...

Then, in part three, women finally get a voice, as it is told by Ida Partenza, the ghostwriter of the manuscript in part two (are you still following, class? :-)). Here, we learn how she was tasked to craft the autobiography of Bevel, and what Bevel wanted to achieve with it. Also, the Rand-like character of Bevel is contrasted with Ida's dad, an Italian anarchist, and her lover, a dedicated opportunist masquerading as a leftist-type of guy. Stuff is said about Karl Marx, and as as someone who studied PoliSci in Karl's hometown, my arm now hurts because of all the facepalming I had to do due to the simplistic ideas about Marxism uttered in this text. That is not to say that the themes and especially his deeper insights aren’t universal. So I don’t mean this derogatory in any way. Neil Strauss has (or had) severe issues with commitment, trust, and fidelity, and wrote a book about his attempts to solve them. That's fine, except instead of realising how messed up he is, or how personal his issues are, he tries to portray his misadventures as something that everyone can relate to, just another phase of growing up, like going through puberty. As if every man is so uncontrollably sex-obsessed that he can't bear the thought of staying in a committed monogamous relationship with nothing extra on the side. As if being a cheater is something that happens to you from the outside, and not a decision that you make yourself. It's ironic that for a book that's supposedly about growing up and maturing (Strauss was in his forties when the events of this book occurred), Strauss comes across as petty, insecure, selfish, and narcissistic throughout. He claims to have learned his lesson in the end, but I didn't find it very convincing. This isn’t to say that the artful construction and structure of the book belies it’s claims to authenticity. There’s really not a moment where you feel that Neil is being untruthful or trying to polish up his image or excuse his past excesses. If anything, it feels painfully honest to a fault - even a little self-pitying at times; the phrase “I’m not the hero of this book, I’m the villain” echoes over and over through the narrative. This actually annoys me. While yes, I do have the benefit of being the detached outside observer, the fact is that there really aren’t any bad guys here. Yes, people get hurt, sometimes hurt badly… but it’s not out of malice or even self-absorbtion. What you see in The Truth are people who are well-meaning and well-intentioned but ultimately wrong for each other; square pegs convinced that they should be round and believing that if they try hard enough or find the right angle, they’ll finally fit into that round hole.I realise the goal isn't sexual anarchy. It's that I want the rules around my sexuality to be self-imposed, not externally imposed. That's the key difference, perhaps in everything. I've never worked with a couple where one of them had it all together and the other was a screw-up. They've got as many issues as you do. Proof of this is that they're still with you. Therein lies, I think, the genuinely subversive quality of this novel (and half the joy of reading it): in its determined attention to the gaps, the silences, the evasions, and how it posits these gaps and silences and evasions—this edge of unfinished business—as a challenge to the reader to find out the truth, and most crucially, to avoid complicity in the erasures effected by the story. The third part is the novel's “highlight” although that is damning with faint praise. Ida Partenza proves to be Bevel's typist (as he would have seen her) or ghost-writer (in reality), responsible for My Life. In A Memoir Remembered she is recounting, decades later, how she became involved with Bevel and with his autobiography. Parts of this story were compelling, although a side story involving her jealous boyfriend, a journalist, seemed more designed to set up part four of the book, rather than add anything, and that of her Italian anarchist father felt like it belonged to another book. I realise that I have felt this “not enoughness” in every man I have been with. I even remember saying it aloud on many ocassions. “I feel like I’m not going to be enough for you babe, you’re always looking for something/ someone more” There was this restlessness, this undercurrent of disatisfaction, this keeping eyes open for something better to come along that I felt in them. In the past I thought it was me, that I wasn’t some kind of not enough for them…but in my last relationship and after developing this magnitude of self-love I knew with a complete certainty that I am enough, so very, beautifully, perfectly imperfectly enough and the problem does not come from me here at all. I continue to work through my traumas and always will. I do not deceive myself into thinking that I am conscious of everything and will ever get entirely clear or never be triggered but I require in my lifes partner a man that recognises this in himself too and desires to journey together. I am enough and he will be enough in himself and from that foundation we will stretch our wings and fly.