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Summary: This book is a must . . .
Review: ... for women who can't understand how & why they keep getting stuck in relationships where they are taken for granted or abused. I was given a copy of this book in 1993 by the bank officer who helped me open my bank account when my marriage was falling apart and this book changed my life! It had such an impact on me that ever since, as soon as I realize that any of my female associates & friends are in these types of destructive relationships, this is the book I buy for them. I've probably bought this book 20 times in the last 7 years . . . I gave up on lending it out, and just buy my friends a copy, because I never get mine back! To Robin Norwood, thank you for putting into words what I needed to hear & opening my eyes 7 years ago. My life has totally changed for the better & I am now in a wonderful relationship. (Ladies, there are good ones out there! Don't settle for less!) There have been bumps along the way, but I will always have my trusty well-worn copy of the book to remind me that *I* can change this pattern forever!
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Summary: Why women pick the wrong guys.
Review: Basically it's your parents' fault. You came from a dysfunctional family.
That sounds flip, and I hasten to say that this is an excellent book. Many women have found it helpful. I've bought extra copies to give to people, which is the highest compliment an author can hope for.
It's very well written, with vivid case vignettes that read more like the work of an accomplished novelist than medical case histories. (She not merely describes the physical appearance of her clients but the scenery around as she talks to them). It's really a piece of literature rather than of scientific psychology, and perhaps should only fairly be judged on that basis.
Scientifically it falls short. The theoretical basis is psychodynamic, with a bias to transactional analysis. She attempts to show that the tendency of women to become disastrously involved with the wrong type of man is a disease with characteristics similar to alcoholism or drug addiction. It is due to coming from a dysfunctional family, but the definition of a dysfunctional family is so broad that her theories beome untestable. Sometimes she makes specific testable statements (e.g that nearly every woman with an eating disorder is the daughter of an alcoholic) but does not back them up with any statistics or references to published experiments.
Her treatment recommendations sound reasonable and in accordance with common sense but they are not backed up by any objective evidence of their effectivenss.(Zero-tolerance hardline methods for dealing with physical abuse are not mentioned). Perhaps she has published objective evidence elsewhere and of course many would argue that the testimony of the women who have found this book useful is evidence enough.
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Summary: This book changed my life.
Review: Do you keep hoping that if you just love him enough he'll change? Are you putting up with unacceptable behavior, just hoping he'll wake up and become that person you know he could be? If so, read this book. Perhaps you have been focusing too much on him. This book helped me understand my part in the sad relationship I was in. It made me aware of decisions I had made that got me to that state - decisions I was barely conscious (or unconscious) of making at the time. WIthout knowing it, I had operated most of my life with an assumption that I didn't deserve a relationship with an emotionally healthy man and that any man who was really healthy would not be interested in me. So I kept getting in relationships with men who had problems - problems I then tried to love them enough to fix. I thought if I just loved him enough, he would reciprocate by loving me enough. But it never worked. This one book taught me as much about myself as a year in therapy. WIth awareness came the possibility for change - and I have changed. This book was an important piece of the puzzle for me and played an important role in my becoming a much healthier, happier person.
Rating: 
Summary: Do you really need this book?
Review: Girls, it's really quite simple. Women are attracted to the potential in men, men are attracted to what's already there in women. If we followed their formula we wouldn't end up with our hearts broken so often or so badly. Unfortunately it would also mean an awful lot of lonely single women with inadequate men who never bother try living up to their potential. The reality is women ARE a motivator for men when they do manage to get something done like pass the Bar or fix the grill. It's our unlucky lot in life as the smarter more adaptable specie I'm afraid to be stuck in this losing end of such a questionable arrangement of keeping the world turning. Also, instead of thinking of yourselves as loving too much (!!) maybe, ratio-wise, statisticaly speaking, there are just more jerks in the world who are men. It's ok to give up on the buggers for a moment and go dancing with the girls.
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Summary: So close to home it was painful (but necessary)
Review: I first read this book years ago after a painful divorce. Fast forward 8 years, and here I am in the same situation yet again with a different man. When I first read this book, I did not take the information in it to heart, probably because it struck too close to home for me so I denied the truth in it. This time, with two children to raise, my recovery is absolutely essential, so I forced myself to read it and remember and deal with it. This book is absolutely on target for any woman who endured a painful, demoralizing childhood. Robin Norwood explains exactly why it affects us into adulthood (and for us it's much different than for men -- she explains this, too), why we keep choosing painful, debilitating relationships and why we can't walk away from them even when the pain is literally destroying us. I highlighted so much of this book to re-read and study later that my highlighting pen almost gave out. The book explains how we actually get addicted to pain and chaos, and why we choose the types of men we do, and why we're terrified to lose even a disastrous relationship. It also looks at how we hide the truth from ourselves and why. If you fit the description of a woman whose childhood was shredded by the pain of a highly dysfunctional family, and now you keep landing in one unhealthy relationship after another with men, this book will definitely help you, but you also must find a good therapist. You WILL heal in time, but you have to step out into the unknown and stick with it. As Robin Norwood so beautifully points out, with this type of love addiction,your future is sure to be painful no matter what. But it can either be the temporary pain associated with dealing with your problems and your subsequent recovery, or it can be the same kind of pain you've got now, magnified over years and years. Identifying your problem is the first step in solving it. This book will help you do that.
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Summary: Life Changing
Review: I read and re-read this book. It gave me hope and made sense out of my mixed up life. The recommendation to go to a 12 Step Program included in the book is the best advice I ever followed.
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Summary: so what
Review: I've read this book several times over the years and I think it is a great book to help the women it is intended for get through tough spots.
A lie? So what the scenarios are fictional. Did she mention anywhere that the scenarios in her book are real. It never even cross my mind to beleive that the scenarios in the book was real.
How many books (self help or not) is based on real life? The fact that she was able to create those scenarios that so closely chronicled what most women go through is outstanding in itself. She did what she did to get through to us and it worked for many women.
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Summary: Do you really need this book?
Review: Is a child ever loved too much? The answer to this seems obvious yet the tendency to question it in adults seems peracious if not faulty. The real answer is that there are too many man who don't love enough. Only within this logic can it be said that there are women who love too much. The disparity is caused by other men who deem loving as somehow indignity to male-ness, or women who accept the limits of male love as a necessary evil because of the work environment they, themselves, accept because of the privileges thought to be attached to the jobs upon which they rely - as money, freedom, or as perks and benefits. Males have never had the emotional freedom to be themselves, or to express the love they feel inside - for women or children - without their jobs and the perception of other men to interfere, and steer them toward such things as lack of commitment, selfishness, or dignity and self esteem found only within the job or work environment, a gross insult to most men. Men have every bit the capacity for love, and the sensitivity to enjoy it if they are divorced from the male image they are seduced into believing 95% of the time. We know this because of what happens to males on vacation, or at times when they do let their guard down to enjoy their lives rather than run the monotonous treadmill of the work lives most cling to for survival. Give a man the freedom to enjoy himself, and undoubtedly, he will show women a life of job and harmony. Include a job, and the atmosphere erodes to the pressures of strain that are typical of most. The most interesting and vivacious of women will defy all odds and refuse to be made into the zombies that permit their men to assume the fetal position that work requires, and encourage them to joyously celebrate their lives and their humanity, able to love with abandon but without promiscuity. The fact that men have never been given a chance to experience their lives in that total comfort and harmony is a fault of women, as well as men, in the demands made upon daily lives. To share in the joy of cultivating an environment of male abandon is a privilege most women never forget, and that too few enjoy. Giving in to the establishment is so much easier, and perhaps more logical with respect to maintaining the morality quotient by which women are conditioned to absorb and don as their coats of armor to bring stability to the world, presumably because men are incapable of doing it, or simply because it is more convenient and comfortable for them to escape those responsibilies, added to their others. Only in the males who are apt to refuse the straight jackets of life that cultivate the abandonment of the joy that could be experienced without it, will women find those that truly do credit to their sex, and to the freedoms they inherit in being males. Certainly, it is likely why women gravitate toward those males who appear to have the characteristics of being fully human, being able to fully love, and in having the courage to truly love the women they enjoy without succumbing to the typical male stereotypes that are fed to the public to contain and corrale weaker men to abandon their happiness. It is impossible for either women or men to love too much. It is only fallacy to recognize that there should be limits to defining relationships that are rooted in joy and self respect, for men or for women, and certainly, for children and parents.
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Summary: This book saved my life once
Review: It was the most horrible summer in my life. I was 23 and I wanted to die. I couldn't understand and accept what was happening to me, that I was addicted to a man who clearly despised me and cheated on me. I had been obsessed with a few men that I couldn't get before, but this was much worse because I thought I had lost my current boyfriend's love because I didn't deserve it. I was a bad person, an ugly and stupid woman, and on the verge of going insane. I had lost weight, my skin was yellow and my intelligence was paralyzed while my soul was in so much pain... At the worst times, I would tear my hair out or pinch myself to distract myself from the psychological anguish. I would often think: "This can't be love! It's surely a kind of mental illness... How could I love someone who mistreats me, lies to me, cheats on me, laughs at me in my face?" I thought I was crazy.
When I first spotted WHLTM at the drugstore, I thought it was just another stupid self-help book with a ridiculous title. How can anyone ever love too much? But my despair was such that I was ready to try anything...
The book confirmed what I was already suspecting: that what I was going through was a kind of mental disorder rather than actual love. Because I had been rejected by my father (he disappeared from my life when I was 4 after sexually abusing me), I was always attracted to men who didn't love me, who often even barely knew that I was alive. I thought I was a romantic, but I wasn't attracted to Prince Charming. A couple of very nice guys suffered because of me because I couldn't love them back.
One of the real-case stories in WHLTM was like a mirror to me (I was very disappointed when I learned that these stories were mostly fiction). It helped me to face the truth about myself, my life, my boyfriend.
I still think the title is misleading. You can never love too much. But you should always be wary of feelings and mental disorders that often pass for love: obsession, addiction, infatuation, mere sexual desire, etc.
WHLTM made me understand what was wrong with me. Sadly, it didn't cure me. I don't think I will ever be able to love a man who loves me me back, so I stay alone. I love men, I have a lot of male friends... But I could never have a healthy romance with a man. Therapy didn't help.
I still recommend this book. To both men and women who think that they love too much and are often in great anguish. It will help you understand what exactly is making you miserable. Then there's a lot of work to do: soul searching, therapy, spirituality. If "loving too much" is the only thing that currently gives your life any meaning, I recommend as a companion book to WHLTM "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.
Good luck. If you're not as "damaged" as I am, there is hope for you and you can learn to love truly and in a healthy way... and to accept that someone can actually love you back.
P.S.: I suffered a lot because of an unrequited "love" last year. It was the first time in ten years. Despite my passion, I was able to stay away from the man... because of what Robin Norwood had taught me about myself 14 years before.
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Summary: Wonderful
Review: Of all the books I've ever read, this is the most useful. The title describes exactly what the book is about. The book itself is a page turner. When I first picked it up, I related to it immediately and couldn't put it down. It is written in a professional yet personal tone and is very down to earth. As is stated in the title, this book is about women that care so much for a man that she drives him away or hurts herself and thinks it's right. Many women think they deserve to suffer and this book explains why that's not true. It's very personal and if you're anything like the title, I would definitely recommend reading it. This will change your life.
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