ManReaders: A Woman's Guide to Dysfunctional Men

by Bonnie M. Kaye

A Woman's Guide to Dysfunctional Men is a self-help book to teach women how to check out men before entering into a relationship that could lead to disaster. This book provides important information about the millions of men who suffer from various issues including sexual, emotional, and mental health problems making them bad risks as partners.
Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed., a nationally recognized and established relationship counselor for nearly 30 years for women involved with or married to sexually dysfunctional men, clearly defines the potential problems that women need to be aware of before getting too emotionally involved with "broken men who can't be fixed." Kaye provides a checklist for women on how to check out a man before investing more time with him in order to avoid these pitfalls. Women coming out of destructive marriages/relationships are often vulnerable to men who are "predators" and repeat the same mistakes in their future choices unless they are aware of what to look for.
This book also strongly focuses on how the lack of self-esteem or low self-esteem can influence women's future unhappiness and how learned behavior also plays a major role in making poor decisions in relationships. Kaye openly discusses her own personal relationship failures based on her lack of self-esteem. Also included is a checklist of traits that women with low-self esteem possess that attract dysfunctional men. This book is also extremely helpful for women currently in dysfunctional marriages and relationships in helping them understand what the problems are so they can move on rather than waste more time staying with men who will never meet their needs. About the Author :
Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed., is an internationally recognized relationship counselor/author in the field of straight/gay marriages. She has provided relationship counseling and advice for nearly 30 years to more than 75,000 women who have sexually dysfunctional husbands due to homosexuality, bisexuality, or sexual addictions. She is considered an authority in this field by other professionals and the media. Kaye has published seven books on straight/gay relationships, which have sold thousands of copies. Her website www.Gayhusbands.com has consistently remained in the number one position on Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines since its launching in 2000. When media contacts want an expert, they go to Bonnie Kaye who has more experience and expertise than any other person in the United States. Her official book website is located at www.BonnieKayeBooks.com. Kaye's support network has over 7,000 women around the world who receive her free monthly newsletter. She also has online computer support chat as well as a weekly internet radio show on Sundays, Straight Wives Talk Show on www.Blogtalkradio.com that can be accessed 24/7 around the world.
Kaye's other books The Gay Husband Checklist for Women Who Wonder; Straight Shattered Lives (Volumes 1 and 2); Doomed Gay Husbands of Straight Wives; Bonnie Kaye's Straight Talk; How I Made My Husband Myths About Straight Wives; and Over the Gay Husbands in Straight Marriages.

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2006

Reviews

[Minnie Rance · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh my god. I don't know what I find more disturbing, that I read this book at all, or that anyone else could read it and recommend it. I felt like I needed to wash my eyes out afterwards. If you read this book, keep your wits about you: this is a woman who makes the worst possible choices in men, and then consistently blames the resulting disasters on him, and learns nothing from the experience. If you have a daughter behaving the way this woman does, get her to a shrink immediately. She's clearly been damaged, but refuses to see it.

This woman interprets every relationship with a man based on how good the sex is. That's it. Nothing else is as important as that. Okay, to each her own, but consider her choices in men (and I'm not making any of this up):

1. in high school, becomes popular by putting out for boys who otherwise ignore her;
2. a heroin addict who gets her pregnant (she planned it), so she could marry him;
3. as an 18 year old, married men around the neighborhood;
4. a Vietnam War veteran who is an addict and abusive;
5. marries a sex addict who is abusive and violent, possibly criminal and dangerous;
6. marries another man whom she is told is at least bi, maybe even gay, but she has children with him, then they divorce after 3 years;
7. starts a pen-pal relationship with a felon in the state penitentiary because she hasn't had sex in a long time (and this AFTER she gets a masters degree in counseling!!!);
8. spends 16 months chasing after a new employee because she felt an immediate reaction to him in her heart (I suspect the anatomy is incorrect). She calls him her soulmate, a co-worker she chased around the office for more than a year.

At the time of writing this book, they've been together for many, many years, they're not married, they're not living together, but the sex is the best part of their relationship, and she says that's BECAUSE they aren't married, but they can still get together several times per week. He goes home at the end of the day, and so does she - to separate homes. So then, WHERE does he go home, and to whom? Put all those pieces together and think about it, really think about it - don't just agree with her without question. What does that relationship sound like to you?

She's been having an affair with a married man from the office, for two decades, behind his wife's back while excoriating married gay men for doing the same thing.

Out of all these disastrous or inappropriate relationships with men, which is the one she picks on the most, which one has she built a cottage industry around, would you guess, and which one is the easiest for her to pin her life's problems on? The gay man, the one with whom she had children, the man who fathered her children and divorced her, and then later returned to be present in the children's lives as their father.

And all the while, she was writing book after book slamming gay men who make the mistake of marrying a straight woman. She insists that she's "very pro-gay" but she's against closeted gay men who get married. That's a weak and conditional definition of "pro-gay." Closeted gay men who get married due to pressure, family or religious upbringing, or lack of self-awareness, are still gay men. You can't say you're "very pro-gay" and then discriminate and pick and choose which gay men qualify. At best, you might say that you're "partly pro-gay" or "pro-gay under certain conditions."

And what about the rest of that list of men, from the heroin addict to the co-worker? She chose them, they did not choose her. But it's all their own fault, every time.

If you read this, keep your eyes open and keep your wits about you. This author has an endless capacity for dissembling, twisting, rationalizing, and deflecting - if this were a piece of fiction, she would be the epitome of the unreliable narrator. As a piece of auto-biography, it's disturbing, but maybe a case study in self-deception and denial.

But as a self-help book... NO! Don't even go there... Put the book down and back away.

[Brianna Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. I had to stop reading after the first two chapters. The only insight to be found in this book is the author is deluding herself and projecting her relationship problems onto whichever man she's with. And she's with a lot of men. She's on a roll to explain her string of bad relationships, and invents excuse after excuse and never learns that she is the common element each time. Typical behavior from a scorned narcissist, nothing is ever her fault. This is not a self-help book; it's a how-to manual for blaming somebody else for your own problems. I feel sorry for any man who was in a relationship with her, it must have been hell.