Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsToo obvious...what we need is a difficult relationships book
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 7, 2004
The stuff in this book should be obvious to most reasonable people. If you're having problems at this level, you still have a long way to go in terms of dealing with truly difficult situations. Seeing so many people liking books like this gets me worried... (Is it just me who feels like I'm back in kindergarten when I take these corporate self improvement classes (come on, be honest now).)
If you can generally gather the gumption to talk with people through awkward issues, this book will not help.
My really difficult issues in life are with severely complexed people who are either defensive to the point of being anti-social or with those who never learned the skill to listen. You know people like this, right? Their bad behavior inevitably drives away their friends and they often have trouble with their other family members.
I'm not saying that I'm always in the right when having difficult conversations with people like this. What I struggle with is dealing with really hard headed people, and this book only belabors obvious points like "there are two sides to every story" and "you have to try to stay reasonable if you care to get through".
Everything in the book is good, if that's what you want to learn about. I just found it too obvious, and it assumes the case where the other person is a relatively well adjusted person.
