The Truth audiobook

So full disclosure: I was given a copy of The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships for review, I’ve hung out with Neil and I’m a former pick-up artist myself. So with all that in mind…The Truth is an interesting book. It’s one that’s fairly easy to be cynical about. I mean, first Neil Strauss becomes famous* for writing a book that taught millions of dudes to try to use Svengali-esque techniques to get laid and now he’s writing about leaving it all behind and embracing monogamy? Like that’s not part of every self-help guru’s progression. After all everyone loves a reformed sinner, right? I mean, shit, the book itself enforces this view - its white faux-leather Bible stylings is the literal opposite of The Game. * Strauss may have been infamous for The Game, but the man had written multiple NYT Bestselling biographies and non-fiction books well before The Game ever happened, as well as being a well-known reporter for Rolling Stone. So needless to say: it’s incredibly easy to see this as being Strauss grabbing for a redemption narrative now that he’s become a poster-child for annoying douchebags at clubs and pushy OKCupid dates and the assholes clustering around public streets in major cities in order to pick up women walking by.And the first couple chapters don’t necessarily help. The book opens with the fact that Neil has cheated on his long-term girlfriend with one of her best friends and - as many men have done upon getting caught - is heading to rehab for sex addiction. Again, this is something we’ve seen over and over again: get caught doing a bad thing, claim that bad thing is out of your control, make public showing of trying to beat bad thing through therapy at a resort-cum-retreat that’s less therapy and more of a long vacation.So you’d be forgiven for seeing this as Neil doing a very public mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. But that’s not what’s going on. What we’re reading is someone who’s doing some very explicit, very unpleasant and incredibly painful soul-searching, trying to come to terms with a lot of ugliness in his past. It’s almost shockingly vulnerable, Neil Strauss as open as we’re ever likely to see another person, trying to figure out just what it is that drives him to push away people he cares about.Now to be fair: one of my longest-running pet-peeves is the trope of “the womanizer is only a womanizer because he has some trauma in his past and is healed to settle down to life-long vanilla monogamy,” and it’s incredibly easy to see The Truth in that light. But thats’ not quite right either. There’s a saying: the path to wisdom is along the road to excess. And God knows Neil goes to excess here. After breaking up with his girlfriend and leaving sex addict rehab, Neil decides to pursue ethical non-monogamy and - as in The Game - dives in head first, visiting polyamory conferences, swingers parties, play parties and kink salons and - not surprisingly - having a lot of sex. Like, Caligula-levels of sex at times. And here’s the thing: despite the fact that Neil is doing some Olympic sport-fucking, none of it is portrayed as all that appealing. In fact, despite living out scenarios that would be hard to swallow (sorry) in porn, most of it feels awkward and uncomfortable and leaves the reader feeling like they’d really rather just go. As with many an ill-advised hook-up, as soon as the one busts one’s nut (or realizes it’s not going to happen at all), it quits being fun and becomes something that you’d rather leave as quickly and unseen as possible. As many people have before him, Neil is slowly being forced to realize that all the sex in the world isn’t going to make him happy. It’s a way of filling a hole in his life, a sort of addiction to numb the pain… and like every addict, it’s never going to be quite enough to do what he ultimately wants. Now, perhaps it’s the English major in me looking for any excuse to justify my BA, but I can’t help but notice that The Truth echoes other works. Like Warren Ellis’ Crooked Little Vein, we’re getting a guided tour of the polyamory underbelly of the world. In fact in many ways, it becomes a Who’s Who of sex researchers, therapists and counselors; Dr. Helen Fisher, Esther Perel and Reid Meihalko all make appearances to one degree or another, while Tristain Taormino, Christopher Ryan, Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy all make cameos via their books. But more than anything else, The Truth reminds me of - and is structured like - Dante’s Divine Comedy. Neil is the erstwhile Dante, crawling deeper and deeper into the pit of sexual decadence in search of his sacred Beatrice before reaching the Purgatory of therapy and ultimately the Paradise of a happy, fulfilled life. In fact, it’s as he’s literally climbing out of the pit that he finally realizes what he truly wants and what he needs to do.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. To be fair: most of the book focuses on Neil trying to convince himself that what he wants is different from how he used to be in his days as Style… despite the fact that what he ultimately wants is a harem, just as he did when he was part of Project Hollywood. Unlike his time as Style, he’s much more aware of just how much he’s hurting other people - as well as himself. This is never driven home more than by excerpts from his various partners’ diaries and journals. We get to hear, in their words, just how bad things are from their perspective and it’s heartbreaking.Much like The Game, The Truth is a book that’s going to be misunderstood. People saw The Game as a how-to manual, rather than the story of a group of men who were fundamentally broken inside trying to use sexual success as a way of increasing their self worth. People will also see The Truth as a condemnation of non-monogamy and polyamory, which is a shame. See, the theme isn’t that monogamy is best and non-monongamists are fooling themselves, it’s that if you’re not emotionally healthy, no relationship is going to work.Part of the overarching theme of the book is that Neil is continually sabotaging himself by throwing himself in head first, biting off more than anyone can chew. His very first foray into ethical non-monogamy involves trying to form a poly triad with everyone living under the same roof. His next involves trying to form his own commune. His third involves starting an open relationship with no rules whatsoever. Small wonder he fails every time; it’s not what he wants deep down and so it falls apart. It would be almost comedic if it weren’t for the very human toll it takes on him and his partners.(It’s significant, to me anyway, that the happiest and most successful polys and kinksters are at Reid Meihalko’s party, where everything is carefully structured and organized without the pseudo-spirituality of the pujas or the wanna-be pornstars of the parties at Bliss.)The end of the book may be a foregone conclusion, but it - odd as it is to say this about somebody’s lived experience - feels earned; you understand why Neil behaved the way he has. You see how, despite having a sexual resume that would make Wilt Chamberlain and Gene Simmons envious, he’s still the same bundle of neuroses and insecurities that he always has been. Until he’s sorted his issues and fought his demons, he can’t let anyone else in, including himself. You think you know what The Truth is about. It’s not about Neil Strauss seeking redemption or making amends for his old life. It’s about trying to figure out who he is and why he does what he does. There’re no excuses being made here, no attempts to deflect blame. It’s, well, the truth; naked and raw.

This book had a deep and profound impact on me. I finished the 11 hour audio in 2 1/2 days.I laughed and cried.I'd probably have to write for days to articulate everything that was so amazing about this book. Neil's transformation within the book, and his vulnerability throughout were completely enlightening for me. Coming from being one of the pioneers of the pickup movement, he found that he had to do some deep introspection, in the form of therapy and other methods, to uncover why his childhood trauma was actually at the root of why he has not found happiness or satisfaction in his relationships or sexcapades. Throughout the book and in many specific incidents, it becomes clear that not just Neil, but every woman he gets with, suffer from damage caused by childhood trauma. Many were beaten, abused, neglected, or abandoned, and are living life stuck in a child or adolescent state of mind, never escaping their past.This book opened me up to the true meaning of vulnerability, and the fact that not many people ever truly become an adult. This book also gave me a true appreciation of what it takes to love- it is far more about becoming whole yourself than to partake in an exhaustive search to find the exact right person that meets every need in every way.Maybe a small spoiler alert, but I appreciated that in the end, he doesn't preach monogamy or non-monogamy but instead says those are the wrong questions. I'm sure i will be revisiting this book as there were so many nuggets of wisdom among the sometimes entertaining, sometimes heartwarming stories. Read or listen to this book if you want the truth about what is the real key to freedom and happiness in relationships, and life.

** spoiler alert ** “They say that Love is blind, but its trauma thats blind. Love sees what is.” - Neil StraussIts been a very long time since I read a book from cover to cover in 24 hours or less. I had seen The Truth by Neil Strauss around and noticed a few people I knew were reading it. When a friend at work listened to a Lewis Howes podcast with Neil on the book and told me that I had to listen to it I took the hint and downloaded a copy. I could not put it down. It was painful to read at first, absolutely soul destroying in parts. His description of women and how he related to them was heartbreaking. I actually felt sick to my stomach and considered not finishing the book a few times but I just had to understand how his mind worked. It was only at the end that I got the reference to it being “an uncomfortable book on relationships”. I personally think “uncomfortable” was an understatement…”fucking excruciating” was more on the mark for me. As I waded through the horror of his experiments I knew why I could never bring myself to read his book The Game. I found myself in a state of despair that there were plenty of men out there that looked at and treated women like this…what hope was there. And of course plenty of women damaged enough to let them. None of his “adventures” held the slightest appeal to me, just disgust and sadness and the hollow, empty using of holes for cheap thrills, causing more damage to escape damage. Towards the end of Door 3: Alternatives I actually had to take a midnight shower, I felt dirty, cold and depressed. Then there was a glimmer of hope, “There is nothing frenzied about debauchery, contrary to what is thought,” Albert Camus once wrote. “It is but a long sleep.” And then he wrote in his own words, “It is time to wake up.” And I felt a rejoicing in my body and a please God let this be worth the shit I just dragged myself though…All the while I’m reading this I’m conscious of the blinding parallels between this story of relationship and the story of my last relationship. Obviously my Beloved was not as extreme as Neil in many ways but he was a dedicated PUA and he did study The Game amongst other things and did live that lifestyle for years. I also saw painful parallels in the love avoidance and love addict dynamic between Neil and Ingrid and myself and my Beloved. Door 4: Anhedonia was where I could breathe again. I cheered out loud when he made the first step in getting out of his fucking head and returning to his heart,“The person who is too smart to love is truly an idiot.With my last pillar of intellectual resistance demolished, I fly to Lorraine to be healed, to become worthy of Ingrid, to become worthy of myself, to find out who I am beyond the perpetually turning wheels of desire, manipulation, and intellectualization that have run my entire life.”When he connected the dots of his childhood trauma with his relationships with women I breathed out a hundred yeses.“All the things you’ve been trying to get from these relationships—freedom, understanding, fairness, acceptance—are exactly the things that you never got from your mom. So every time you load all that unfinished business onto your partner, you’re setting yourself up for another disappointment. Because as an adult, the only person who can give you those things is you.”All his life he had been hiding from true intimacy within relationships, where better place to hide than that, whenever intimacy reached a certain level he would become scared it would consume him so he ran, thus creating a pattern of short term, shallow end relationships. True intimacy is when partners stop living in the past, in their trauma history, and start having a relationship with each other in the present moment. Love, is not something to be learned, its something we already have and we must unlearn in order to access it. Which reminds me of a Rumi quote that keeps coming up for me lately, “ your task is not to seek love (for Love is who you are- my words) but to remove the barriers you have built against it”.When he finally reaches Freedom in Door 5 he quotes one of my favourite Pablo Neruda poem for Ingrid to begin the chapter marked with an eternity sign. I cannot help but burst into tears with great sobs. This dear god, this is what I want.“l will die kissing your crazy cold mouth,caressing the lost fruit buds of your body,looking for the light of your closed eyes.And so when the earth receives our embracewe will go blended in a single death, foreverliving the eternity of a kiss”~ Pablo Neruda Cien sonetos de amorHis heroes journey brings me to my knees, this is possible, if someone with his trauma history, impediments of extreme intelligence and stubbornness can come to this place then anyone can.“While reading these beautiful words, I notice the complete absence of my old feelings: suffocation from her love, doubt that I have a good heart, fear of opening our lives to each other, and anxiety about her expectations of me. Instead, every word rings like truth. Neither haunted by the past nor worried about the future, I’m finally grateful for the present.”I realised that every man I have ever loved has had this parental wounding as have I and we were not be able to be fully present to the other because of it. I have loved with wild abandon…only to be abandoned time and time again when Love opened the mother wound in my partner and made him resentful and closed to me. In the past I loved more, this time I let go and next time…well there wont be a next time with this pattern as I’m letting the whole trauma drama 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.”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.This is a brave book filled with ugliness and beauty in equal measure.

It's a weird book. Strauss is a narcissistic lunatic, who runs all over the place trying to deal with himself. While this is extremely entertaining, it makes his conclusions feel like utter bull. Now he is all better. And I should believe this, why? Some of his self deceptions border on utter madness. It never occurred to him that he wants to screw around, but that if he let's his gf screw around he is wracked with jealousy. When this happens to him - his jealousy - he is stunned. What? Why is this so hard? He must have been compartmentalising, he says, letting himself off the hook. Why on earth was his jealousy such a surprise? To be fair, Strauss is so open & sharing with most of his life (and that of his parents) that it's almost disturbing. His own stupidities, his self deceptions, his bad behaviours - he revels in sharing all of this filth. And his sexual exploits. Which makes the predictable upbeat ending somewhat disgusting. Now he is an enlightened being who wishes to share his wisdom. There's something about that which is vile, as he treats himself that way from page 1 (he has all the answers) and then unironically still sees himself that way at the end (no, wait, now he has all the answers).This is all very harsh on my part. The Truth is an extremely readable book. At the same time, it feels like a huge con job. On the reader, on the author. On everyone. Simultaneously Strauss gives good advice. Fix yourself then pursue relationships. Examine your early traumas and the programming you got from your parents. And yet... And yet... I don't know. This review of mine borders on gibberish. I was going to give the book 3 stars but I'm now bumping it to 4. Strauss gets super cornball and spiritual by the end, but he gave me a fun, if very shallow ride.

This book has a lot of things. It has honesty (in spades). It has sex (lots of it, with graphic descriptions). It has hurt aplenty. I'm aware that the author might have airbrushed the story to make it more coherent, but the downward spiral and subsequent long road to recovery made for a riveting read. A textbook on love avoidants and love addicts and all the assorted dysfunction that comes along for the ride.____Evidently, men have sex addictions, women have eating disorders. I suppose both share the same obsession: womens' bodies.She (therapist Lorraine) tells me that 90% of sex addicts seeking treatment are men, because men tend to act out, while 90% of people with eating disorders are women, because women tend to act in.Lying is about controlling someone else’s reality, hoping that what they don’t know won’t hurt you.What it means to tell the truth: It is to give someone else her freedom, to allow her to have a reaction even if it leads to negative consequences for you, to give her the voice that lying takes away.Intimacy is sharing your reality with someone else and knowing you’re safe, and them being able to share their reality with you and also be safe.To survive painful beliefs and feelings, we often mask them with anger. That way, we don't have to feel the shame behind it. The payoff of anger is mastery, control, or power. So the anger makes you feel better and one up.Self-depreciation is still self-worship. It is still about self.Remember that humour is a wall. It is a form of denial, just like minimisation, repression, globalisation, and rationalisation.Intimacy problems comes from a lack of self-love, someone who fears intimacy thinking, unconsciously, that if you knew who I actually was, you'd leave me.The avoidant is good at seducing, in the sense that he has an uncanny ability to find out what his partner needs and give it to her. Because he was usually enmeshed, he gets his worth and value from taking care of needy people.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.When an avoidant and an addict begin a relationship, a predictable pattern occurs. The avoidant gives and gives, sacrificing his own needs, but it's never enough for the love addict. So the avoidant grows resentful and seeks an outlet outside of the relationship, but at the same time feels too guilty to stop taking care of the needy person.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.Centuries ago, women who were overtly sexual were likely to be burned as witched at the stake, as they were thought to be in league with the devil. Five centuries later, we've come a long way. Instead of calling them witches and burning them, we call them sluts and burn their reputations. We have so many contradictory, repressive, self-limiting beliefs about sexuality - and almost every one of them stems from a pathological need to dictate to someone else what they are and aren't allowed to do with their body and heart.Loneliness is holding in a joke because you've no one to share it with.So far, it seems like their open relationship has as much drama as a closed relationship. And the drama is about the same thing, trust. Perhaps the reason friendships tend to last longer than relationships is that they don't come with rigid rules and exclusivity clauses.Perhaps the problem with most relationships is that the rules start to become more important than the values they're supposed to be representing.I realise that there's more to swinging than first meets the eye. For some guys, it's about showing off the woman they love: Look what I got. And she loves me, so I must have value. And if you treat me with enough respect and admiration, I will share her with you - but not too much, because I don't want to lose control of her. That would cause me to feel pain and question my fragile sense of self-worth.I've known people - mostly love addicts - who would be less hurt if their spouses died than if they cheated. They'd even prefer the former, because at least they couldn't take it personally. One of the unfortunate axioms of human behaviour is that what others shame people for the most is usually what they're doing in secret themselves. After all, an accusation is much more powerful than a denial: it's a way to seem one up when you're really feeling one down.In life, whoever has the strongest reality wins. Lose your moral certainty and lose the ground you stand on.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 used to think that a good relationship meant always getting along. But the secret, I realize, is that when one person shuts down or throws a fit, the other needs to stay in the adult ego state. If both people descend to the wounded child or adapted adolescent, that’s when all the forces of relationship drama and destruction are unleashed.The only relationship that’s truly a failure is one that lasts longer than it should.The person in a relationship with the least amount of comfort does get to set the boundaries - even if she keeps changing the rules.You can’t force a relationship to happen. You just have to make a space in your heart for one, then let go of all expectations, agendas, and control.Relationships don’t require sacrifices. They just require growing up - and the ability to stop clinging to immature needs that are so tenacious, they keep the mature needs from getting met.Any style of relationship is the right one, as long as it’s a decision made by the whole person and not the hole in the person.In the dance of infatuation, we see each other not as they are, but as projections of who we want them to be. And we impose on them all the imaginary criteria we think will fill the void in our hearts. But in the end, this strategy only leads to suffering. It is not a relationship when the other person is left out of it.The problem many people have is that the exact quality that attracted them to their partner becomes a threat once a serious relationship begins. After all, this quality was the open door through which the romance started, so now they want to close that door, lock it, and throw away the key before someone else tries to come in after them.If married men have mid-life crises, men who haven't ever truly been able to commit have no-life crises. And if they're able to see clearly for even just a moment, they start to realise that they're losing more than they're gaining each day they remain stalled on the scenic road of growing up.What's the fun of hiking Machu Picchu, of walking a trial carved centuries ago, if I can't share it with someone I love? That is the price of freedom.That is love, when two (or more) hearts build a safe emotional, mental, and spiritual home that will stand strong no matter how much anyone changes on the inside or the outside. It demands one thing and expects only one thing: that each person be his or her own true self. Everything else we attach to love is just a personal strategy, be it effective or ineffective, for trying to manage our anxiety about coming so close to something so powerful and uncontrollable.As my grandmother used to say: You can't change a person unless they're in diapers.

My mind is blown. This book delivered way above expectation. The Truth explores topics that we think about all the time when it comes to relationships. However, due to work, inertia, fear, or other excuses it's rare we're honest with ourselves, going out looking for the difficult answers. Most settle with mediocrity and compromise when it comes to relationships. In this book, Strauss goes through intense relationship therapy, and experiments with all types of relationships until finding what works for him. It's an extremely painful yet ultimately rewarding process for him. As a reader, you get a front seat into the tumultuous emotional roller-coaster experienced by Strauss over many years as he looks for himself. The book is written in a very gripping way, and oftentimes you feel like you're the one in these experiences.On the surface, it's just a book about relationships. In its essence, it's a book about our relationships with ourselves and our happiness. Therapeutic, emotional, mind expanding is how I would describe The Truth.

Audiobook version. The length represented a solid commitment. It was worthwhile. There is something in this book and its diverse cast for everyone. And when you come across a sentence that shines a light in a dark place normally avoided - it is worth pausing and reflecting. Perhaps writing something down to come back to later yourself. It is entertaining, perhaps it is oversharing, certainly it is intriguing. Thank you for putting yourself out there Neil. I have never read the game, being married for 21 years I never saw the point. However I will likely work back through all your books now.

One of the BEST books on relationships I've ever read. I'm recently divorced after a 12 year monogamous relationship and have been reading a lot about polyamory so it was awesome to see Neil go out and try it for himself. I felt like it helped me heal so many limiting beliefs of my own about sex and love. I loved this book. I wrote a lengthy blog post about my feelings over at http://makermistaker.com/the-truth

This book is arguably even more absurd than its predecessor. It takes sex addiction rehab, swinging, Eastern-tinged ritual orgies, doomed polyamorous arrangements, and a whole lot of chaos for the author to come to the conclusion that maybe he shouldn't think exclusively with his little brain. It's astonishing it isn't written in blank verse, such an amazing journey of self-realization should've only been put to paper as an epic poem. Like Sisyphus pushing his rock, Neil Strauss tries to justify that the summum bonum of human experience is living life like you're a cross between characters from Porky's and Eyes Wide Shut, i.e. that man's Platonic form is to be A Horn Dog ™. After realizing the futility of his journey, he sees the error of his ways and returns to his ex-girlfriend and has a kid with her. How shocking to discover they were divorced but a few years after this book's publication! I thought he was a changed man, for Christ's sake! I don't think this book is meant to be comedic, but it certainly was for me. It was a reality show between a front and back cover, and I'm a sucker for trash, what can I say?

Very useful to reflect about how our self-esteem, behavior, choices, and perspective in relationships are influenced by external factors that we are likely not aware of. The author goes through a long journey to understand what he really needs in a relationship to be fulfilled, with exhaustive analysis of each step. This leads to the importance of emotional health, usually lacking to certain extent in most of us. Fun to read, many lessons to be learned.