Relationship Manifesto , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Stephen Whitehead

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102 pages

English

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The most honest and sane book ever written on love, sex and relationships. A manifesto for the 21st century, aimed at helping people overcome guilt and regret and find true contentment as they embark on their unique love journey. Based on extensive research and including vignettes from around the world, The Relationship Manifesto provides detailed descriptions of the different types of love; lists the relationship vows guaranteed to make a marriage work; explains why sex is not always about love; and examines what true togetherness really means. A remarkable and insightful read, designed not to fuel myths of Happy Ever After, but explain the different types of relationships that might work for you. An absolutely essential read for anyone in or out of love.

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	01 février 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785388576
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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LOVE WITHOUT REGRET, SEX WITHOUT GUILT
THE RELATIONSHIP MANIFESTO
Stephen M. Whitehead

2018 digital version converted and published by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2018 Stephen M. Whitehead
The right of Stephen M. Whitehead to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This book is an update of
The Relationship Manifesto 2012 Edition,
with new content and foreword.

For wives, lovers and friends

Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Chris Smith (Shambles Guru), Juthamard Whitehead, Catherine Chen, Anya Kingsford, Adam Dedman, Trey Dobson, Gaby Corbera, Marie Bah, Maren Peterson, Denry Machin, Ally Taylor, Anne Evandt, Sheila French, Sian Edwards, Jessica Loh, En Hudson, Emma Vanseters, Sonia Land, Crysse Morrison, Eva Pascal, Suwanna Yantraruyaha, Susan Dunsmore, Marlene Clarke, Rachel Cooper, Carlton Rounds, and all those who offered their stories for inclusion in the vignettes.

About the author
Dr Stephen M. Whitehead is an internationally renown writer on relationships, gender and identity. He was formally Senior Lecturer in Education at Keele University, UK and Visiting Professor in Gender Studies at Shih Hisn University, Taiwan. He has been invited to speak at leading global universities including Cambridge, Toronto, Oslo and Singapore. Stephen has written and co-authored numerous journal articles together with 10 mainstream and academic books which have been published in 17 languages. Stephen’s books include, Gender and Identity (Oxford University Press), The Many Faces of Men (Random House); Men and Masculinities (Polity); Masculinities Reader (Polity); Men, Women, Love and Romance (Andrews); Managing Professional Identity (Routledge). He has been a relationship coach for many years and provided personal and professional guidance to hundreds of couples and individuals around the world. When he is not writing, Stephen works as an international education consultant in South East Asia. He lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with his fourth wife, Mam, and stepdaughter. If you have any questions on love, sex and relationships that you’d like to put to Stephen, contact him on www.quora.com

Foreword
We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking that created them.
- Albert Einstein
We are living through a time of unprecedented change, in every aspect of our lives. Even though we know increasingly more of our past, we find it hard to fathom the present and even harder to predict the future. Aside from the coming of Artificial Intelligence, especially sex-robots, we have the dramatic gender changes all contributing to our sense that the world has tilted on its social axis. I started writing and publishing books on men and masculinity over 25 years ago, and back then there weren’t many of us doing such research. Now there is an avalanche of articles across the media, all concerned, in varying ways with ‘toxic masculinity’. No doubt, the recent very public exposure of dysfunctional powerful men and their abusive behaviours, especially in Hollywood, Houses of Parliament and Washington, has fuelled this interest in a burgeoning ‘male crisis’.
In this guide, I do not give to give too much space to the issue of a ‘male crisis’, that will have to wait for my next book. But I do recognise its importance and significance, not least because I firmly believe that any such a crisis in the male psyche can be traced to the profound shift in gender and sexual relationships detailed in this book.
I have written The Relationship Manifesto to help you navigate what is increasingly a tricky path for all of us: the path of love and contentment. Much of what I describe I’ve experienced myself or it has emerged from 25 years research, not just in the UK but worldwide.
My own love journey has been fascinating, exciting and never boring. I am in my fourth marriage, and had many relationships with women from a number of different countries. I am now happily married and monogamous. I first got married aged 21. By the time I’d reached 45, I’d had sex with only four different women, and three of those I’d married. But thereafter I changed my lifestyle and embarked on a new love and sexual journey with lots of energy. Only recently have I settled back into a monogamous lifestyle, which at this time in my life suits me nicely.
Whatever your gender, sexuality, age, race, or relationship experience, it is hoped this book will provide some words of empowerment and that its core message resonates for you. But don’t go looking for the love myths - they are not here. Rather than rely on myths and illusion I urge each and every reader to:
Go out and live your life’s love journey with respect, honesty, empathy, openness and confidence. Be both optimistic and strong and in turn you will not only find love, friendship and emotional comfort, you will discover yourself.
Stephen M. Whitehead 1st January, 2018
www.stephenwhitehead.org

Chapter 1: Waking Up
If you want to make your dreams to come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up
- J. M. Power
Mary is 21 and lives in Los Angeles. She first had sex five years ago. She currently has two lovers; a man aged 19 and a divorced woman aged 32. She met her boyfriend online. Her woman lover is one of her university tutors. By the time Mary is 30 she is likely to have had sex with at least one hundred people, both male and female. If she ever does marry it is not yet clear to which sex it will be.
Susan is a barrister, aged 39. She is Singaporean, a divorcee raising two young children. Susan has dated many men since her divorce ten years ago and is currently involved with a man she met through work but who lives in Australia. They meet up three times a year. Susan occasionally sees a married male friend for what she describes as “uncomplicated fun”.
Betty and Joe are married, in their early 50s. They live in the north of England. Betty and Joe are like thousands of British couples; both have jobs, their children have grown up and left home, and they have a holiday home in Spain. And every other weekend they meet other couples for swinging sex.
Welcome to 21st century relationships.
The Denial
When it comes to sex, love and romance, it appears the world is in a state of denial. Every wedding has become a symbol of resistance against the reality of divorce and separation, every divorce and separation the looming spectre at this feast of love. Sex is one of the central drivers behind our very existence yet still we feel trapped between guilt and pleasure. We cling ever more desperately to the myths of Happy Ever After and when it turns out to be neither Happy nor Ever After then we blame ourselves or, just as likely, our ex. Millions of us are in relationships where truths can no longer be spoken, recriminations, disappointments and regrets are mounting up, and our eyes increasingly wander to others. We stay because that is what we are expected to do, it’s too costly to leave, or we just don’t have the emotional strength to live on our own.
Those of us who do make the move have then to cope with a social attitude which sees divorce and separation as ‘failure’, every ended relationship as ‘failure’, our inability to live the dream of eternal love as ‘failure’.
That is a lot of failure.
We start out in our teens and early 20s believing the romantic novels; expecting that we will be the exception to the rule when it comes to love; yes, our love, when we find it, will be different to all the others - it will last forever.
By the time we get to our fourth and fifth decade we are wiser. But we are also bruised. We still hope, but that hope is now tinged with realism. At times, it’s been a very hard journey and we’ve felt really alone, however, along the way we’ve discovered who we are and who we can be. We have gotten stronger - we have matured and grown. But still society expects us to conform to some monogamous sexual model that has, for us, long ago proved inadequate. So, we play along, not revealing who we truly are for fear of negative judgement, a critical gaze. We become hypocritical, quick to condemn the promiscuous behaviour of celebrities and politicians, but just as quick to emulate if the opportunity presents itself.
We either settle for being single, and learn to enjoy that state, or we remain in a relationship which eventually loses its sparkle, becomes predictable and boring, but feels safe and looks ‘normal’ to outsiders. And despite all this we still hold on to the myths of love and romance. Of course, we ourselves cannot attain them, but we put that down to some deep inadequacy in us.
Failure, guilt, hypocrisy, shame, anger and regret - let us begin by binning these feelings altogether and facing up to the truth. Which is that you are normal, it is society that has the problem.
This book is designed to challenge your thinking on love, sex and relationships. I want to offer you not myth and illusion, but the world as it is. I am not interested in enticing you with the ‘holy grail’ of perfect love, but the chance to be free from its myths. If you read this book and feel empowered, inspired and unshackled from whatever social constraints have been imposed on you regards sex and love, then I have achieved my aim.
I want you to stop feeling guilty at the relationship ‘failures’ you’ve had in your life. In fact, I want you to stop seeing your ended relationships as any sort of failure. I want you to stop feeling guilty at desiring sex with more than one person. And I want you to stop feeling guilty at being single or if you are in a relationship, wanting to be out of i