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Check out "Finding the Boyfriend Within - Brad Gooch" at FiercePoet.com

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I read this book several years ago and I picked it up again tonight.  I remember reading it th first time and realizing that I truly need to make myself happy first.  I need to get back to that and start learning to live again. Brad Gooch’s take on the self-help genre is a self-described gay updating of Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl, and it’s a sensible, straightforward--and welcome--addition to the field. Who is the Boyfriend Within? Simply put, he embodies “qualities we find attractive in ourselves but often imagine others to possess more fully, as well as ... dormant qualities we wish to nurture and grow.” This growth process takes place through 16 “Awareness Exercises” that range from identifying the behavior patterns that might be keeping you from having a boyfriend to planning dates with your Boyfriend Within. (And before you crack any jokes, he really does mean dates--be they quiet evenings at home, neighborhood walks, shopping trips, or other activities.) Gooch’s own inner boyfriend is a bit like a male version of Midge, the Barbara Bel Geddes character in Vertigo, a constant (but not flashy) source of “sanity, peace, happiness.” But, he emphasizes, that’s just his own--the love of your inner life may turn out to be completely different. The exercises in Finding the Boyfriend Within hold great promise for fostering self-knowledge and the cultivation of one’s goals, not just in romance but in all aspects of life. - Ron Hogan In this guide for gay men searching for greater self-acceptance, Gooch genially advises readers to live every day as if they were expecting to entertain a dream lover for tea or dinner. The unkempt house, long a symbol of the bachelor, is a sign that the “inner boyfriend” is neglected. Gooch is not a psychologist. His credentials are based on having hashed out his own failed relationships and those of his friends over many brunches. Influenced in addition by therapy, his experiences in ashrams, the work of such authors as Rilke, Thomas Merton, Marianne Williamson and the Sufi poet Rumi, Gooch offers reflections on his own experience and linked “awareness exercises” that are meant to strengthen the reader’s relationship with himself. In recommending what amounts to an automatic writing excercise, Gooch asks the reader to invoke his inner voice to learn the answers to recurring questions that may cause him pain (e.g., “Why don’t I have a boyfriend?"). Other exercises suggest listing neurotic behaviors and “attractive qualities of the ‘package’ that is you.” While Gooch may be given to unreflective acceptance of the prevailing gay cultural standards of physical perfection and an ideal lifestyle, his good-natured advice won’t steer anyone wrong. - Agent, Joy Harris http://www.fiercepoet.com/index.php/446/

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