First off, I am a guy and this book is definitely written to the female audience. So I had to keep transposing and interpreting as I went along. As I read it I found that I was having all kinds of reactions ranging from HECK NO! to DARN RIGHT!

One of my first reactions was to a subheading in the first chapter DO YOU WANT IT ALL, OR ARE YOU WILLING TO COMPROMIXE TO GET HIM? that really pushed my buttons because one of the issues that I am working on in my life is not settling.

What kept me going through the book were the examples and how many were true for my life. One of the best insights in the book for me was that rejecting someone can be an act of love. The author advocates either accepting or rejecting someone, both are acts of love. What is not an act of love is to tolerate someone.

I think that many of my concerns with the book could have been alleviated if the material in the chapter FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES, which is at the end of the book, would have been placed at the beginning. For me, it sets the context in which the rest of the book is written rather than being a summary. It directly addresses many of the concerns that I had as I read the rest of the book.

There is much of value in here, and even though it is written for women and I don't agree with everything in the book, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in improving relationships in their life simply because it is so thought-provoking.

61 of 65 found the following review helpful:


Life Changing  Feb 08, 2006 By Shannon
I'm what you call a serial monogamist. I have always had boyfriends. Some for a year, two years, etc. I have a great social life, I am successful and very attractive. I have never had a problem meeting, dating or having long and honest relationships with men. But, something happened in my late 20's. There I was, 27, single (for a minute), living in New York, working in the fashion industry and my clock went off-I wanted to find a partner for life, I wanted to find my husband. Now, this was very different than having a boyfriend, this was the big leagues. I didn't have any clue how I needed to go about this.

"Getting to I Do" catalogued various relationship scenarios, where the authors pointed out what worked and what didn't. I have to be honest, being a self-supportive "modern woman", I at first thought that the simplistic illustrations of male/female dynamics were really old-fashioned and that I might as well just talk it out with my grandmother. But, the book went way beyond just designating roles. For me it helped me to embrace the woman I was and to understand the relationship dynamic I wanted to have.

The book is terrific. I read it and applied it to my next relationship-someone I fell in love with and wanted to marry. I went through the "phases" as stated in the book and when it got down to the "negotiation" phase, my boyfriend wanted to move to France, with me. Great! But, not without an engagement. Turns out he was not ready to be married. It was a very painful to think about being without him. To have my dreams of being married to him dissolve. Fortunaltely, I had learned that I would be putting myself through so much more pain and anguish if I had up-rooted my life without any commitment other than being a great boyfriend. So, I let him go.

Thanks to "Getting to I Do", painful decisions became easy to navigate because I knew I wanted to find the person who wanted to commit to me, who would not stand to see me go without the emotional commitment I needed. Two years, and couple of boyfriends later, at age 34, I have found the man of my dreams and we are getting married in Septmeber.

"Getting to I Do" has tought me to never compromise my feelings and that you don't have to argue in order to communicate. I am really thankful and grateful that I recieved this book, it has been a blessing!!!

46 of 50 found the following review helpful:


Not completely idiotic  Jul 20, 2005 By L O'connor
I usually totally despise self-help books of the 'how to get a man and keep him' type, but this one, although like most self-help books pretty silly, does contain some quite sensible advice.

Dr. Allen's theory is that everyone is either a 'feminine energy' person or a 'masculine energy' person. The masculine eneergy personis the leader who cherishes his mate, the feminine energy person is the follower who respects her leader. Dr. Allen doesn't think it matters whether the man or the woman is the leader or the follower (this makes her more flexible than the authors of most such books), but she maintains that you must have one of each, she doesn't think 'equal' relationships can work.

If you decided to be the 'feminine energy' woman (as she thinks most women will probably want to be) you let the man make the running, make the decisions (so long as they are not unethical, immoral, or something that can harm you or your children), and accept what he gives you graciously (that includes accepting things you might not particularly care for, like unwanted advice). You always give back less than you take, because a feminine energy woman must love herself more than her man.

One of her theories is that men want to marry virtupous women, so you must not sleep with a man until he has 'committed' to you, if you want to marry him. I don't know how true this is generally, but it certainly wasn't true in my own case, I slept with all the men I went out with before they'd 'committed' to me, but nevertheless some of them did want to marry me.

The part of this book I enjoyed the most is the chapter called 'Finding the Toad in every Prince' in which she describes how you cope when you discover the things about your prospective mate that you don't like. she says "There is a prince in every toad and a toad in every prince. But does someone fall in love with the prince part of a person? No way. They fall in love with the toad part. It's the idiosyncracies and weirdness that really endears someone to you, the part that makes you say "Oh, that's just him" and you love him anyway.

I tell women if they are still waiting for the perfect man - mentally, physically and emotionally he's not coming.

I feel that if you get someone who is 51 percent or better, keep him. That is to say, if you like more about the person than you don't, then go for it. Because odds are that if you don't, and you go out looking for a better deal elsewhere, you could end up with someone who is only 49% or worse."

I thought this was very sensible advice. One of the things I like about this book, is that Pat allen does not recommend a woman making herself into a doormat, or behaving as if only what the man wants matters, she believes that a naturally 'masculine energy' man will want to keep his wife happy and give her what she wants.

Not everything in this book made sense to me, but I did think some of the advice was quite sensible, and you might find it helpfull. It certainly didn't induce in me the feelings of nausea that other books of this kind have done.

35 of 37 found the following review helpful:


This book's principles are working for me.  Aug 06, 1999
After years of throwing caution to the wind when it came to my romantic relationship I've finally realized that something I was doing and not doing were holding me back from being truly happy. This book helped me find out what the problems were and sometimes still are. With the help of this book, I set upon a strategy to make my romantic prospects flow smoothly, therefore, making every aspect of my life flow just as well. With this book I learned why I felt strangely about one situation and content with another. I realized what would truly make me happy, and choosing the feminine energy works for me.

In the past, I felt I could cushion the blow of rejection and meet a life partner by displaying the masculine energy, which only caused turmoil when in a relationship with a masculine man. A masculine man is what I want. THIS WAS THE NEGATIVE APPROACH I LET RUN MY LOVELIFE FOR OVER TWELVE YEARS. Now I choose my dates and/or partners much more carefully and I'm happier for it.

There are many books telling men and women how to pick up one another, how to have sex, wear clothes, apply makeup, etc. There are many books telling you how to do everything under the sun, but not how to love yourself, and therefore, start loving others. Its what all of us have been hearing for most of our lives, but never really knew how to do so, like with everything else we need a step-by-step plan.

This book show us how and why we have to experience temporary pain to make the rest of your lives peaceful. This book is for anyone who wants to know how to relate to the opposite sex.

This book is NOT a quick fix. I first read it over three years ago, temporarily practiced the principles, then fell into my bad habits, but with constant reference and study I've learned the principles work.

I recommended this book to everyone I knew, male and female, who are having romantic problems. None have read it, laughing and saying, "No thanks." But go on crying for months and years, paying therapists outrageous amounts of money talking about someone who is not interested in them. Wondering why things don't work out. It's sad that people choose a life of confusion.

I don't agree with everything in this book, but I do agree with 98% of it and it does work. It may sound old fashioned for some, but we all learn from history. Don't be afraid to look into the past to make the future better.

READ THIS BOOK!

26 of 27 found the following review helpful:


Very Interesting!  Aug 27, 2001
Watch out, this is a very deeply provocative book. I wouldn't call it spiritual, but would say that it honors an enduring psychological energy exchange that is very real yet confounds most of us as we bumble along wondering why the things we are doing in our relationships aren't working. This is a very intelligent yet practical treatment of how this energy needs to be exchanged in relationships. I have being reading this book over and over for the last year to get it's principles into my mind. But the payoff has been tremendous. Its provocative content forced me to take a doubletake. I just couldn't believe what she was saying, yet something about it spoke to the part of me that always worked hard to be independent and do the right thing by being an equal in a relationship.The book encouraged me to cherish the feminine side of myself. Those of you out there with low self-esteem know how difficult this is to maintain. Read the hostile reviews and you'll see that some find it impossible to cherish themselves. Applying these principles, although they may seem simple, is not easy. The negotiation strategies, for instance, take practice -there has been an ongoing learning curve in my case. The author shows what to do in painful situations where some of us get reactive and defensive. (See her "5-step clean up" strategy.) The neatest thing is that the responses to this approach are loving and cherishing. The cherishing is what I have always wanted and now know how to get. It's what makes the relationship a romantic love affair instead of a business deal type partnership. And it brings out the best in my boyfriend, a maturity, that he never knew he had. Of course there are times when we switch roles and he shares his feelings and I share my thoughts. In my opinion, any person who says the author does not advocate this role reversal at times just did not sincerely look for the balanced approach that is here in this book, and that's not a fair treatment of her philosophy. If you want to grow up in a relationship, this book will help point the way. In writing this, I am "casting my bread upon the waters," in hopes that it will give someone else a chance read it and to experience what the book has given me.

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