Are former lovers, live-ins, louses, and spouses cluttering your life like an overstuffed sock drawer — to the point that you can not find the sock mate you need? Do you struggle with a post-breakup relationship and "handle" it by having sex, doing favors, providing emotional support, and continuing a stream of electronic contact? And do you perceive that the PC or healthy goal of a breakup is to maintain a friendly relationship with all ex-whatevers? Or maybe your list of breakups is short, but the aftermath has risen to bite you in the butt? If "yes" is the answer to any of these questions, then you gotta read the book.
In Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ex*, authors Heather Belle and Michelle Fiordaliso present tons of reasons to rethink your values and choices about relationships that fall into the "ex" this and that category. They contend that all relationship breakups have the potential to reap a negative backlash of "ex" consequences. Even one-night stands and brief sexual flings with a coworker add an important dimension of reality to resolve after a breakup — you got naked together.
The authors take the position that the PC goal of remaining friends with the wrong exes can leave you stuck in your history and sabotage future relationships. The authors propose that the question of being friends or maintaining contact with exes should be evaluated on an individual basis. In this book, they systematically take you through the process of assessing who can remain on your friends list and who's really gotta go.
The authors stop short of tackling the special complications presented by divorces beyond the silver mark; but they present a broadly defined view of relationship breakups that produce an "ex-something" — ranging from divorces to casual one-night stands, with kids and not. Belle and Fiordaliso's approach to handling your "ex" somebody and elaborating on how your new partner's exes have an impact brings understanding to today's complex relationship maze.
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