I Married Dr. Jekyll and Woke Up Mrs. Hyde:
Or What Happens to Love?
Alma Halbert Bond, Ph.D. (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
2000 ASJA Press/iUniverse.com, Inc.
ISBN: 0595140459 Amazon's price is: $22.95
What can wrench apart a seemingly destined union? Why do so many marriages fail? What can we learn from the experiences of others about our own marriages? What questions would you ask of your divorced friends to find out why they think their marriages ended?
This is not an easy book to read -- the voices of the women who answered Dr. Bond's Questionnaire vibrate from the pages in a rainbow of emotions -- fury, sorrow -- wry appraisal -- wise hindsight -- petulance & glee!
Yes, married men don't make it through unscathed yet almost every woman worked hard, in her musings on the how & why of the collapse of their union, to give her erstwhile partner a kudo or two, some morsel of credit -- except the irredeemable fellows!
Dr. Bond has amassed this amazing body of research into The Women Speak -- of the Physical Abusers: The Verbal Abusers; The Withholders; The Need for Space; The Unfaithful; The Abandoned Ones; The Homosexuals; The Narcissists; He Changed After We Married; The Control Freaks & finally, to leave us on a hopeful note: The Good Marriage & Dr. Bond has stepped out of the way to let the women's voices come through without comment & to reverberate clearly for the reader to hear & think about.
Out of each woman's story Dr. Bond has distilled their essence & presents telling & sometimes poignantly funny titles: “God Didn't Put Me in this Marriage to be Humiliated;” “You Don't Quit Lovin' a Man Because He Hits You” or “He Talks the Talk but Doesn't Walk the Walk” & “Love is Such an Intangible Tangible” or “He Felt Like an Octopus Who Wrapped Me in His Tentacles” or “The Glass Was Alway Half Empty” or “The 'Other Woman' Was Inside of Him” or “I Felt Like a Flower That Has Never Been Watered” or “We Shared a Cold Bed” or “The Only Forward Movement Was the Hands of our Clock” or “He Talked Nicer to the Dog than He Did to Me” or “The Divorce Helped Me Blossom into the Person I Wanted To Be” & finally: “We Reinvented the Traditional Roles”.
I was praying Dr. Bond would give us some Conclusions & she does, both statistical & thoughtful with Appendixes in which she prints the Divorce Questionnaire that started it all.
A must for any counselling offices or domestic violence prevention centers as well as sorority houses -- anywhere women congregate to think & talk about one of their biggest life choices!
This collection of stories is not about trashing men -- it is all about women healing themselves by lancing their pent-up feelings over the failure of their marriages. I don't doubt it will be mistaken for a man-hating book -- thus I do not recommend men read it -- it will hurt too much!
More from Alma Halbert Bond, Ph.D.: The Masochist is the Leader printed in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis Vol 9 #3, 375-389 Who Killed Virginia Woolf, a Psychobiography On Becoming a Grandparent The Autobiography of Maria Callas: A Novel Maria: a play
& many more articles & books.
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