Review: Sex Is Not Enough

Sex Is Not Enough
by Robert M Fox

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sex Is Not Enough / 0-9712149-1-3

I'm honestly not certain how to rate this book. There's a lot of good "common sense" information here, and almost all of it is very valid and should be paid attention to. The book explores, in sometimes agonizing detail, all the relationship qualities that will make a difference over a long-term relationship (with a specific eye towards marriage), including such staples as communication, common goals, financial compatibility, and so forth, but I'm not completely clear on who the audience for this book is, really.

The authors seem to think that there's a significant portion of the population who have brief, whirlwind romances with mind-blowing sex and then run off to marry in haste and repent in leisure. If that's the case, then I suppose a book like this would be invaluable, although it seems that anyone who took the time to buy and read it would already grasp these concepts - maybe it's meant to be a gift book? (I'm not sure what that would say about the relationship dynamics between the gifter and the giftee, though.)

If this book has a blind spot, I would say that it lies in the apparent assumption that the answer to this "marry in haste, repent in leisure" epidemic is best solved by just finding "better" people to marry. That's a long term solution, I suppose, but a simpler might be to just have longer romances, with extended living together prior to making a legal commitment like marriage - this would provide the necessary growth, learning, and maturity to gauge whether or not the relationship has "distance" potential, without having to deal with the problem of, "What if I find someone who seems to have the same communication / goals / financial priorities as I, but changes soon after marriage?" - a problem that I think is far more epidemic than couples getting married on sex-compatibility alone.

Still, overall, there's a lot of good information here - it's just that it's probably nothing you haven't already thought of already.

~ Ana Mardoll

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