Finding the Boyfriend Within: A Practical Guide for Tapping into your own Scource of Love, Happiness, and Respect

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