I would strongly recommend removing More Than Two from the post. The primary author has been accused of abuse by his co-author and multiple other long term partners (>50% of all long term partners he’s had, maybe close to 100%). It’s not clear to me his behavior meets a strict definition of abuse, but you can’t get to this stage without some combination of “the relationships were terrible and he contributed to that” and “he has absolutely terrible taste in partners”, and I think both are pretty disqualifying for a relationship advice guru. Plus, while I don’t have any evidence other than his statements and theirs, the kinds of bad behavior they describe are extremely consistent with the failure modes of what he writes about.
Sex at Dawn is also atrocious from a scientific perspective, although much less likely to cause overt harm.
I disagree with this comment. Veaux seems awful, but a bad messenger doesn’t make a bad message and his coauthor (one of his ex-partners and accusers) AFAICT, still endorses the book. In any case, I continue to believe it contains good relationship advice.
Can you say more about what you think is good about the advice, and why that book in particular is the best source of that advice?
The co-author didn’t immediately retract the book but had since said at least one of the core models strips people of defenses against abuse, and that that wasn’t necessarily the worst thing in the book, just the easiest thing to point to.
I would strongly recommend removing More Than Two from the post. The primary author has been accused of abuse by his co-author and multiple other long term partners (>50% of all long term partners he’s had, maybe close to 100%). It’s not clear to me his behavior meets a strict definition of abuse, but you can’t get to this stage without some combination of “the relationships were terrible and he contributed to that” and “he has absolutely terrible taste in partners”, and I think both are pretty disqualifying for a relationship advice guru. Plus, while I don’t have any evidence other than his statements and theirs, the kinds of bad behavior they describe are extremely consistent with the failure modes of what he writes about.
Sex at Dawn is also atrocious from a scientific perspective, although much less likely to cause overt harm.
I included these comments in the post so people actively know these resources are disendorsed.
I disagree with this comment. Veaux seems awful, but a bad messenger doesn’t make a bad message and his coauthor (one of his ex-partners and accusers) AFAICT, still endorses the book. In any case, I continue to believe it contains good relationship advice.
Can you say more about what you think is good about the advice, and why that book in particular is the best source of that advice?
The co-author didn’t immediately retract the book but had since said at least one of the core models strips people of defenses against abuse, and that that wasn’t necessarily the worst thing in the book, just the easiest thing to point to.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/brighterthansunflowers.com/2019/11/29/what-i-got-wrong-in-more-than-two-the-dark-night-of-the-soul/amp/