Dear Lover: A Woman's Guide To Men, Sex, And Love's Deepest Bliss

Dear Lover changed the way I think about relationships and gave me permission to seek a deeply spiritual connection with another human being. I was always looking for the kind of love that Deida writes about and yet I felt guilty looking for more than 'checked boxes' from my lovers. The kind of love Deida describes is my new barometer for connection and prerequisite reading for my future relationships.

I bought it for a friend after reading The Way Of The Superior Man, this book's companion. She doesn't believe in God and couldn't get past the mention of a higher power, so I guess atheists don't get to benefit from Mr Deida's wisdom. For everyone else, I think he has the best understanding of the male/female dynamic out there.

My friend's other complaint was that the information was too new and too different from what Dr. Phil and everyone else teaches. She said that if the contents of this book were legit then everyone would already know this. That complaint should be an encouragement for every person out there who thinks Dr. Phil is an idiot and is afraid to buy a relationship book for fear that it will contain the same old warmed-over nonsense.

If nothing else, this book contains NEW information, stuff you haven't heard before, stuff I look forward to trying out on the next open-minded woman I meet.

I won't go into a relationship again with a woman who can't grasp this. I think Dr. Phil works for the divorce lawyer's lobby and David Deida is on our side, and since this book is tragically out of print, you can get it cheap and take a chance on finding that one in a million relationship.

Wow, ancient wisdom delivered in a way that the modern man can learn the secrets of sacred sexuality and how to unleash his full potential across all aspects of life. I’ve been studying obscure ancient text on this subject of sacred sexuality and find David to be the foremost expert on bringing the wisdom found and lost in today’s world back using skilled communication to make it easy to understand the secrets of masculine energy that any man can tap into if they have the understanding. Nowhere else can you find such an updated comprehensive guide to some of the worlds most illuminating information that in its self can transform a man, his world and the world at large. Most read if you identify with being masculine.

One of the deepest, most profound books I ever read. I just finished it - it changed my way of seeing myself in a relationship forever and helped me understand that it was ME pushing others away - and not the other way (which I thought most of the time they were doing).

It takes a lot to open up, to truly open up and love with all you have - to go beyond your inner shells, to love yourself so deeply that you inner light can shine into the world - without a doubt.

I am so happy that I read this book - and this is, by the way, one of the books I read through without reading another one next to it. It caught me once and never let me go... of course my ego sometimes said to me: that's not true, the other person has just as much to do with it all - as you have - but in the end, my ego go quieter and quieter and was finally silent, the further I got into this book.

I especially love the letters at the beginning from each chapter.

David Deida has a deep and very beautiful way of writing. I am lucky that I found it - it's one of the best guide books I ever read (and, yes, I am VERY honest: I read many...)

While I would've given this a five-star rating if the writing were less redundant, I did find the repetition of the same ideas expressed in different ways to be surprisingly helpful. It seemed like hearing it over and over and over again was necessary for me to fully comprehend the message.

This book came into my life when my marriage was on the brink of collapse. Our communication had dwindled, and the tension between us was palpable. One night, everything erupted, leaving us feeling utterly broken and lost, yearning to love but paralyzed by the fear of releasing our egos.

In moments of despair, I questioned myself: What can I give to him? What haven't I tried? In the darkness, alone and in tears, it felt as if the divine spoke to me, reminding me of this book as I prayed for answers.

The author's explanation of the feminine yearning for love resonated with me, mirroring my own feelings. Having it articulated by the Masculine Guru himself served as confirmation and reassurance, affirming that this type of love is indeed real, not just a fantasy.

I found the love letters at the beginning of each chapter truly captivating. The compassionate and loving tone, along with the author's expression of the masculine frustration toward the feminine's closed heart, resonated deeply. The emphasis on how the natural masculine way can inadvertently cause the feminine to close up echoed my husband's expressions of hurt and frustration, albeit presented in a more refined manner.

Gotten to halfway through the book in just two days, I felt compelled to follow the author's advice of opening and surrendering to love. Approaching my husband, we reconnected in a way we never had before. My devotion to love opened his heart in a manner I had never witnessed. Together, we experienced a mix of emotions, from tears to laughter, culminating in a deep, sweet love making.

A month since that transformative night, we find ourselves dancing, navigating the ebb and flow, contending with the egos that harden our hearts. Yet, I recognize that I am embodying divine love. I feel honored to present this gift to my husband, a journey of devotion to love that, in its essence, brings both of us closer to God.

A central question in David Deida's work is: What is sexual love between a man and a woman for? The answer he gives here and elsewhere is that the purpose of sex is to open our bodies and hearts to God, and in fact that sex more than anything else in life is what takes us open to God. "Through entering your heart and body with mine in love's deepest bliss, I open together with you to God."

Deida's distinctive writing style is intuitive and filled with redundancy, so you'll read that message often in this book (which is written as a series of letters from Deida to the reader as his female lover). To me it's attention-getting the first few times he says it but soon becomes mind-numbing. By the end of the book it's enough already!

Still, this book contains some interesting corollaries for women to contemplate. Among them:

• "The secret to unfolding your heart's deepest bliss is to give and receive love fully, with or without a man. . . . You can learn to open your body as if it were a big heart, vulnerable and full of love's radiant life-force. And it is this disposition of openhearted radiance that will gift the world as well as attract and keep a man capable of actually meeting your heart's deepest desire."

• "Whether you are alone or in relationship, your spiritual and sexual bliss require a daily allotment of whole-body pleasure and deep-heart offering, or else your joy will shrivel like an unwatered plant."

• "Deep heart yearning is not a problem to be solved but a divine pull to open as devotional surrender, as wide as all, now. . . . This capacity to offer your open love is indestructible. No amount of rejection or betrayal can destroy this offering of love."

• "Even when you are tense or upset, you can practice surrendering your body and heart to be breathed open by this love that yearns in everybody's heart."

• "Your yearning attracts and inspires love. If you allow your deepest yearning to show through your entire body, you will attract and inspire a deep man."

• You will attract your reciprocal. "Unsurrendered women attract unpresent men."

• "Your secret sexual desire is to be ravished, lovingly forced open in unbearable pleasure, and taken fully open to God by a man of deep spiritual wisdom, strength, humor, sensitivity, and integrity."

• "Few men are capable of entering a woman's heart and opening her body to God's bliss, but few women are capable of offering their heart and body to be claimed open in this way."

• "Men are terrified of a woman's depth of love and the energy that moves as a woman's sexuality and emotions. And, at the same time, men want nothing more in this life than to merge completely with a woman's devotional love and wild energy. Only as a man outgrows his fear can he handle a woman's tremendous love-energy without running. And only such a man is worthy of your devotional offering in a committed intimacy."

• " . . . you settle for a mediocre relationship because you are afraid to be alone. You fill your heart's yearning with an adequate, but not entirely trustable, man. As you grow beyond being dependent on a man, you may choose to settle for an independent life because you are afraid to rely on a man's support."

• "Eventually, you realize that self-sufficiency is a transition phase. . . . Instead of denying your own needs or limiting your love to self-reliant independence, you realize that, more than anything else, you actually yearn to live open as a devotional offering of love."

• "Your concern for career and self-sufficiency is obviously healthy, but your deepest fulfillment may await risking your heart wide open, offering your bright love to all beings, and giving yourself to be claimed - by a man of integrity, by a family of beloveds, by a world that needs your love. Love is the only way to live that won't leave your feminine heart feeling unseen, ungiven, empty, and wanting--no matter how successful your professional life may be."

• "You want him to notice - in fact, worship - your body's radiant beauty and your heart's light of divine love and he wants you to acknowledge and worship his heart's capacity to spiritually and sexually ravish you open to God."

• "If you want to inspire your man's depth of presence and commitment, offer him your feminine heart's deepest yearning, sexually, actively, and devotionally, receiving him into you completely and responding with full pleasure and trust."

• "Men are like trains. They are going somewhere. Choosing and staying with a man is like choosing to get on a train. You will end up going where your man goes, spiritually and sexually, or you will have to get off his train. You cannot change a man's direction to yours without losing trust in his capacity to navigate."

• "A young rigid woman, closed down and energetically dead, is far less sexy than an older woman who offers her heart-open pleasure in surges of abandoned moans and undulating sensuality, whose devotional eyes and mouth and vagina and legs move and open as unquenchable yearning, whose trust is total, who gives her man her deepest heart and every ounce of her own pleasure as a gift for him to feel, worship, and behold--such a woman is agelessly sexy. She is grounded in her heart and generous with love's offering."

• "Besides your heart's pleasure, your heart's pain is also a gift, if given through an open body and heart. . . . But there is a big difference between accumulating your emotions--eventually expressing them in a toxic dump of tense build-up--and being able to spontaneously express every nuance of emotion as the flow opens through you. Spontaneous emotional expression, from your deep heart through your open body and relaxed breath with no closure or tension, is a natural expression of love--even if love is expressed as sorrow, anger, or fear. . . . With practice, you can learn to offer your pleasure, pain, and emotions spontaneously and responsively as soon as they occur, letting go of them instantly, always with your heart open and connecting with your lover's heart."

• "Men constantly crave feminine energy, especially in safe forms that don't demand depth."

• "Men tend to leave relationships too soon, always looking for a better option. Women tend to stay in relationships too long, always hoping that their man will change and grow."

Now for the kookiness. The following little nuggets just seem way, way off base to me.

"Clitoral orgasms are the most superficial orgasms, requiring little if any emotional or spiritual trust--a vibrator can be used to achieve this pleasure. Nevertheless, clitoral orgasms can prepare you for surrendering more deeply." OK, so he's telling us that some kinds of orgasms are more evolved than others. Let's see, didn't we finally get permission some decades ago to jettison the myth of the vaginal orgasm?

The chapter entitled "Choosing Abuse and Refusing Love" is simply bizarre. There Deida asserts that if you choose to wait for a good man, taking care of yourself while your career progresses, your friends grow, and your life improves, you a choosing to be a victim of abuse. Huh? "The mistreatment is not from a man, but from yourself. You are actively closing, protecting your heart from love, shutting down so your body and heart don't ache so openly. You may be damaging yourself as much as any man could damage you. . . . You've grown used to some suffering, and you truly love your well appointed home, your friends, your cat, your garden. . . . you are choosing to play the victim to less love than you know, deep down, you deserve." Oh puhlease!!!

The chapter entitled "On Showing Your Heart's Light in Public" contains this interesting characterization of Deida's own gender: "When your heart is fully claimed by divine love, you have no personal neediness to be seen. Your body is open and flowing, alive with sexual energy, radiant with delight, and resplendent with the shine of love--you don't want to desecrate love's fullness in the oinking barrage of men's psychic grabbing and groping."

A final note. Deida's original contribution to relationship theory is his idea that in our time men and women are working out what it means to be in a stage 3 relationship, with stage 1 being the role-bound relationships of earlier generations, stage 2 being the egalitarian ideal that emerged with the modern women's movement, and stage 3 being based on the understanding that cultivating the male and female polarities in relationship is what keeps sex passionate and bonding. The idea is appealing, but what bothers me in Deida is a subtle flavoring of male dominance, since it's always about "your man's claim," "your man's taking you open to God." Contrast this with the female-pleasure-based paradigm put forth by Regina Thomashauer in Mama Gena's Owner's and Operator's Guide to Men and you'll see what I mean. Both Deida and Mama Gena agree that feminine energy is the most attractive force on earth, but I find Mama Gena's ideas more revolutionary.

If you’re debating on wether or not to buy this book because you liked The Way of the Superior Man, don’t bother. I was struggling to finish it. The writing style is so strange, so many points and words are repeated, and his analogies are weird. I suggest you spend your money on another book. I did like some parts about the masculinity and femininity essence but eh, not worth buying the entire book when we all know about it lol

I bought this for my wife. But, and I probably shouldn't have done this, I read it first.

And I see something in this book that not many reviewers see ( I think ).

The onus is on the man. That's right. Time and time the author points out that if you (female) are not "open" to love then maybe the man you're with isn't the one to open you. Maybe he can't do it for you. He's not powerful enough to "hold your wrists down and force himself on you." Yeah, that one made me pause, too.

So, this book may be instructional for men, too. Because it seems clear that we, as men, must be capable to open our wives. We must be the one God made to do that. We must be the one to bring her to the point of being open to love.

It's on us, guys. If you want her open, you figure out how to do that. (BTW- there is a pretty good book titled, "Open Her," by Karen Brody that you might want to read.