cover image Design Your Love Life: A Guide to Marriage and Relationships in the 90s: Intimacy with Independence, Commitment Without Confinement

Design Your Love Life: A Guide to Marriage and Relationships in the 90s: Intimacy with Independence, Commitment Without Confinement

Bryan D. Brook. Walker & Company, $18.95 (170pp) ISBN 978-0-8027-1092-5

Addressing the vast topic of ``America's 54 million marriages that struggle almost daily with changing sex roles, gender clash and economic pressures,'' this book grew out of interviews with 900 people of both sexes. The author, a therapist, is host of the television series, How's Your Lovelife? After presenting the parallel concerns, almost mirror images, of women and men who express feelings of discontent, Brook proposes a ``redesigned togetherness.'' Today's social matrix, he writes, requires a model for marriage that is realistic, flexible and responsive to changing gender roles. Rather than focus on psychological roots of marital trauma, Brook suggests ways to rethink one's options: ``It is time for more persons to be intentional about what is possible in their lifetime strategies for love, freedom and parenthood.'' Assessment scales and gender profiles are among the self-help apparatus included in his trendy pep-talk. 35,000 first printing; author tour. (Oct.)