How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk

The Foolproof Way to Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind

By: John Van Epp

Narrated by: Alexander Cendese

Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

Based on years of research on marital and premarital happiness, How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk will help you break destructive dating patterns that have kept you from finding the love you deserve. With this book, you will learn how to:

• Ask the right questions to inspire meaningful, revealing conversations with your partner
• Judge character based on compatibility, relationship skills, friends, and patterns from family and previous relationships
• Resolve your own emotional baggage so you're ready for a healthy relationship

©2007 John Van Epp (P)2017 Tantor

Should be Titled:Lessons in Love from the1950'sEra

It's great for warning signs. could use more practical advice. Still totally worth it. .

TONS OF INFORMATION

Very enlightening book…every young person should be given this in elementary schools before dating…it really shows how we make our dating/sexual/martial decisions & offers actionable techniques to not fall into an abusive or toxic relationship.

Valuable & Dated

8/10 — valuable takeaways, especially through the middle of the book. When we got to the end about sex, that’s when things got dated.

Some research presented correlated premarital sex with increased divorce rates, but the research centered around WOMEN not having sex. What about men having premarital sex? I believe this sends a message to women that if they have sex before marriage, they’ll get divorced! 👎🏼

I’m all for waiting to have sex, 3+ months in order for the mask to come off, but is the author advocating for no sex until marriage? Very dated IMO.

why did nobody tell me about this book earlier...

this is one of those books that everyone looking at building a great relationship should read this book was not only informative it was fun to read and so eye opening in many ways I'm glad I read it The RAM model is something people looking to build great relationships should know about it just makes sense and there's science behind it

GREAT Information! Downside; NEEDS different voice for this serious material.

This book is full of Insightful research based relationship information.

Very Difficult to get past his voice because it is the Beast from Beauty and the Beast.

Insightful

This book give me a lot to think about! i feel like I have the tools I need to pic a partner that is right for me and to avoid the bad. This book help me to think critically and help me be more observant when I go out on dates.

Great but also dismissive

Great performance, and the guide points and tools for getting to know your partner, when your relationship ideal is a monogamous lifelong partnership, are incredibly clear and helpful.
My critique deals with the last chapter, in which the author argues (without using religion, to his credit) that statistically speaking, cohabitation and sex before marriage lead to a higher divorce rate. This may have been statistically true at the time of writing, I don't doubt it. But he dismisses any actual consideration that other factors can mess with these statistics. For example, that conservative or religious backgrounds that don't live or sleep together before marriage often also have a taboo against divorce, and therefore marriages may continue to exist but not necessarily be happy or mutually successful. Or that again in conservative circles, sex before marriage is less common but terrifyingly for married couples who have NOT had sexual experiences before marriage, the amount of women who do not experience orgasms at all (and have been taught this is just their fate) in their married sex life is an alarming amount. But that female pleasure is one of the most under-researched categories of human physiology out there.
I'd respect his points more in this category if he actually honored the complications and unknowns of his argument. Otherwise, this last chapter comes off as a sermon with religious undertones rather than scientifically sound and therefore helpful guide.

That being said, again, all other chapters are some of the best I've ever read in terms of a framework for getting to know another human being, understanding the difference between red flags and simple differences of being, and ways to navigate several different moments in the journey of a life together. Would recommend to most people. Minus that final sex life chapter.

Great book to read before dating

I really enjoyed th is book and want to utilize the information. I will most likely listen to the audio book 2 more times to reinforce. the narrator's voice sounded very mysterious and kept me interested the entire time.

A book to read when you get engaged

If this book doesn't stop you in your tracks for relationship awareness I don't know what will. This book will make you want to shatter your own mirror but when you can accept your reflection, it is so much more powerful! I've been able to honor myself more in my traits and short comings and also been more eye opening to my partner's traits and shortcomings. I am grateful to have been shared this book so I can reflect wholly on what I am embarking on.

Life altering!!

Doctor van Epps book was absolutely amazing, it was an amazing book that had inspirational content , it left me hanging to want to complete each chapter one more day I listen to the whole book in the matter 48 hours and wad absolutely floored with all its content. transformational to relationships.