Beyond Wanting to be Wanted
This fascinating and groundbreaking book explores the idea that women concentrate too much on being wanted, and not enough on discovering and fulfilling their own inner needs. Women often look to others to provide confidence, happiness and self-esteem. But this reliance produces a need to please others, which women often do by trying to conform to an image (the perfect spouse, lover, mother or worker) rather than finding out what their real needs are. If this image conflicts with our true, unacknowledged inner needs we can become resentful, frustrated and out of control - and one way to deal with this unhappiness is by trying even harder to live up to an ideal.
Polly Young-Eisendrath believes that women have to abandon these female images and discover our own real needs, without fear or shame. Only by learning to identify these needs clearly, and meet them from within, can we escape the cycle of wanting to be wanted.
