Joshua Rotter writes: The now-happily married father of one is only too eager to share his discoveries about life and love in his new book, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships, which he’s promoting at a Litquake brunch on Saturday, Oct 17, that’s aptly titled “A Playboy No Longer: (Former) Bad Boy, Neil Strauss. ”
Strauss went from interviewing musicians for Rolling Stone and reviewing music for The New York Times to co-writing a string of successful memoirs, such as Marilyn Manson’s The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt, and Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star.
He would next write about his own sex life in the controversial bestseller The Game, the career-changing 2005 novel in which the author penetrates the seduction community. Unfortunately, Strauss began using those manipulative strategies IRL — and encouraged others to do the same in his sequel, Rules of the Game.
“I just have to embrace the fact that I had that side that was attracted to something so shallow and objectifying and narcissistic,” he says. “There’s a part of me that felt disconnected, and here was this group of guys that was maybe showing me how, instead of being an observer, to participate and have fun and get acceptance and all those things that maybe I lacked on the inside. I think it spoke to a wound, and the wound says, ‘Yes.'”
He credits legendary music producer Rick Rubin with mentoring him out of The Game. “He helped me realize, ‘You’ve got everything you’ve wanted, now you’re social and can meet people, so why are you still not happy?'”
Strauss wrote The Truth in an attempt to answer this question.
“The answer and the heart of The Truth is that there are unconscious forces that we’re not aware of, that are guiding the way we live our lives by the lies we tell ourselves — like ‘I don’t fit in,’ or ‘Everyone’s making fun of me.’ Maybe The Game and The Truth should have been one book, ’cause this is the conclusion it should have had, about getting away from manipulation and returning to intimacy and honesty. To start off with honesty, you have to be honest with yourself and know who you are before you can really be honest with someone else.”
He also learned that communication is key or else we just build resentments, that we pick our partners to work out childhood issues, that sex suffers over time because we turn our partners into our parents, and that only once we “un-parentalize” our partners can we truly connect with them sexually or otherwise. He speaks from experience.
