Drama Kings: The Men Who Drive Strong Women Crazy

by Dalma Heyn

Book Overview

The bestselling author of The Erotic Silence of the American Wife is back with another provocative peek at women's secret lives. Have you ever looked at one of your women friends and asked yourself,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1579548881
• ISBN13: 9781579548889
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.7" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

He's Just Not That Into You... or maybe he's a Drama King

Some of the push-pull male behavior in Behrendt's "He's Just Not That Into You" went beyond mere disinterest and entered the realm of pathology. This book gives good insight into the crazy-making behavior patterns that are routinely encountered by women in today's dating scene.

I've given this book to my friends!

Ever been in a relationship which is going nowhere, you don't know why and you just wish someone could give you some answers? Heyn's book is it! She clearly believes that there are wonderful men out there, men who want a full relationship. This book helps you see the signs of the "Drama Kings", relationships which just sap your time and energy, so you can move on and find that wonderful person who really works with you. The book has an easy, narrative style. Each chapter focuses on a type of "Drama King", gives you examples of behavior and a quick summary of the "signs". There is an upbeat, non-judgemental tone. These are insights into men and dating you wish you'd known earlier.

Fantastic Guidebook for the Single Woman

This book is right on the mark with describing how to tell if the man your dating or thinking of dating is a "Drama King". Dating today is hard enough without having to date men who have no intention of working on a commited relationship. Dalma Heyn describes five different types of men who you should be wary of in the dating world. After reading the book, you should be able to easily check off the signs and characteristics of different types of men who are not willing to commit to a relationship. I know a number of women who have spent year(s) in what they believed to be a growing and committed relationship and suddenly the man proclaims that he isn't ready for a commitment. Dalma Heyn's book provides a succinct guide to signs of men who can never commit.

It's Oxygen!

I've always believed that one's sharpest criticisms of others are really truest of oneself, and the previous reviewer of this book, Ellie Reasoner, provides a comic example of that. She said that DRAMA KINGS "set off to validate its own agenda and that's what it did." But, actually, that's what SHE did. It looks like she decided in advance what kind of book this is and then didn't bother to read it. Because actually, Dalma Heyn quite agrees with Reasoner. She doesn't remotely "expect a relationship to contain no flaws," she's not recommending trying to "change the behavior of any man," she doesn't claim that ALL men are "Drama Kings," and her bottom line, too, is, "if he's a jerk, get out of the relationship . . . ditch and move on." If you're in your 30s or 40s, strong, independent, eager to be interdependent, and DATING, you'll run into a lot of "drama kings" simply because that's what's left out there. There are plenty of great men, but naturally they're almost all taken! To me, Heyn's work is oxygen. It's the only place I know where I can still find, in utterly contemporary form, the exhilaration I felt at the very beginning of feminism -- before it got all militant and strident and dogmatic, when it was just pure discovery, and recognition, and expression of the paralyzingly inexpressible. When it was spell-unbinding. Heyn's first two books were about the mysterious loss of self that women in the 1980s and '90s still often experienced in their relationships with men, especially in marriage. "Marriage Shock" was about the asexual domesticity and dependency that could descend on a vital, independent young woman at the altar or soon after, and its roots in a long-ago historical moment when women's very survival came to depend on pleasing a man. "The Erotic Silence of the American Wife" was about how an affair could be, to paraphrase Kafka, the axe that shattered that frozen sea. It wasn't that the SEX in affairs was fresh and forbidden and therefore hot. It was that the SELF in affairs was natural and uncensored. What happened to women in marriage wasn't their husbands' fault. It was a kind of cultural spell that possessed and dispossessed them both. Both books were perceived as dangerous. I remember being surprised by the wild misfit between the reviews and what was in the books. Heyn's honesty seemed to panic people to the point where they couldn't hear what she was actually saying. When "Erotic Silence" came out, she was pilloried for advocating affairs -- when what she really advocated was going into marriage with your eyes open to the danger, so you wouldn't lose yourself in the first place. With "Marriage Shock," she was attacked for encouraging women to walk out of marriage -- when all she had done was, first, point out that young women, who had already known the taste of self-possession, were in fact walking out of marriages earlier and earlier; and then, suggest that the way to save marriage was to make it hospitable to whol

Drama Kings

"Drama Kings: The Men Who Drive Strong Women Crazy" by Dalma Heyn is a great "can't put down" read, albeit a potentially uncomfortabe one for those women who are currently involved with and feel stuck in a relationship with someone who manifests the signs of a Drama King. Regardless of one's status, I believe that most, if not all women, will recognize the various syndromes, unfortunately, because they no doubt have experienced the confusion and disappointments that accompany a relationship with a Drama King, regardless of type. And, while delving into these issues may be neither a welcome or a pleasant diversion (far easier to just ignore the Drama King signs and hunker down with the familiar), the theories set forth in the book will give any woman with some intelligence a wake-up call in terms of evaluating her own dissatisfaction and what she can do to transform it into something positive, which for the healthy woman with self-esteem most likely would lead to termination of the relationship and moving on, whether as an independent, self-sufficient person or in a relationship with a more highly evolved man. The book may be revolutionary in it analyses but, notwithstanding the discomfort it may potentially create, the read is well worth the effort, regardless of what a woman may elect to do in the future. In my own view, I think that Drama Kings should be read by every young woman about to embark on a relationship because it will give her the appropriate tools with which to assess a potential relationship as well as by those women who are frustrated in their attempts to make their current relationships more satisfying and meaningful. Hopefully, it will become a classic among womens' literature.