Anyone read this book.... Judith Rossner is the author.

Maybe you saw the horrible adaptation of it into a movie... Diane Keaton and Richard Gere.

Well, it is about a woman who is a professional, almost shy even. A teacher, actually. She starts dating a kind, polite caring guy but she finds he is too boring. She then meets the bad boy (the stereotypes of the characters are a bit exaggerated))... and finds the best of both worlds in two men. She dates the one and parties and have sex with the other.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I saw the movie years ago, and quite frankly it scared me to death....and I'M a guy!!!

i want to be the bad "one"

I read it years and years ago. Didn't she end up picking up the wrong guy at the end?

How come their is no Mrs. Goodbar?

Well, yes, the bad boy killed her.

The story is actually the paradox of finding a balance between what we want and what we need, romantically.

Yes.....she wound up getting killed by him at the end!!!

See....I guess I've lived such a "protected" life, I would have never gotten this philisophical about the movie.

That's what I thought, just didn't want to be a spoiler for anyone who hasn't read it I must have been in my early teens. I've been scared off one night stands for life

That's because it WASN'T a movie. It was literature, a book. Then someone made it into a movie. The same thing happened with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. They are BOOKS.

I only brought up the movie as many people have seen it and it does, to a degree, follow the plot of the story. Anyhow, back to the point....

sorry....

No need to apologize, I guess I just thought I made it clear in my post...

Never read the book or saw the movie but am all too familiar with the dichotomy.

I may just be too American-culture-encumbered to embrace the idea of a bifurcated "ideal" -- I don't know -- and, when I was younger, it was easy to rationalize along the lines of "Donna's cute and fun but Joy is smarter and more interesting but Alisia makes me feel good" and use that as a justification for all kinds of philately. (see if anybody catches that one.)

But what are we really talking about here? The insufficiency of the "ideal" as an attainable goal -- if there is no one perfect person (an idea that many of us still haven't abandoned), then what's the alternative? Settle for the kind, good-hearted loser who means well but who will never amount to anything because he's dumber than an ox?

So -- the piecemeal solution. Cherry-picking the "best" parts from more than one source.

Gets complicated when emotions enter into the picture though.

I get a sense of the whole "Mr. Goodbar" thing as a "sign of its times" -- what was in, the 1970s? The "Alternative relationship" was a big theme. (Remember "The Harrad Experiment"?) A titillation, a sense of the (at least ostensibly) forbidden. "Ooooh, I'm naughty, I'm involved with TWO men." It was considered risque at the time, I suppose....appeals to the "wish I could try that," vicarious instinct.

I wouldn't want to mess with it now, though. From either side.

Yes, it was from the 70's, 1974 or 1975 I think. I suppose it presents an interesting point though. How do you prioritize the factors in which you want and need?

If you start with the basics....the "nice" guy.....couldn't he be "taught" to have parts of the "bad" guy??? Then you'd have both worlds eventually!!

I know I've done some pretty strange things just because my significant other enjoyed it!

Well in real life richard gere had to go to the hospital to have his dead shaved greased gerbil girlfreind removed from his ass that he put there with a phalsh tube. So I guess he didn't find true love either.

True, but I don't think the bad boy is only a sexual component. I think there is a sense of adventure and free spiritedness, a "fun" thing for lack of a better term.

It is a mixture of raw and refined, a balance between sweet and spicy. YOu just need to find your own level. I thinks this presents a dilemma in all of us, whether or not we realize it.

I think that's arbitrary to the point of being almost completely indeterminable -- for me, anyway. I have only the vaguest notion of what separates wants from needs (in my own personal "model," it breaks down into two main categories of people, which I have labeled the "Standards" and the "Exotics" for purposes of discussion) because there is a tremendous degree of overlap in my "wants" and "needs." There are really only a handful of things that can be definitively categorized as clearly being one or the other.

But I've noticed that most of my friends have a completely different construct -- their "wants" are wildly divergent from their "needs" -- which I suppose is more "normal."

Diane keaton couldn't find her love in a bottle of alcohol. There's some real irony here.

Are you yourself an exotic, then?