Neil Strauss was a successful, accomplished journalist when his book "The Game" was published in 2005. The book detailed Strauss’ exploration into a group of pickup artists, and the events depicted in the book changed his life, but so did the response to the book. "The Game" began a cultural touchstone and is still being felt to this day. Since then he’s written a few other books including "Emergency" and "Everybody Loves You When You’re Dead," but his new book "The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships" is in many ways a sequel to "The Game."
In "The Truth," Strauss pulls no punches. He writes in the beginning of the book, “I am not the hero in this tale. I am the villain.” It details how he cheated on his girlfriend, went to rehab for sex addiction, his multiple attempts to live non-monogamously. Strauss doesn’t go easy on himself. Ultimately the book is about Strauss learning to understand himself and his own beliefs and how that’s vital in order to have a healthy relationship of any stripe. He was kind enough to open up about alternative relationships, how people read–and misread–his work and the power of writing.
ALEX DUEBEN: The Truth details a few years in your life, which were very eventful, to say the least. When did you decide to write a book?
NEIL STRAUSS: It really became a book in my head when I broke up with Ingrid to go off and explore different types of relationships. I thought it would be a book about that, but part of the art of writing is allowing the book to be what it wants to be, not what you want it to be. Originally I wanted to write about non-monogamy and how monogamy’s not natural and makes no sense. It’s just some Ninth century Catholic Church agenda that’s still dictating our behavior. That was going to be the book. It became a very different book as I found out that monogamy wasn’t the problem, I was the problem. [laughs]
AD: At what stage were you thinking of using The Game as a model of sorts to talk about your journey and use it as a way to discuss a lot of ideas.
NS: I didn’t really think of The Game as a model at all, really. In my mind The Truth is a very separate book from The Game. At the end when I was all done I was thinking about packaging, I thought, because it’s about relationships, it’s a nice bookend to The Game. The Game isn’t necessarily a prequel, but I know what you’re saying. I would say The Game, Emergency, and The Truth are about the journey to grow myself up.
AD: This is a personal memoir, but I don’t think that people are reading this the way that people read a memoir by, say, Mary Karr
NS: [laughs] I think that’s true. The New York Times on the bestseller list didn’t put it on the nonfiction list where they put memoirs, they put it on the how to/advice list, which says something.
AD: I never read The Game as a how-to guide, but I know a lot of people have and I’m sure some people will do the same with The Truth.
NS: I really think The Game has been interestingly mis-categorized in the culture–which has both served and not served it. Some people read The Truth just as my own interesting story, and other people really see themselves in the pages and it helps them identify the problems in their lives and possible solutions. I guess The Game was the same: Some people saw it as a guidebook and maybe never finished it, and some people see it as a fascinating story of a journalist’s immersive journey into a bizarre subculture.
AD: I’m sure a part of you almost expects people to misread the book and see it as proving that monogamy is the only, natural solution, and that’s not the point at all.
NS: Yes. Thank you for saying that. It’s funny. All these first articles and reviews about the book have talked about how the book is advocating monogamy–which it isn’t. It’s advocating having a healthy relationship, whatever style of relationship that may be.
AD: A lot of times when people write about alternative relationships, they’re not doing it the way that you do. They’re looking at it like an anthropologist.
NS: Right, either in an anthropological sense or an endorsement/advocacy/advice sense. Chris Ryan’s Sex at Dawn might be what you’re referring to when you’re talking about the anthropological and evolutionary, and then there’s Opening Up or The Ethical Slut which say, hey, this is why this is great and these are the best practices for doing it. When something is so marginalized in the culture–such as the idea of having more than one concurrent honest love relationship–those who live it tend to publicly discuss only the good sides so as to legitimize it. Versus just being honest about how their relationships–like every relationship–have their ups and downs.
It’s interesting that the truth of relationships, whether monogamous or non-monogamous, is something we keep hidden. Couples try to present a happy face to the world, and don’t show their problems–until there’s a real rupture. The truth of relationships is so often hidden. We share so much of our lives online and in person but we so rarely share what’s behind closed bedroom doors. I think it would be helpful if we did because people feel like maybe that conflict or sexuality is abnormal or shameful, when it can be healthy if it’s at a high level of respect, honesty, and communication.
AD: When you start the book, you go into rehab and your attitude is essentially, yes, I cheated on my girlfriend, but these other guys have real problems. Your revelation seems to be not that you’re a sex addict, but that you do have issues. Is that fair?
NS: I think that’s fair. If you look at the other books I wrote with Marilyn Manson, Motley Crue, Jenna Jameson, and even my entire career as a journalist, I was always the “normal person” explaining the “crazy people.” The Game and Emergency were the same. I wrote about the crazy pickup artists or the extreme survivalists. But in The Truth, I realized I was not normal. Nobody’s normal. Everybody has their shit. Yet I really thought that somehow I was the only normal person in the room. And maybe that’s because we live with ourselves for so long that, to us, our thoughts and behaviors seem normal.
AD: Do you think that you are or were a sex addict?
NS: I guess the answer is it depends on whose definition of sex addiction you’re looking at. By some definitions anyone who has premarital sex or who watches porn is a sex addict. By other definitions, it’s more limited. The answer is, I don’t know. And I’m not so sure it matters. By the definition in rehab, I wasn’t a sex addict. But if the definition is a behavior that’s interfering with your life and your happiness, and your willpower isn’t strong enough to control it, then by that definition I was a sex addict. Anyone who’s had a resolution to do something that will be positive for their lives but doesn’t do it is probably facing some sort of compulsion or addiction by that definition.
That said, I think going to rehab was one of the best things that happened to me. I recommend it because I definitely had core childhood issues that were interfering with my happiness and my relationships. Going into therapy would have done nothing, but going to rehab, where it’s so intense and really focused on results, was one of those moments where my life changed.
AD: Early in the book you discuss the difference between guilt and shame, which I liked. That guilt is about making a mistake, shame is about being a mistake. A similar relationship along those lines would be that The Game was about here’s how you can change the way you approach women. The Truth is more about why are you approaching women and how are you reacting to them.
NS: That’s exactly it. The Game is about behavior. The Truth is about beliefs. Behavior is: “When you approach, do these five things and your approach will be 1000% more likely to have a positive result.” The Truth is about: Why are you afraid to approach? Why do you feel like you’re not enough for someone? Where does your sense of shame and fear come from? Who in your early life was so critical of you that now you’re so critical of yourself all the time? It’s about the beliefs that drive you–and not just around relationships. I think the fear of approaching is really about shame and the belief of “I’m not enough.”
AD: There was actually a point in the book where I started mapping out my own life and how my parents and my life have shaped my behaviors.
NS: That’s fantastic. I’m so happy to hear that because one of my goals was to leave a trail of breadcrumbs so that people could have that experience and recognize what their own templates were–especially around the idea of enmeshment, which I think is not a commonly known or understood idea in the culture. Everyone knows about abandonment but no one know about the flip side of abandonment, where instead of a caregiver being absent in your life, he or she is overly present in your life and often smothering or overwhelming your sense of self.
AD: I think that’s true and enmeshment seems to be much more common.
NS: And it’s mistaken for love, so it’s dangerous. People can think, ”My parents love me because they need me.” Or “My parents love me because they’re so worried and anxious about me all the time and they still love me because they’re calling me all the time and still doing it.” That’s not love, it’s control.
AD: What has the response to the book been like?
NS: I’ve definitely gotten the best reviews of my life from the book, but I find that outside of America some people see it as blaming one’s parents versus understanding one’s self. That makes me sad because if you spend your life protecting your parents then you spend your life not understanding yourself. There’s a quote that begins the book: “What we do not know controls us.” I think you don’t get to have a conscious life if you’re defending your parents instead of objectively looking at them without blame. If that’s too hard, try to see your upbringing like a movie, then you can see what the ingredients were that made you.
AD: There is almost a joke that if you go to therapy, they blame your parents for everything and there is an element of truth to that, but that does miss the point.
NS: I guess I think it’s your parents fault to the degree that a book is my fault. I wrote it. [laughs] Your parents and caregivers write your entire brain. The architecture of your brain is almost entirely built by the experiences of your first years in life and whoever is shaping those experiences is shaping your brain. The neurons that form the beliefs we’re talking about are wiring together. That is a scientific fact. There’s no blame involved. Because you’re still responsible for changing it. In fact I would say the idea of not looking at the way your parents raised you is in fact a refusal to take responsibility for your life. I think that’s the key distinction. If you just blame your parents and feel like you can’t change it, that’s a kind of helplessness versus understanding yourself and recognizing you can change things.
AD: There’s a quotation on page 350 which jumped out at me, which I know says more about me than you, but I wondered if you could talk about it. “If married men have mid-life crises, men who haven’t ever truly been able to commit have no-life crises. And if they’re able to see clearly for even just a moment, they start to realize that they’re losing more than they’re gaining each day they remain stalled on the scenic road of growing up.”
NS: I think it’s easy to get stalled or stuck in a place in life because it’s safe versus getting outside of your comfort zone and challenging some of your beliefs.
I think the message of the book is that it’s not about what you’re doing, it’s about why you’re doing it. Whether you’re choosing to be celibate, promiscuous, in a monogamous relationship, in a non-monogamous relationship, eternally single–nothing is wrong if you’re doing it for healthy reasons because it’s really what you want. However if you’re doing it because there’s an unconscious fear of intimacy,because there is a message programmed into you, because you have esteem problems, because you’re doing it to avoid pain or uncomfortable emotions–that’s unhealthy. There are plenty of monogamous relationships that are completely childish and unhealthy. [laughs]
AD: I kept thinking of a through line between The Truth and some of your other books. For example in The Game, you very consciously built this community and a family and were living with other guys and you seem to have been doing this in different ways for a while. I don’t know how conscious of this you are.
NS: I think it’s an interesting through line. Two things. I love the idea that instead of having a family of origin, you can have a family of choice which is not the family you’re born with but the family you chose and the people around you who really nurture you and you nurture and feel happy with. I think that’s true. The pick up artist community was sort of a family. The survivalists became a little family. And in this book, Rick and Lorraine and some of the guys I was on this journey with became family. Another through line connecting all the books is I didn’t have a strong father figure who taught me all about life. I think I looked for those in Mystery in The Game or maybe Mad Dog and some of the guys in Emergency and then some of the therapists and counselors and friends in The Truth. I think a lot of it’s learning and finding these parental figures who can give me the knowledge I never got.
AD: You don’t linger on the sex in the book, but you also don’t linger on depression, either. How intentional was that?
NS: As I edited the book, I took out any sex stories or incidents that seemed gratuitous or didn’t drive the story or themes further. The adventures with Sage, in particular, could probably be a book in themselves. I think the same is true for depression, which I’m not sure was a core issue for me, but there were certainly a lot of scenes of me wallowing in my own pain during the anhedonia section that I removed out of mercy for the reader.
AD: I know that you’re always working on many projects. What are you working on now? Where is your head right now?
NS: I’m working on a new book. I’ve actually finished. I finished another extreme autobiography in the sense of the Marilyn Manson and Motley Crue books. I can’t say who it is yet. It’s a really wild one. I’m diving into the next book, which is taking some things from The Truth and pulling them out and exploring them in depth in a way that I hope will improve how people relate to each other.
Then obviously there’s The Society, which is the hundred person mastermind group I run. I do four events a year with them and they’re all amazing events. I bring in some of the best experts in the world. They teach us and we talk about how we can implement this stuff in our lives. It’s basically a hundred people that I’m on a self improvement journey with. I’m enjoying that. We have a lot of adventures too. We just went to Antarctica and ran a marathon there. We went to North Korea. Stuff like that.
AD: I’m sorry. You went to North Korea?
NS: We went to North Korea. I try to find experiences that you can’t have otherwise. It’s all about self-improvement and peak life experiences.
AD: We talked earlier about how people read The Truth differently from other memoirs and you’re a very serious writer, but people never ask you about the writing. Is there a question you hope to get asked about the writing that you never get?
NS: There’s no one question I hope people will ask. The fun thing about the books I write is that every interview is different, and I never know what’s going to happen. I’ve enjoyed this interview because I feel like you see the books on the level I write them. I actually like the way we’re discussing the book. The way you see the continuity between them and the balance between reporting, memoir, and advice is awesome. This is the way I enjoy talking about them because this is the way I think about them.
As far as the writing goes, I love the writing and I love talking about the writing but I don’t always like to answer questions about the writing. I never want to demystify the incredible experience people have when they open a page and they’re sucked into a new world. Sometimes taking someone behind the scenes can demystify it. It’s like learning the magic trick behind an incredible illusion. In a book you’re creating a three-dimensional world in just block letters.
