Someone just sent me a reader’s review of Solemate that was posted on Amazon. The reviewer made a good point that I want to address in my blog, since I have no way of contacting the person directly. The reviewer, a cognitive behavior therapist, gave Solemate a glowing review but only gave it 4 stars out of 5 because of my failure to include same-sex relationship examples in the book.

First, I want to say how much I appreciate the lovely review, and secondly, I’d like to thank the reviewer for pointing this out. After I read the review, I reflected on why it didn’t dawn on me to use same-sex examples. The answers that came up are these: 1) I’ve found that the type of relationship dynamics I talk about in Solemate tend to be universal—whether it’s a straight or same-sex couple—so it didn’t occur to me to differentiate between various types of relationships, and 2) although I’ve worked with gay and lesbians in my individual coaching programs, I’ve only had the opportunity to work with straight couples in my relationship coaching programs, so I had no same-sex couples’ case studies of my own to use.

I’m grateful to the reviewer for making me more aware of the importance of including same-sex relationship examples when discussing partnership dynamics, which I will certainly do going forward. I apologize if you found my omission hurtful or off-putting, as it was genuinely not my intention.