by JULIET WATERS

A few years ago, Carina Chocano, an L.A.-based cultural critic who writes for salon.com, The New Yorker and Bust, reviewed some of the best-selling self-help books about relationships. From her reading she constructed a list: “Ten Habits of Highly Effective Relationship Writers.” Of these 10 habits, probably the most effective is to “suggest reader may be just a tiny bit mentally ill.” In today’s society, whether one is single, married, or in a “relationship” (whatever that is), it’s easy to be convinced that you are not mentally ill enough for therapy, but just mentally ill enough to blow $19.99 on a book.

Now Chocano has come out with her own book, Do You Love Me or Am I Just Paranoid?: The Serial Monogamist’s Guide to Love. What makes this one different? For one, it’s about 100 pages shorter and $5–$10 cheaper than the average relationship book. For another, she suggests the reader start by denying their current relationship problems. “The fact is that serial monogamy is now the norm,” she writes. “Consequently, there’s no reason to keep looking upon it as some kind of repetitive failure pattern. Maybe we should just start regarding it as a flower pattern or paisley.”

Certainly, there’s much in our culture to help us in the redecoration of our romantic fantasies. Let’s face it, where would the music, television and film industry be if people weren’t falling in love and breaking up about as regularly as they change their Ikea furniture? The continent is mystified as to why Quebec is currently ahead of the U.S. and the rest of Canada in job creation. Could our astonishingly robust manufacturing sector have anything to do with our astonishingly low marriage rate? A new relationship cries out for new curtains, and doesn’t somebody have to make those new curtains? So there are numerous reasons - social, as well as psychological - to embark on the five-year break-up plan, Chocano suggests.

“Is there advice in this book?” you ask. “Yes,” answers Chocano. “… But it’s terrible. On the other hand, it’s probably just the sort you generally give yourself, so there’s no hard work involved. If you follow it, you will learn how to leap blindly from relationship to relationship, how to ignore your better instincts, how to drag out a doomed affair, how to enter into an exciting rebound, how to make the most of your ex-girlfriend persona, and more - just like you’ve been doing all along.”

But this book may be especially valuable for singles - particularly self-loathing singles - because Do You Love Me? reminds one in excruciating detail of the many-splendoured ways in which one can intensify this self-loathing by sharing the project with another person.

There are, as Chocano explains, five essential steps to embracing the increasingly popular lifestyle of serial monogamy. (1) Lower your standards. (2) Question your instincts. (3) Accentuate the positive (before dismissing someone as “ugly” or “crazy,” ask yourself if he’s wonderfully weird, thrillingly obsessive-compulsive or expertly medicated). (4) Adjust your mental image of the ideal mate (i.e. avoid having a mental image), and eventually you can reach the final step: Keeping the Ball Rolling. In Mandarin, explains Chocano, the word for “I want your things out of here by tomorrow morning” is the same as the word for “opportunity.”

When we do come up for a word for “I want your things out of here” in English, it will no doubt be the same as the word for “I need new things.” Probably one day we won’t have relationship talks, we’ll simply look at each other and say with a certain sadness, “Curtains, baby.”

This is the one weakness of Chocano’s otherwise brilliant book. She does little to contextualize the problem within the materialist forces of production. But for this she’d probably need another 75 pages, and you’d have to spend another $10. And you may be needing this for your next relationship. :

Do You Love Me or Am I Just Paranoid? by Carina Chocano, Villard, pb, 150pp, $14.95