GETTING To YES by Tim Hunniecutt – Romance, 1970s, Emotional Struggle

As a freshman at Florida State University, Chris should be enjoying the usual 1970s “free spirit” college experiences, a little studying and a lot of partying. In Tim Hunniecutt’s Getting to Yes, Chris dreams of being a poet. His way with words, boy-next-door looks, and an athletic runner’s body means he has no trouble attracting one girl after another. However, Chris wants more than just a fling.

He’s looking for a relationship, a girl who loves him, but the girls he meets don’t seem to want forever. Most of them only want a good time or have boyfriends back home. After a series of failed romances, Chris finds himself depressed, realizing part of the problem lies in the emotional chasm he’s carved within himself after his parents’ disastrous marriage.

Chris’s emotional roadblock began when he caught his mother naked in the arms of a man who was not his father.

He never told anyone, including his father, about the affair, and his parents went on for a while pretending their relationship wasn’t falling apart. Their loveless marriage created in Chris a fear of expressing his own emotions. In his adolescent mind, not revealing the weakness of loving too strongly became normalized. When his father finally broke down and cried to Chris about his mother’s lack of love, Chris’s derision of feelings became cemented in his psyche. Girls were simply pretty distractions. Ironically, the maturity he likely developed because of this situation makes him easy to talk to, and girls flock to him.

It isn’t until he meets Deb, a girl in his class with a terrible home life, that he begins to realize a need within himself to find more than just physical attraction. Though Deb is unattainable, she awakens an “overwhelming hunger” within him, which he sates by dating as many girls as possible in his first year at FSU. He thinks he finds what he’s missing in Colleen, his first girlfriend.

His first attempts at physical love end in failure. When he finally finds physical fulfillment with a girl, he falls immediately in love with her.

Colleen seems perfect for him, but when he discovers she has a boyfriend, he doesn’t try to fight for her. He won’t acknowledge his strong feelings, and he allows her to slip away. Chris vows never to allow his inability to open up get in his way again, and when he returns home at the end of his freshman year, he meets Chloe.

It’s love at first sight–at least for Chris. He falls quickly, offering his heartfelt “I love you” early in their relationship, but Chloe comes with her own issues. Her abusive father left a need for male approval that she seeks in the arms of the wrong boys, and she repeatedly finds herself in loveless relationships in which she is used and tossed aside.

Chris’s pain is palpable in the novel, and his uncertainty is heart-wrenching, creating a strong theme of trust– the kind of trust that comes with allowing oneself to love and knowing the other person will return that love. When Chloe finally allows herself to express aloud to Chris what he desperately needs to hear, she gives herself permission to feel this trust.

Tim Hunniecutt’s Getting to Yes is a tale of a young man searching for his first real love and finding that what he learned from his parents does not have to be his fate. This book is recommended for anyone who wants to explore the complexities of early love though a young man’s perspective as he struggles to overcome the damage of his own parents’ marriage.