Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: December 31, 2001
Publishing house: Scribner
Release Date: January 01, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 976044
Studio: Scribner
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Why is love between men and women so difficult? In this groundbreaking new book, bestselling author Terrence Real analyzes the crisis in intimate relations, a crisis that has lasted more than a generation, yielding divorce rates of 40 to 50 percent. Our culture prepares us to fall in love, but it does not give us the skills we need to stay in love. Here Real offers a radical new vision of love and the practical tools with which to achieve it.
The current crisis is a product of changing gender roles, Real explains. In the past thirty years, women's roles have changed radically and men's have not. For the very first time, adult women are asking their partners to acess the very skills -- emotional sensitivity, expressiveness, responsibility -- that most men have had psychologically, if not physically, stamped out of them as boys. Patriarchal culture does not raise boys to be intimate; it raises them to be competitive performers. At the same time, girls are taught to be compliant and accommodating. The result is that, within relationships, men feel bewildered and unappreciated while women feel unheard and resentful. Conventional therapy, which either sidesteps the issue or reinforces 'traditional' male roles, has failed. The demand for intimacy in marriage must be met with new skills.
Real's insights into marriage are a direct outgrowth of his pioneering work on male depression, which culminated in his bestselling I Don't Want to Talk About It. As in that book, Real draws on myth, literature, film, and heartrending stories of the men and women he treats to illustrate his compelling analysis. Breaking taboos about love, marriage, and passion, Real not only reconstructs gender roles but also shows that patriarchy's idealized model of love is impossibly flawed. He teaches partners to replace it with a love that acknowledges imperfections, and he then provides five Core Relational Skills designed to help every couple reach their full potential. Innovative, powerful, and eminently helpful, How Can I Get Through to You? is the book that every couple has been waiting for -- and our culture needs.
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That's what this book helps you to do...it's hard to seperate responsibility when emotions are running high. Sometimes it just helps to know that someone else has been where you are and lived to tell about it!
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This is an excellent book. Real has thought through couple's issues in a smart way, refreshingly different than many who have preceded him.
In this book, Real faces head-on the reality that many women come into couples work with fierce anger, frustrated by trying to achieve true emotional intimacy with their man. His premise is that many women's responsibilities and aspirations have grown as part of the women's movement and their resulting, empowered roles, during decades when many men's roles and expectations have progressed less dramatically. As difficult as the tone of the anger and complaint, Real suggests the substance of women's frustrations is right-on, which will provide some much needed vindication for women readers.
This book is full of composite examples of couples-therapy sessions where the woman's attitude sounds in complaint and withering anger. The man in these examples sounds clueless, and deeply hurt by the woman's anger. Real's prototypical woman comes off like a nag, shaming while complaining. It is at this point where men typically recoil avoiding facing women's needs, and their own fears.
In Real's analysis, unconscious and almost always unacknowledged entitlement characterizes the man's side of the relationship problems. We were raised to quietly sit back in much that happens in the home, letting things take care of themselves. In reality, things don't really take care of themselves; women are taking care of them. Men's toughest work, it seems, is traditionally as breadwinner outside the home. Once home, perhaps enlightened some by the women's movement, we may do some chores and help some with the kids. But we may also quietly avoid the challenging work of true relational intimacy with our woman. The man often sees no problem, or at least no rational issue.
The man may think, "what's the problem: I am nice and thoughtful. I don't rage or abuse....." But the rub may be in his disengagement, and in his urgent avoidance of shame. Having studied male depression (I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression"), Real understands that men's issues are often driven by shame, where women's are often driven by fear.
Because women are most heavily tasked with maintaining relationship, and are very often dependent on the man for economic and child-rearing reasons, women's fears are usually very first expressed circumspectly, on eggshells, rather than angrily. The fierce anger arises later -- after more delicate strategies have maddeningly failed. The anger feels like poison to the man.
Real's approach is much needed, and this book not only explains unflinchingly, but suggests ways out of the deadlock. There have been important contributions along the way - e.g., Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. And there are libraries full of hyped up, supposed love-life panaceas. This fellow has a smart, tough set of insights, with ideas for finding our way out of the wilderness of too many current relationships. Highly recommended, for both men and women, and for couples therapists.
Real has since published an excellent follow up book structured a bit more as a "how to" guide: The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work. This is also very highly recommended.
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Mr. Real asserts as an established fact that traumatizing events in childhood cause us to adopt patriarchal male and female roles in our adult lives and in our relationships. Even if this were true - and for the record I wasn't convinced - he has precious little in his book that a lay reader can take away and use. I found his writing style to be pedantic and touchy-feely at the same time (not an easy thing to pull off), and sprinkled with long stretches of incomprehensible gibberish. Why use one little word when ten big ones will do? The guy just wouldn't get to the point.
Professionals in this field may have a better appreciation for the style and content of this book, but I would not recommend it to those in need of counsel.
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This book was written before the Marriage book Terry wrote. In some ways I got more information that I needed. If you are trying to improve any relationship this book is a must read. Terry Real is right on!
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I read this book to get continuing eductaion credits for my social work license. It's completely changed how I look at the therapy process. It's also completely changed how I look at my marriage. It provides an effective, yet not impossibly complicated, roadmap through the dilemmas and no-win situations in which couples find themselves. It gave me insights into what I was doing wrong, and ideas of how I could quickly change.
Is this a male bashing book? I thought so at first. As much as I liked the book, I resented being stereotyped as a male with a certain commitment to accomplishment at the expense of vulnerability and feelings. I'm actually just the opposite, a product of 1960's encounter groups. Toward the end of the book, though, Real does acknowledge that every now and then there is a male who has the opposite problem. He's in touch with feelings, the nurturing side of life, but perhaps viewed as a loser in the world of accomplishments. And that fits me dead on!
The book's style isn't typical for a book about therapy. There's a great deal of self-revelation on Real's part, and also many passages that would pass as high-caliber fiction were they not obviously based on fact. Real is a skillful writer. And that makes him easier to read.
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