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 first time, adult women are asking their partners to access 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 butalso 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.
