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“Conventional therapy has failed most couples,” Real writes, and with over 20 years of marriage and family counseling experience, he’s qualified to judge. Though traditional marital counseling has been prevalent for 30 years, divorce rates remain the same, and studies show that counseling has no lasting effect on either marital satisfaction or endurance. The author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It, the national bestseller on male depression, Real is attuned to the characteristics of contemporary marriages and demonstrates insight into both male and female perspectives. The fundamental problem, he argues, is American culture’s deeply entrenched “psychological patriarchy,” which devalues all things feminine (including healthy relationships) and wounds males at an early age by disconnecting them from themselves and others. Men can’t relate, and women can’t teach them how (“If a wife truly demands that her emotional needs be met, she may indeed put her marriage on the line”). Counseling, too, fails them both in a “collusion of silence” as to what’s really wrong. Real’s alternative is “relational recovery.”Identifying a healthy marriage as one following the repeated pattern of “harmony, disharmony, and restoration,” Real teaches five skills for accomplishing the crucial, ongoing task of repair: holding the relationship in high regard, preserving intimacy and relational (i.e., authentically connected) speaking, listening and negotiating. With numerous scenes from his therapy sessions including quarrels most married couples will recognize Real deftly shows readers how to transcend “our culture’s anti-relational bias” and move “out of patriarchy into healthy relatedness.” This is a well-balanced and exciting new addition to the marriage-manual genre. Agent, Beth Vesel. (Jan.)Forecast: This breakthrough handbook should cause a stir in the marriage guidance field, with its acknowledgment of counseling’s failings and exposing of what Real considers unhealthy fundamental American cultural values.What the Readers says about this audiobook:After 30 years as a licensed Marriage and Family counselor, I now make it a point to recommend _How Can I Get Through to You? (Reconnecting Men and Women)_ to every couple in my practice. As a man, husband (32 years) and father (of a son and daughter), I credit this book with changing my life.Although I have seen these issues play out over three decades of leading partners through couples therapy, the wisdom and insights that I’ve gleaned from this book have offered me a new perspective from which to help couples help themselves.Terrence Real speaks of the breakdown of couple relationships as a mirror of societal gender conflict. We (patriarchal culture) socialize boys to be competitive and girls to be compliant. When men and women become joined in marriage, it is a union of twodifferent species. However Real moves beyond merely describing the differences between men and women by recommending a radical course of bringing the genders back into balance – and wholeness.He refers to this as 1) empowering the woman and 2) reconnecting the man. This core concept really speaks to me for I find that the majority of the couples in my practice are living examples of the corrupted communication patterns that Real describes through his model and illustrates so well in case studies.The greatest insight that I received from this material is an understanding of the profound impact of the early disconnection of men. As Real explains, both girls and boys are severely wounded during the socialization process – but the damage toboys is more significant because their disconnect (from relationship, from their feelings and from all that is considered “feminine”) occurs at such an early (between 3 and 5 years) age. I and all men walk around this planet with covert depression because of the parts of us that got lost.In my work with couples, I emphasize the skills of healthy relating with the insights presented in this book as background. I now have a deeper understanding of where each party is coming from and I can better see their gifts, honor their wounds and hold a vision of what may be possible for them. In this way, I seek to empower the couple – by being the orchestrator who holds the sacred space for a more fulfilling relationship.One of Real’s most powerful contributions is his notion of the five key Relational Skills. As I have seen in my practice, these skills can be taught to and internalized by both parties in a relationship.” I’ve seen evidenced, internalized by both parties.When a couple has the core skills and an intention to replace the “control, revenge, resignation syndrome” with “harmony, disharmony, repair”, the future is much, much brighter.This is work we all need to do. ~Ed Shea – Family CounselorThis 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 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.~J. Winokur