Why Men Won't Commit
Getting What You Both Want Without Playing Games
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Dr. George Weinberg has been a therapist for over twenty-five years. In that time, he has worked with a great range of men, and he has discovered that deep down, men actually want commitment, love, and permanence every bit as much as women do. Over the years, his patients -- even those who have had a string of failed relationships -- have expressed deep desires for permanent, monogamous mariages.
So why do they behave as if they don't?
And what can a woman who wants a relationship do to help her man commit?
While other therapists tend to be students of women, Dr. Weinberg is a student of men. From childhood, most men have been taught to be strong and silent, never to show weakness. They've been discouraged from talking about their feelings, so they never learned the skill. Now, most are on a quest for the ready-made perfect woman. They feel that, in relationships, things can't be worked out. When the slightest thing goes wrong, it seems easier to bolt than to talk.
In engaging prose filled with anecdotes we all can relate to, Dr.Weinberg unveils the psyche of men to show the real insecurities that lurk there. Other books like The Rules and Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus have played right into men's fears -- by accepting the old myth and telling women that their job is to "overcome" men's fear of commitment. As Dr.Weinberg explains, this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Men have a powerful radar that tells them to run away when any strategy is being used on them. He explains why games of any kind -- playing hard to get, making a man jealous -- will only push a man further from commitment. And he gives women four simple keys to understanding their man's real needs and helping them move toward relationships.
It is easy to scare a man, but it is also easy to capture his love without playing games. Why Men Won't Commit shows women how to enter places where her man has not allowed any other woman to go and, if it's right, to stay there in a loving, committed relationship.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Men actually want commitment, love, and permanence every bit as much as women do," assures the author of this no-nonsense guide for frustrated women, but they often act as if they don't because of"feelings of threat to their masculinity." Clinical psychologist Weinberg (Self Creation) explains that men, forced by a macho culture to hide their feelings until they lose touch with them, often cannot recognize or articulate them, and that it may be the woman's job to identify inchoate feelings dangerous to the relationship (his"gut reactions") and alter her behavior. He discusses what women might unconsciously do to trigger those feelings, including over-estimate their man's strength and fortitude, or compare him to other men. Men, Weinberg maintains, have four basic needs: to feel special, to"travel light," to know their partners are loyal and to"be close emotionally." Explaining how that last need is true in the face of so much evidence to the contrary is one of the main tasks of the book, one that Weinberg carries out carefully and without condescension. But the implications of this theory of"gut reactions" that must be managed has consequences: because men are actually the"weaker sex," the job of seeing through a man's"Masculine Pretense" and acting accordingly--at least with men who are not in therapy with Weinberg--falls to women, who must be willing to accept that role. Weinberg necessarily paints men in broad strokes--surely not every man equates earning power with virility--but for women who can see the individual beneath the stereotype and who don't mind being the minder of the relationship, this book offers concrete advice.
