We Have to Talk
Healing Dialogues Between Women And Men
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
“We have to talk.” For many men, these are the four worst words in the English language, especially when they're uttered by a female partner. But it doesn't have to be that way, argue Samuel Shem and Janet Surrey in their pathbreaking and practical new book. “Male relational dread”—that all-too-familiar reaction set off by women's “relational yearnings”—can be tamed, and in its place can emerge true satisfaction for men and women.To demonstrate how this is done, Shem and Surrey take us behind the scenes of their popular workshops. We hear couples speak intimately about anger, guilt, resentment, shame, and sex. We watch them wrestle collectively with the gender divide in their relationships—the deep disconnects, or “impasses,” that reflect the vastly different developmental paths men and women have traveled. We see couples learn to bridge the poles of dread and yearning, to emerge from isolation into mutuality. We witness their moments of sadness, humor, and, ultimately, discovery.Filled with moving stories of real people struggling with real problems, We Have to Talk shatters the “rules” and offers dramatic proof that men and women are not from different planets after all. It is certain to be seen as the relationship book for the new millennium.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beginning with a small experimental group workshop on a weekend in Cape Cod in 1986, Shem, a psychiatrist, and Surrey, a clinical psychologist, have conducted what they call "gender dialogues" all over the world. They reject the popular notion that men and women are so different that "they might have hailed from different planets," dismissing the idea as a "masked return to the stereotypic 1950s." Instead they argue that "isconnections in male-female relationships impact everyone: in families, schools, corporations, medical settings, courtrooms, and government." The athors offer a "relational" approach for more honest and mutually beneficial communication by applying the Connection Model--developed at the Stone Center at Wellesley College, where they are faculty members--to find and attend the "we" in any given exchange. Their implied position that what has traditionally been women's (learned) view is superior to that of men's and should be adopted in all circumstances will be troublesome to some and requires further discussion. Nonetheless, the actual dialogue sessions presented here ring true, and the positive results offer hope for the possibility of improved connections between different people in various settings. Couples, families, classrooms, schools and businesses, for example, might benefit from the authors' recommendation to learn to focus on a shared "purpose statement," admit and release the "dread" and "yearning" that create impasses in communication and "hold the we" while attempting to reconcile differences.
