How Can I Get Through to You?

Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women

Terrence Real

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781439106761
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

"What happened to the passion we started with?
Why aren't we as close as we used to be?" PROBLEM: If you are a woman who is unfulfilled in your marriage...if you feel unheard or overburdened...if you quietly live in a state of slow-burn resentment...
PROBLEM: If you are a man unhappy that your partner seems so unhappy with you...if you feel bewildered, unappreciated, or betrayed... This book offers a solution Bestselling author and nationally renowned therapist Terrence Real unearths the causes of communication blocks between men and women in this groundbreaking work. Relationships are in trouble; the demand for intimacy today must be met with new skills, and Real -- drawing on his pioneering work on male depression -- gives both men and women those skills, empowering women and connecting men, radically reversing the attitudes and emotional stumbling blocks of the patriarchal culture in which we were raised. Filled with powerful stories of the couples Real treats, no other relationship book is as straight talking or compelling in its innovative approach to healing wounds and reconnecting partners with a new strength and understanding.

CHAPTER ONE
Love on the Ropes: Men and Women in Crisis

Women marry men hoping they will change. They don’t. Men marry women hoping they won’t change. They do.

—BETTIN ARNDT

“I’ve always felt our relationship was a threesome,” says Steve Conroy, crossing thin legs sheathed in worsted wool, black socks reaching not quite high enough, cordovan loafers with tassels. His style is pure Beacon Hill, his voice soft, modulated. “Our little ménage à trois has consisted of me, Mag, and Maggie’s misery.”

“Oh, nice, Steve,” Maggie snorts, on cue. Short, blond, muscular, she seems coiled for action.

Steve stares down at his hands folded together in helplessness; his forehead puckers with concern.

My wife, Belinda, also a family therapist, has a saying: “Beware of ‘nice’ men with ‘bitchy’ wives.”

“Her misery?” I pursue.

Steve nods, ruefully. “It’s rare to see my wife happy.”

“It’s rare to see her happy with you, maybe.” Maggie takes the bait.

“Asshole,” I finish for her.

“Pardon me?” Maggie turns to me, flushed.

“It’s rare to see me happy with you, maybe, asshole,’” I paraphrase. Maggie pulls her head back a few inches, as if smelling something disagreeable. “I never said that,” she tells me softly.

I nod, turning to Steve. “Is she always this easy?”

“I’m not sure I take your meaning …”

“This goad-able?”

“Look.” The concerned frown reappears. “I have no interest here in …”

I take a breath, regroup. The covert hostility flying around the room is getting to me. When I ask Steve how his wife’s “misery” manifests itself, he hesitates, and, studying him for a moment, I sense that his reluctance is more than a move in their game. He really is afraid of her. On the other side, Steve’s negative image of Maggie traps her like tarpaper. The more violently she protests, the more he stands confirmed as the victim of her irrationality. For eighteen years, Steve has managed to outflank his wife like this. Enormously successful in the world, ever reasonable at home, often beleaguered by his wife’s high emotions, steadfast, patient Steve has only one problem—Maggie wants to leave him.

“I love Steve,” Maggie declares. “I’ll always love him. But not in the way I need to, not anymore,” she trails off, seeming more worn out than angry.

Steve has no idea why his wife wants to quit their marriage, even though—watching from the outside—I can recognize their troubled dance within a few minutes of our first encounter.

“I just don’t feel connected,” Maggie tries to explain. “I used to fight it. Years ago. I’d try to talk. I’d arrange little dinners. I’d beg Steve to open up …”

“You’d throw things,” Steve adds helpfully.

Maggie looks at Steve sideways and then sighs. “Sometimes I’d be measured, sometimes I’d be wild,” she says, like a nursery rhyme. “Sometimes I’d be seductive, sometimes I’d be cold.”

“There was a little girl who had a little curl,” I chime in.

“Yes, but then one day the little woman looked at herself in the mirror and came to a big realization.”

“Which was?” I ask.

Maggie leans toward me in her chair and confides in a stage whisper, “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I do. With Steve, what you see is what you get. This is as open as my husband is going to become.” She leans back again. “I don’t know what I am to Steve. I don’t know who he thinks he needs to ward off. To be honest, at this point, I don’t care. I’m just tired of it, whatever it is. All right, Doctor?”

“Call me Terry.”

“You win, Steve.” She pushes right through me. “Here’s the white flag, okay? ‘Uncle.’ I surrender. I’m a bitch, okay? I admit it. There. Can we all go home now?”

I raise an eyebrow toward Steve.

“What am I supposed to do?” he complains. “Forgive me if I don’t feel quite as vile as her portrait suggests. For years now Maggie has complained that I am ‘shut down.’ But, frankly, I just don’t buy it. Actually,” Steve says, crossing his legs, “for a guy, I think I’m pretty romantic.”

Maggie laughs.

“You want to put that into words?” I ask her.

“By romantic …” Maggie looks at her husband. “Steve means flowers and music whenever he feels like having sex.”

“You know, that really is unfair …” Steve begins.

“Anyway, what’s wrong with that?” I ask Maggie, heading him off.

“Nothing,” she says, “as long as it doesn’t take the place of other ways to be close.”

“Like?” I prompt.

Maggie’s eyes dart over the room, anywhere but at Steve. “Like listening to me!” she says.

“But Maggie,” Steve whines, “once again, you simply don’t …”

“Like,” I ask Maggie, “as in now, for example?”

“Now, just hold on a second.” Steve’s voice rises.

“Is this how it is at home?” I ask her, ignoring him. “How it’s been?”

Maggie’s head drops; she nods. I can’t tell if she’s crying.

Finally, Steve’s reasonableness cracks. “Do I get to speak here?”

He vibrates with indignation, hands outstretched, warding off the two of us. “Do I have a voice?”

“Not yet,” I answer softly, trying to catch Maggie’s eye. “So,” I continue, “this is how it is?” She nods, beginning to cry while Steve fumes.

“If I push him,” she says, her voice small, “which I don’t anymore.”

“How long?” I ask. Steve impatiently shifts in his chair.

“Steve,” I say, an aside. “I can be nice to you right now, or I can do my best to salvage your marriage. What’s your preference?”

He opens his mouth, shuts it, and then waves me on.

“How long?” I resume, turning to Maggie.

“How long has he been treating me like this?” she asks.

“How long since you gave up?”

“Years.” Maggie begins to cry in earnest. “Years.”

I lean back, sobered, sad. “I’m sorry,” I tell them both. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this.” Maggie cries harder. Steve looks to the side, upset as well. “And you tried therapy?” I ask.

“Yes.” Maggie nods vigorously. “Twice, no, three times, really. But …”

“But no one took him on.” I finish the sentence for her. She nods.

I lean toward her. “And if I do, Maggie?” I ask. “If Steve changes? I mean really changes. Are you even open to it at this point, or is it a forgone conclusion that—”

“No!” Maggie wails. “I want this to work. I want to love him. Three children, eighteen years!” She folds in, crying hard, angry and hurt. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? ”

“Okay,” I soothe. “Okay, Maggie. I’ve got it. Breathe a little. I’ve got it.”

Now Steve charges in, furious, oblivious to his wife’s tears. “She asks me to cut back on my work. I say, Okay, I will.’ And I do. She wants me to be more involved with the kids. I don’t turn around like a lot of—”

“Steve,” I interrupt, speaking gently. “Are you aware of your wife crying a few inches next to you?”

“Of course I’m aware,” he blusters, offended. “And you accuse me of condescension! What kind of cretin do you take me for? I do respond to my wife. That’s precisely the point. I work hard. I tend to our children—”

“That’s all to the good,” I stop him. “It really is. I am not being glib about that. But it just doesn’t seem to be good enough, Steve. I’m sorry. I believe you are trying, trying hard in fact. But it’s just not the fundamental thing.”

“What I’m attempting to say …” Steve tries plowing on.

“The fundamental thing,” I continue, “is that, real or imagined, your wife experiences you as someone who, though you on’t mean her harm, is nevertheless in day-to-day life simply too selfish and in your own way too controlling to live with.”

Steve stops short. “I can’t believe this!” he says, his voice a whisper. “You don’t even know me.”

“Do you think I’m wrong?” I ask him. “Do you? Watch this.” Steve is speechless. I turn to Maggie, “Am I?”

She shakes her head vehemently.

“Then maybe you’d better tell him yourself.”

“Steve,” she says turning to him. “My darling. Idiot! I’ve been telling you. I’ve used those very words—for years!”

Steve contemplates us both for a long moment, eyes squinting as if in bright light. Then, to my surprise, he suddenly smiles. A shrewd businessman, Steve is, in fact, nobody’s fool. He knows, for example, when he’s been had. I notice he stands in possession of a truly disarming grin. What causes him to back down now? Because he has correctly assessed that within minutes I have gained access to something he has been living without and very much wants—Maggie’s goodwill.

“Nice smile,” I say, breathing again. “So, what are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve just lost controlling interest of the board.” His smile broadens.

“And how is that for you?” I ask.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to see, won’t we?” he replies. We let that one sit between us for a while. “So now what?” Steve breaks the silence. “What do I need to do?”

I find myself matching his smile with one of my own. “Now, that’s the most refreshing question I’ve heard so far today,” I answer. “So, listen. I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

“Oh, you decide,” he offers magnanimously, the tension between us dissipating.

“What happened to all that anger just a moment ago?” I ask.

Steve grins again. “Well,” he says, “sizing things up, I suppose I decided that it was just … too irrational. You were giving me some news?” he prompts.

“Fine,” I answer. “Here’s how it is. The good news is that I think I can help you, if you’re willing to do the work. Unless there’s some curveball I don’t know about, my guess is we have a fair shot at turning this around.”

“And?”

“The bad news is that you have to do what I tell you.”

“Which bridge will I need to dive off of?”

“None, most likely. I think you’ll find most of what I coach you to do eminently reasonable. But it may be uncomfortable a little, Steve. Maybe even uncomfortable a lot.”

“Hey, I’m a captured market,” he says. “Bring it on.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers simply, seriously.

Now it is my turn to contemplate him for a moment. “Why?” I ask.

“Eighteen years,” Steve replies without a pause. “My family, my home. You don’t think I care about that?”

“And Maggie?” I ask.

“Sure Maggie,” he says. “Of course Maggie.”

“What about her?”

Steve turns to his wife, as she burrows and cries. For the first time in the session, he seems really to look at her. As he answers, his gaze finally matches the softness of his voice. “Maggie’s the woman I love,” he tells me, eyes shining.

She looks up at him.

“And those tears in your eyes, Steve,” I amplify. “If they could speak, what would they say to her?”

“That she’s the most important person in the world,” he tells me, softer than ever, unable to say it to her directly. “I don’t want to lose her.”

I offer him my hand. “Good work,” I tell him.

“But this isn’t that different …,” he starts.

I put a finger to my lips and he stills. “This is a nice moment,” I tell him. “Let it be.”

Maggie was right about Steve. Even though he had no idea what she was trying to tell him, and had no conscious malevolence, nevertheless, Steve would eventually push any partner to the brink his wife now stood upon. And, while some other wife might have gone down quietly instead of swinging, like Maggie, sooner or later, most women would have gone down. And with them, the marriage, the real marriage, their passion, no matter if the conjugal shell remained intact or imploded, as it was about to do here. And the saddest part of it all was how much Steve really did love her, not even “deep down,” but all the way through. Maggie knew her husband loved her, suspected how devastated he would be if she left. But she could no longer feel his love. He would not let her. Their marriage was like a beautiful garden Steve adored but rarely tended. Their enemy was not blatant violence, other women, or alcohol. Their enemy was simple rot.

The medieval alchemists said, “To make gold, one must first have a drop of gold.” Within minutes of our initial session, Steve and Maggie were able to shift from helpless recrimination to a shared moment of tenderness. Fragile, fleeting, as dependent upon the therapy as someone on a respirator, their capacity to touch and be touched had survived, buried perhaps, but not extinguished. The sheen in Steve’s eyes as he professed his love, and the way Maggie’s body relaxed when she heard it—these were the drops of gold I was looking for. I call this process “moving the couple back into connection.” No one could predict the fate of their marriage, but these early signs augured well. There is another old saying, “Hope is the remembrance of the future.” Steve and Maggie had it in them to remember a future, their love, at least for an instant. If they could do that, then the odds were that with hard work, they could remember it for an hour or two, perhaps a whole day. This is how couples heal, building up from such small instances of recovery. Finding these moments, sometimes creating them—through teaching, encouraging, exhorting—is the essence of my job. In the trenches with Maggie and Steve I have one paramount question: How can I help them recover? But, after twenty years as a couple’s therapist, after meeting hundreds of pairs who struggle like Maggie and Steve, a broader question presents itself. What is it exactly that must be recovered, and how did it come to be lost to begin with?

Like most couples I see, Maggie and Steve did not start off in such disrepair. Quite the contrary, their earliest days were spent in that marvelous state of joy called “falling in love.” “The first time I saw Maggie,” Steve tells me in one session, “I thought I was looking at a thousand-watt chandelier. I mean, look at her. Does she light up a room or what?”

“You sure haven’t been treating her like a thousand-watt chandelier lately,” I observe.

“No.” He looks down, sheepish. “No, I guess not.” “I loved Steve’s energy, I just loved it,” Maggie says in another session, glancing fondly at him. “He literally swept me off my feet.Right into the dustbin.”

The answer to the question “What must Maggie and Steve recover?” is simple—their love. They each still love one another inside, but in the wear and tear of everyday life, that crucial emotion is rapidly becoming too bruised to be of much use to them. Maggie might still love Steve even on the day she files for divorce; she just won’t love him enough to live with him any longer. Were that day to arrive, Steve would probably feel, like so many of the men I treat, confused, angry, and betrayed.

In his relationship to Maggie, Steve reminds me of an ancient Sumerian poet who once complained to his gods, “I would gladly do what it is you require of me—if only I knew what it was!” And Maggie brings to mind the angry wife in a New Yorker cartoon who exclaims to her puzzled husband in front of their marriage counselor, “Of course you don’t know why we’re here. That’s why we’re here!”

“He doesn’t get it!” cries Maggie. “What does she want from me?” complains Steve. Their essential lines are so familiar, so quintessentially male and female, it is all I can do not to smile, until I recall how high the stakes are; their marriage, three children.

One of the few stable statistics in our fast-changing world is our rate of divorce, which has hovered between 40 and 50 percent for the last thirty years. Any two people who marry face a grim 50 to 60 percent chance of survival. And if that weren’t sobering enough, one needs to ask further: Of those who remain together, how many do so happily, as opposed to those who stay for external reasons, like their chil...