About the Author

Terrence Real is an internationally recognized family therapist, speaker, and author. He founded the Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, and parents along with a professional training program for clinicians to learn his Relational Life Therapy methodology. He is the bestselling author of Us, How Can I Get Through to You?, and The New Rules of Marriage.

Reviews

"How Can I Get Through to You? is not a Band-Aid, it's a revolution -- a poignant and masterful guide that will heal our loneliness and isolation by empowering us to reawaken the natural state of closeness we all long for....I strongly urge you to read this life-changing book." --Cheryl Richardson, author of Take Time for Your Life and Life Makeovers

Cheryl Richardson author of Take Time for Your Life and Life Makeovers How Can I Get Through to You? is not a Band-Aid, it's a revolution -- a poignant and masterful guide that will heal our loneliness and isolation by empowering us to reawaken the natural state of closeness we all long for....I strongly urge you to read this life-changing book.

"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 acknowledgement of counseling's failings and exposing of what Real considers unhealthy fundamental American cultural values. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.