{"id":27556,"date":"2016-04-14T06:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=27556"},"modified":"2016-03-26T09:50:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-26T14:50:43","slug":"we-have-to-talk-healing-dialogues-between-women-and-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/we-have-to-talk-healing-dialogues-between-women-and-men\/","title":{"rendered":"We Have to Talk : Healing Dialogues Between Women and Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"We<\/a>Have you ever thought it would be fun to be a fly on the wall during an interesting conversation? Reading the book We Have\u00a0to Talk : Healing Dialogues Between Women and\u00a0Men<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Janet Surrey and Samuel Shem is like being\u00a0a fly on the wall\u00a0during couples therapy. I\u00a0find it\u00a0fascinating how our\u00a0cultural differences are shaped by gender. Understanding between women and men is often lacking (sometimes comedically, sometimes painfully so). The authors of this book hope to change that.<\/p>\n

Surrey and Shem are psychologists who are also married to one another. They\u00a0have been\u00a0conducting workshops for married men and women for over 30 years.\u00a0 Their method, put simply,\u00a0went like\u00a0this: first, they invited couples to gather together for a weekend workshop.\u00a0Fifteen people showed up to the first one: 9 women and 6 men. This included four couples and\u00a0seven individuals\u00a0whose partners chose to stay home.\u00a0First, they gathered as a group to talk. Then, Samuel\u00a0took\u00a0the men to a different room while Janet stayed with\u00a0the women. This is when things started to get real. The group participants shared the honest truth\u00a0about their relationships among their same-sex peers, where they didn’t have to worry about hurting their partners’ feelings.\u00a0Finally, they\u00a0re-convened\u00a0in the\u00a0larger\u00a0group.<\/p>\n

What happened next was life-changing.\u00a0The workshops led the psychologists and the participants to some valuable\u00a0discoveries about themselves and each other.<\/p>\n

They came to the conclusion that even though men and women generally want the same outcome from the relationship (connection), they tend to go about achieving it in vastly different ways. Not only that, but the way in which women prefer to connect (talking to their partners) has the exact opposite of the intended effect.<\/p>\n

Women: have you ever been talking to a man and get the sense that he isn’t really<\/em> listening? Men: have you ever found yourself at the mercy of a seemingly never-ending conversation, getting more and more\u00a0anxious and trying to figure out some way to get out of it? The authors call\u00a0this\u00a0“male relational dread.”\u00a0According to the authors,\u00a0men often\u00a0feel threatened and want out of\u00a0a\u00a0conversation\u00a0with their partners about the relationship as quickly as possible. This often\u00a0has the effect of leaving the woman feeling abandoned, then angry. Her male partner feels ashamed that his actions have upset his partner. When he tries to reconnect,\u00a0his active attempts to do so\u00a0(often in the form of\u00a0physical touch) are received with- you guessed it- the opposite of\u00a0the intended effect. The woman feels like she is being taken advantage of and wants out of the situation as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

How are couples to find a way to connect when their attempts to do so are\u00a0by\u00a0vastly different methods? Surrey and Shem attempt to answer that question. The key seems to be giving the relationship it’s own identity.\u00a0It is almost like\u00a0giving it an\u00a0anthropomorphic quality. That is to say, whether or not the couple has children, it is helpful to think of the well-being of a third entity – the “we” – in the relationship. \u00a0When problems arise, approach it by asking the question “What does the “We” need right now?” rather than from a first-person perspective (“Here is what I need…”)\u00a0The authors refer to this as “mutuality” and they have found it\u00a0can make all the difference.<\/p>\n

To learn more, check out We Have\u00a0to Talk : Healing Dialogues Between Women and\u00a0Men<\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Janet Surrey and Samuel Shem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever thought it would be fun to be a fly on the wall during an interesting conversation? Reading the book We Have\u00a0to Talk : Healing Dialogues Between Women and\u00a0Men by Janet Surrey and Samuel Shem is like being\u00a0a fly on the wall\u00a0during couples therapy. I\u00a0find it\u00a0fascinating how our\u00a0cultural[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[3349,3461,713,3460,680,3350,420],"class_list":["post-27556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reference","tag-communication","tag-couples-therapy","tag-marriage","tag-men","tag-relationships","tag-talking","tag-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-7as","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27556"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27843,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27556\/revisions\/27843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}