Why Women Talk and Men Walk:

How to improve your relationship without discussing it
Patricia Love and Steven Stosny (Vermilion, 2007)

Here is a great book – one that I’ve recommended to both my colleagues and clients! For those who just can’t understand how their better halves think or behave and have done their best to follow traditional advice of ‘improving communication skills’ without success, here is a little gem.

In their introduction, Love and Stosny declare that “It’s not about communication.’ “Rather,” they elaborate, “it’s about connection.” Or to be more precise, why we ‘disconnect’ from our partners. In a chatty, yet amusing, informative and extremely practical way the authors describe the premise for disconnecting from our partners and how to remedy this. From a man’s point of view, and from a woman’s point of view.

Yes, men and women are wired a bit differently. They describe how men and women suffer different ‘invisible’ vulnerabilities in the form of ‘fear and shame,’ and how this results in a lifetime of men and women trying to avoid these feelings. It is our challenge to manage these differences – not avoid them – that is the key to ensuring we have a truly meaningful and connected relationship.

The first part of the book describes our differences, and why it has been so hard for us to understand what makes our partners ‘tick.’ The second part gives practical exercises for reconnecting with our partners; finding that original spark again. I found the most valuable part to be the exercise on understanding our core values. If we do this, we will transform our feelings of fear and shame, and at the same time, we will become more compassionate towards our partner’s feelings; we become ‘emotionally attuned’ to each other once more.