When trying my best to describe my work as a Relationship Life Therapist, trained by Terry Real (Terry Real book) I decided he does it best. So I’ve borrowed an excerpt from his newest book, “The New Rules of Marriage”   What I must add, emphatically taught by him in his training, is that his words and work apply to LGBTQ couples as well. An internationally acclaimed therapist and speaker, Terry’s work, with its rigorous commonsense approach, speaks to both men and women. His ideas on men’s issues and on couple’s therapy have been celebrated in venues from Good Morning America, The Today Show and 20/20, to Oprah and The New York Times.

A proponent of “full-throttle marriage,” as described in The New Rules of Marriage, Terry has been called “the most innovative voice in thinking about and treating men and their relationships in the world today.”

Relationship Empowerment: Operating Instructions for the Twenty­ First Century 

The final decades of the last century helped millions of women move from disempowerment to personal empowerment. Now it’s time to take the next step to what I call relationship empowerment. Relationship empowerment is this: “I was weak. Now I’m strong. I’m going to bring my full self and full strength into this relationship. I’m going to stand toe ­to toe with you and do my very best to insist on healthy intimacy between us because I love you. Because I love us, our relationship. And because we both deserve it.” [And because our shared history, and/or children, deserve it. MV]

Relationship empowerment has a very different feel to it than personal empowerment. It’s not about being right, or about self expression or control. It asks these questions: 

1. How are we going to be together in a way that works for both of us? 

2. How are we going to negotiate our needs? 

3. When there is conflict or hurt, how are we going to move back into loving connection? 

Relationship empowerment asks both partners to verbalize: 

1. This is what I’d like.
2. Tell me what you’d like.
3. And tell me what you need from me to help you deliver. 

RULE: THE GOLDEN RULE OF RELATIONSHIP EMPOWERMENT IS: “WHAT CAN I GIVE YOU TO HELP YOU GIVE ME WHAT I WANT?” 

This new approach empowers you, the individual, to take risks, tell the truth, and go after your needs. And it also helps you  empower your partner, doing your best to help him or her succeed. 

Traditional femininity taught women to shut up and eat it. Feminism taught women to speak out and leave it. Relationship empowerment asks women to stand firm and mean it. 

[And it asks no less of gay partners. MV]

And what about men? Relationship empowerment helps men meet their partner’s new demands while insisting, no less than women [or their male partners MV], on appreciation and love [and satisfying sexual intimacy, MV.] Ironically, one of the few things held equally by both men and women is a false belief that straightforward negotiation with the other sex is doomed. [Some people MV] believe that their partners will be too insensitive and feel too entitled to care about their deepest needs. And men believe that women will be too irrational and too critical to ever be satisfied. 

The skepticism with which each sex views the other is not paranoid or stupid. The negotiation of emotional needs in most relationships does fail, or at best succeeds only marginally. But not for want of goodwill, only for want of good skills. 

There is a technology to working a relationship, a new set of rules that succeeds. In this book [and in our sessions MV] I will teach you to: 

• Identify and articulate your wants and needs

• Listen well and respond generously

• Set limits, and stand up for yourself

• Know when to back off 

• Know when to get help

• Know when to embrace what you do have with appreciation and gratitude 

• Share yourself and receive your partner 

• Actively cherish each other 

• Excerpted from Terry Real’s  “The New Rules of Marriage”.