What Do Women Want?: Exploding the Myth of Dependency
Susie Orbach, Luise Eichenbaum
Language: English
Pages: 246
ISBN: 1497486416
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The modern relationship is in crisis. Why? In this pioneering work, Susie Orbach and Luise Eichenbaum pinpoint the deceptively simply question that lies at the root of all its problems and ask - what do women want? Torn between all the demands of today’s society, many women feel that they pour love, commitment and understanding into their relationships, but that it is not returned in kind. He seems secure and independent, she feels insecure and needy. The truth is that both men and women are dependent… In crystal-clear prose, Susie Orbach and Luise Eichenbaum explore the relationships of men and women, explaining how men have learned to “manage” their dependency needs very differently to women, and why women feel so dependent and hungry for love. They show conclusively why dependency on both sides is the essential core of any successful relationship and how it offers a new blueprint for the future. First published in 1983, this feminist classic has been thoroughly revised for today’s audience. Its message is as relevant as ever.
like so many people, only felt the preciousness of something by its potential or threatened loss. His attachment to her resonated at a psychological level with what he had always been raised to expect: a woman to love him and be with him. He was content and in love. That is why Mindy's statement of feeling he didn't love her seemed ludicrous to him. Of course he loved her. As we have seen in chapter 2, girls, because they must give up maternal nurturance, have in their psychology the anticipated
and clingy. She couldn't imagine what she would ever do without Thomas; he was her life; she lived for him. She continually vowed to herself not to ask Thomas questions about who was at the meeting, where it was being held, etc. Each time she did he became furious with her, and yet each time it seemed to slip out of her before she could catch herself. During an argument that followed one of these exchanges, Thomas told Ilene "not to push him." She was frightened. What did he mean by that? Was he
her of her father, she unconsciously superimposed a whole set of other emotional characteristics onto him that were actually about her father's personality. Transference can get in the way of starting a relationship but it also operates to cement relationships in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Rosemary and Neil have been together for ten years. Neither of them feels really good about the relationship. Although they manage to have some good times, for the most part they feel dissatisfied. And
hundreds of women and men in great detail. In our earliest years of practice when we opened The Women's Therapy Centre in London, the confusion and self-recrimination that surrounded women's wants and desires were strikingly evident. And now, in 2012, in each of our practices in London and New York, the content of women's stories may have changed, reflecting the social changes in women's lives over the past quarter of a century, but the confusion and disgust about women's needs lives on. Young
friend and she could only identify through pain and victimization. In fact, Randy found it very difficult to fight for herself and placed all of her own feelings of being a victim, of anger, of acute sensitivity to injustices, of having to make right what is not right, etc., onto her relationships with others and then fought for them. Randy could not allow herself to feel happy with what she had achieved because unconsciously she felt that recognition of the good would negate her legitimate anger