How Can I Get Through to You?

What it is about

How Can I Get Through to You? is Real’s account of the intimacy gap: partners talk, and still do not hear each other, because one is often pressing for contact while the other hears that press as control. He describes psychological patriarchy as a split that ranks self-protection above connection and leaves both people resentful—one unheard, the other never quite getting it right. The shift the book asks for is from arguing a case to repairing the connection the argument sits in. It belongs with his later rules book, but its subject here is why the hearing fails, not the full list of practices that came after.

Questions it can answer

• Why can two people talk at length and still fail to hear each other?
• How does Real describe the intimacy gap between a press for contact and a defence against being managed?
• What does it mean to repair the connection an argument sits in, rather than to win the case?

What you will not find

• Proof that the gap is the same in every culture and every couple
• The later full-respect workbook restated as a second copy
• A method for making a partner open up on demand