Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

What it is about

In Us, Terrence Real argues that many couples treat intimacy as a contest between two selves. Drawing on Relational Life Therapy, he describes how grandiosity and shame, and the “adaptive child” each person learned at home, show up as winning, withdrawing, or scoring the other person. The practical move is to speak from the part that can protect the relationship while still telling the truth.

Questions it can answer

• Why does a couple keep having the same fight as if one person must lose?
• How do shame and the need to be right show up in ordinary marital talk?
• What does it mean to speak for the relationship instead of only for oneself?

What you will not find

• A laboratory scoring system for conflict
• Legal steps for divorce or property
• A claim that working on oneself alone will repair the couple