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A review by jarrahpenguin
Us: How Moving Relationships Beyond You and Me Creates More Love, Passion, and Understanding by Terrence Real
2.0
Full disclosure, I only made it 2/3 of the way through this book. At first I appreciated the approach, including Terrence Real's integration of social issues and how our capitalist, white supremacist society pushes us towards individualism and alienation and away from togetherness and solidarity. While the level of analysis and advice was a bit light, I did find there were some helpful concepts, like Real's graph of how people tend to be shaped by the way they were parented, moving towards an opposite approach on the axes of empowerment/disempowerment and abandonment/intrusion.
But I had some issues with the book, especially as it progressed. On the more serious side, there are a couple of really problematic examples where Real talks about intimate partner abuse/violence and conveys unintentionally really harmful messages. In one, he describes an example of a couple where he says he screened for domestic violence, but was satisfied it was ok to counsel the couple together because the man was never physically abusive. He did, however, regularly throw things, verbally berate his wife, and lock her out of the bedroom in front of their kids for refusing sex. These are all clearly abusive behaviours. Real does describe them as "bullying" but distinguishes it unhelpfully from DV. And while he puts the onus on the man to change before he can expect his wife to be interested in sex, he also implies that part of the issue was the wife needing to learn to stand up for herself.
In another chapter Real talks about one couple's experience with infidelity. He outlines the messages the wife found between her husband and another woman, including graphic imagery that I don't think the audience needed. The way he describes that and the wife's images of the infidelity feel salacious and unnecessary.
Less seriously, Real's audiobook narration is quite slow so if you do decide to listen, I recommend listening at 1.2% speed.
Overall I think there are a few interesting takeaways in this book for people who struggle with understanding how their childhood impacts their relationships, but I would not recommend it for anyone who is in an abusive relationship, has Relationship OCD, or already has a fair amount of literacy on these topics.
But I had some issues with the book, especially as it progressed. On the more serious side, there are a couple of really problematic examples where Real talks about intimate partner abuse/violence and conveys unintentionally really harmful messages. In one, he describes an example of a couple where he says he screened for domestic violence, but was satisfied it was ok to counsel the couple together because the man was never physically abusive. He did, however, regularly throw things, verbally berate his wife, and lock her out of the bedroom in front of their kids for refusing sex. These are all clearly abusive behaviours. Real does describe them as "bullying" but distinguishes it unhelpfully from DV. And while he puts the onus on the man to change before he can expect his wife to be interested in sex, he also implies that part of the issue was the wife needing to learn to stand up for herself.
In another chapter Real talks about one couple's experience with infidelity. He outlines the messages the wife found between her husband and another woman, including graphic imagery that I don't think the audience needed. The way he describes that and the wife's images of the infidelity feel salacious and unnecessary.
Less seriously, Real's audiobook narration is quite slow so if you do decide to listen, I recommend listening at 1.2% speed.
Overall I think there are a few interesting takeaways in this book for people who struggle with understanding how their childhood impacts their relationships, but I would not recommend it for anyone who is in an abusive relationship, has Relationship OCD, or already has a fair amount of literacy on these topics.