The New Rules of Marriage

By Annie

As I was driving through Arizona, periodically getting car sick, I read this book out loud with my sweetheart. A good friend recommended it to us. So we thought we’d give it a shot. He wasn’t partial to how it seemed to blame men for all the problems within relationships or the stereotypes it seemed to perpetuate of men. Overall, we both enjoyed the book and found it insightful for couples.

In The New Rules of Marriage, Terry Real addresses what the author sees as a discrepancy between 20^th century rules for companionships versus 21^st century expectations. The book is based of the premise that we have different needs than our previous generations have had. He describes this shift because of the increasing autonomy of women during the later part of the 20^th century. This lead to increasing financial stability for women as well as education, putting an end to some of the traditional gender roles that had served as a building block for marriages. Instead of looking for financial stability and security, Real argues that women are now looking for emotional security and intimacy. However, men have not realized that what they are expected to do has changed. This causes a disconnect in between couples.  To remedy this conundrum, Real spends most of the book addressing different strategies that he has used in his practice based on this theory.

The book emerged out of seminars that he had done to help struggling couples reinvent their marriages. Based on this format, he addresses various aspects in which couples miscommunicate. He gives practice sections at the end of each chapter so that couples can evaluate where their communication skills are, what you may doing wrong, as well as right, and what a healthy couple should be doing – again based on what he calls “the new rules of marriage.” For example, there is a chapter entitled “Get What You Want: Empowering Yourself, Empowering Your Partner.” In this chapter, Real first explains winning strategies to have a healthy self-esteem. To explain the possible shortcomings in achieving these, Real gives real-life situations from his practice in which he explains how a certain couple struggled with their individual self-esteem thereby affecting the boundaries that they created and maintained with each other. He then describes how they implemented changes in their outlook and communication with each other that helped them to better achieve their goal. He does this in a well-outlined manner, by giving a “rule” (example: Rule: Interpersonal Conflicts are not resolved by eradicating differences, but by learning how to manage them).  He then uses the couples situation to show how first they are not “obeying” the rule, how that is hurting their relationship, and then how following the rule (and by giving specific examples of how to follow the rule) benefits their relationship. The practice section at the end really highlights how a couple can implement techniques into their marriage. He has lots of different activities couples can do together, such as journaling, quizzes and homework assignments, which typically consist of applying the rule. For example, he challenges couples to go 10 days without complaining. After that, they are to evaluate how well they did.

I think that his book is good, even though it isn’t supported by other research than he his own clinical casework. Despite the lack of hard empirical evidence, he has good insight into challenges that couples face. The book is a good read, because of how it is organized. The case studies bring the problems to life and make them easier to identify with. His practice sections are where the real strength of the book lies because it allows the reader to evaluate themselves and have practical applications to see changes in their relationships. I would suggest this book especially to dating couples who have tying the knot on their mind. It would be a good way to establish the direction, purpose and needs of each other and how to best accomplish this.