Transcripts

Scott Haltzman:
There's a joke that I heard a comedian tell and he says, "I'll give you the definition of compromise: one year I wanted to vacation in California and my wife wanted to vacation in Florida, so we compromised - we went to Florida."

Psychiatrist Dr. Scott Haltzman, author of the book Secrets Of Happily Married Men…

From a woman's perspective - if you talk about something and process it and ultimately come down on her side, she views it as compromise - from a man's perspective that same process is looked at as capitulation.

When couples get into trouble the subject of going to couple's counseling often comes up but Dr. Haltzman cautions…

Couples therapy is often sought by the woman as a solution to the relationship problem. Because the woman is frequently wanting her husband to become someone that he's simply not able to become - she wants him to become softer, more gentle. So what happens in therapy is you come in and the therapist says, "Everything's even here." We're both going to sit down on this cushy couch and we're both going to spend an equal amount of time talking about our emotions. As a man that doesn't feel very equal to me - perhaps a better scenario is if the therapist took us out on the basketball court and said, "OK, everything's even here, we're going to play some one-on-one for the next forty-five minutes." Now that feels like an area that I have an advantage in.

You can link to Scott's website from ours; somethingyoushouldknow.net- I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.