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Men and Women in the Real World
For the last decade, American culture has been brimming with images of men and women who do not understand each other and who just cannot get along. The popularity of self help books such as John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and Fein & Schneider's The Rules reflects pervasive cultural stereotypes that depict men and women as inhabiting dif ferent relational worlds. Perhaps the popularity of these books, and the beliefs they advocate, should not be all that surprising. The changes that occurred in gender roles during the last half of the twentieth century have resulted in uncertainty about what it means to be a man or a woman, a husband or a wife.
This uncertainty is often coupled with deeply ingrained personal views about masculinity and femininity that seem to contradict current expectations about gender roles. Men and women grasp at the easy answers and simple solutions presented in the popular media, including selfhelp books and talk television. The generalizations presented in these popular forums, especially in Gray's proliferating cottage industry, often do seem to fit people's experiences, though only superficially. People can usually find descriptions of themselves that have the ring of truth, just as they do in horoscopes, which frequently seem to provide an accurate portrayal. However, the problem is that these depictions are so general that they are not particularly useful. How accurate are these perspectives? And does this depiction of men and women as inhabiting different worlds help husbands and wives to understand each other and resolve relationship difficulties, or does it create a gulf between them and hinder their ability to recognize the complexity of people and their intimate relationships?
Even though the perspective that men and women inhabit "different cultures" is a major theme on best-seller lists, recent research presents a more complicated scenario. This scenario challenges the over-simplified Mars/ Venus perspective that magnifies and reifies relatively small sex differences and overlooks more common similarities. Popular culture fails to note that gender is a complex phenomenon, and we must go beyond simply comparing men and women if we are to unlock the myriad ways that gender influences relationships.
THE EMOTIONAL DOMAIN OF MARRIAGE
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