“A beautiful and important book, particularly for the moment we are in.”—Bruce Springsteen, from the foreword

“When I need advice, I call Terry Real. His decades of clinical experience, research, and wisdom are invaluable to my patients, colleagues, and friends. Us brings his advice to life. It is the book that we all need to read to create more thriving and intimate connections.”—Esther Perel, New York Times bestselling author and podcast host of Where Should We Begin

“Terry Real is a wise, honest, and charming guide. This book is a road map for all of us who seek true intimacy. Real’s approach teaches us how to step outside of the culture of individualism and embrace our interconnectedness. We can use it to heal a single relationship and to shift our collective culture.”—Gwyneth Paltrow, founder and CEO of goop

“Terry Real’s work is nothing short of miraculous. In Us, he delves into the dynamics of modern relationships with precision and wisdom, offering practical tools to create true closeness with others. His work has quite simply changed my life. Read this book. It could well changes yours.”—Bradley Cooper

“This is a stunning book. With page-turning flair and brilliant insights, Terry Real exposes the hyper-individualism that ruins relationships—and shows us many effective ways to move from ‘me’ to ‘we.’ A masterpiece from a master psychotherapist.”**—Rick Hanson, Ph.D, New York Times bestselling author of *Resilient

“Love has the power to hurt but it also has the power to heal, and Terry Real shows us how in this revolutionary guide to happy, thriving couplehood. Chock-full of wisdom, research, and innovative teachings, Us is the book every human should read in order to truly understand not just their partners, but themselves.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of ***Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

“This is a wonderful, wise, and witty book, consistent with cutting edge science and filled with soul and practical advice that can inspire us to discover who we can become together.”—Daniel J. Siegel, MD, New York Times bestselling author, Brainstorm and IntraConnected

“In his previous books, Terry Real awakened us to the fact that most men are not relational. In Us, he not only elaborates on that thesis but, with the writing of a good novelist, brings his approach to transforming men and couples to life. Share this book with your partner and then talk about what it brings up. It may be one of the most painful but also important conversations of your life.”—Richard Schwartz, PhD, developer of the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy

Autorentext

Terrence Real

Klappentext

"You've probably heard some variation of the idea that before you can love someone else, you first have to learn to love yourself. Renowned family therapist and marriage counselor and bestselling author Terrence Real says that we've got it all wrong. In fact, the way to save your relationship is not by working on yourself, but instead by working together. Continuing to focus on yourself will just feed the problem, which is that most of us developed a set of techniques to survive our families that no longer serve us as adults. You can learn to tap into your wiser, more collaborative self. In this groundbreaking book, Real offers a new set of science-backed relational skills that have saved real marriages on the brink. Using psychology, history, and stories of actual couples who have entered his office, Real helps readers move beyond their traumas and stressors and shift from thinking in terms of me and you to a different consciousness. The consciousness of us. The Hail Mary family therapist for couples on the verge of divorce, Real teaches us how to speak up for ourselves with love and build solid, loving relationships that are authentic and interdependent"--

Zusammenfassung
*****NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, ***AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER • Stop working on yourself as an individual and start working on your relationship as a couple, with the help of the renowned family therapist and author of The New Rules of Marriage

“This book is a road map for all of us who seek true intimacy.”—GWYNETH PALTROW, founder and CEO of goop

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal

Not much is harder than figuring out how to love your partner in all their messy humanness—and there’s also not much that’s more important.

At a time when toxic individualism is rending our society at every level, bestselling author and renowned marriage counselor Terrence Real sees how it poisons intimate relationships in his therapy practice, where he works with couples on the brink of disaster. The good news: Warmer, closer, more passionate relationships are possible if you have the right tools.

In his transformative book Us, Real brilliantly observes how our winner-takes-all culture infiltrates families with devastating results: repetitive fights that go nowhere, or a distant relationship in which partners end up living “alone together.” With deft insight, humor, and charm, Real guides you to transform your relationship into one that’s based on compassion, collaboration, and closeness.

Us is a groundbreaking guide to a new science-backed skillset—one that will allow you to get past your knee-jerk reactions and tap into your wiser, more collaborative self. With a novelist’s flair, Real shares the stories of couples whose relationships have been saved by these skills and pans out to the culture that reinforces our dysfunction. If you and your partner are backed into separate corners of “you” and “me,” this book will show the way back to “us.” With Us, your true relationship can begin.

Leseprobe
Remembering Love
Before you pick up that verbal knife, before you brick yourself in even further, let me remind you that you love this person. And therein lies the rub, my friend. Do you remember, really, in that heated moment when fear or righteous anger courses through your veins, that you love this person? Do you remember it when your body shuts down and, for the life of you, you can barely squeak out a word or two? The sobering answer, if you’re dead honest with yourself, is that you do not. In that heated moment, the sweetness between you, the sense of the two of you as a team facing the world together, the sense of us, is nearly impossible to locate.
The good news is that the love is still there. The bad news is that it’s stored in parts of your brain, body, and nervous system that, in those flash moments, you no longer inhabit. Your endocrine system is on high alert, pumping stimulants into your bloodstream. Your autonomic nervous system—far below your consciousness—is in fight-or-flight, spurring you on or shutting you down. The higher functions of your brain (the prefrontal cortex, the reins) have gone completely offline, while the more primitive parts of your brain (the limbic system, particularly the amygdalae) have decisively taken over.
At those times, the brain is in a state in which the prefrontal cortex is neither connected to nor soothing the subcortical system. Without that soothing and connection, we lose a pause between what we feel and what we do. These more primitive parts of our bodies and brains care only about our personal survival; they have no interest in maintaining the vulnerability of intimacy. Us evaporates and becomes you and me, adversaries in a cold world of I win, you lose.
Us is the seat of closeness. You and me …