Intimate Strangers: Men and Women Together

by Lillian B. Rubin

Book Overview

Intimate Strangers is a book for every man and woman who has ever yearned for an intimate relationship and wondered why it seemed so elusive. Drawing on years of research, writing, and counseling... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060149221
• ISBN13: 9780060149222
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

High comedy, low insights

I remember a few years ago, this book had acheived some fame as a sort of frappucino version of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus." I was never inclined to read such a thing, as my philosophy on the matter is that "women are from mars, pass the beer nuts." However, upon a slight perusal of the thing on a psychologist friend's bookshelf, I couldn't stop myself from reading the whole thing. In fact, I could not help laughing out loud every couple of pages; shucks I was positively roaring with laughter. I do not think I have ever laughed so hard at any book, television comedy, or moving picture farce in years. The upshot of the book was that women want men to share their emotions to increase their "intimacy." Most men resist this. They do not have strong or differentiated feelings on most subjects, and when they do, they often consider them to be private matters; stuff which their wives couldn't relate to anyway. Men simply do not have complicated emotional lives, and what emotions they do have, they do not ascribe great importance to, being more interested in building impressive objects out of plastic and iron, such as monster trucks or nuclear submarines. On the rare occasions that men are browbeaten by their wives into sharing their feeeeeeeelings (one must pronounce it this way, I think) on a regular basis, the inevitable result was, well, divorce! Of course the author, being a proud posessor of two X chromosomes, still seemed to think this emotion sharing "intimacy" was a good thing (because all women seemed to want it), despite admitting that it generally resulted not in any kind of improved relationship, but breakup! There were plenty of wonderful "man/woman" stories she brought up from her theraputic practise, none of which would suprise any student of human nature -these parts almost read like a stand-up comic routine; she seemed to find these stories suprising and revelatory rather than banal. Stories like "all he seems to want to do is eat, have sex and watch television!" Or, "she's always bothering me about my 'feelings.' What feelings? My feelings after work are, 'I am tired and want to go to sleep.'" Or, "I always wanted him to share his feelings until he did, and then I found out what a weak, contemptable coward he is! I want a big strong daddy to take care of me!" I am paraphrasing, of course, but these were the upshot. Beyond my eternal amusement at the poltroonery, odiousness and feeblemindedness of the human animal, one of the things I found most amusing about all this was her perpetual amazement at it all, and her sniffily haughty assertions that she and her husbands relationship isn't as screwey as those of her patients. The latter sounded suspiciously like ordinary housewife coup-counting; "well, my Larry is so well trained, he mows the lawn and makes me breakfast in bed, (subtext: unlike your lump who just watches football games)." I would love to eat dinner at her place. Surely such a unique example of domestic