What Do Women Want: Exploding the Myth of Dependency

Not only men, but women, too, ask the question, "What Do Women Want?" To both sexes it often seems that men and women live in two separate emotional worlds, and attempts to bridge the gap meet with frustration and resentment. This groundbreaking book by psychotherapists Susie Orbach and Luise Eichenbaum illuminates the heart of the conflict. The problem is not women’s hidden fear of independence, as many people have claimed. Dependence, the authors show, is a universal human need; it is not limited to women. But men and women have been taught to deal with this need in radically different ways. Women are schooled to be depended UPON. They must provide the basic emotional support of others - their children, lovers, husbands. Such support will only be returned symbolically - through the economic support and physical protection of a man. Men, on the other hand, learn that while they must act independently, there will always be a woman - mother, sister, wife-- they can lean on emotionally. Men need not ask for this support. In fact, acknowledging their emotional dependency - even to themselves - is taboo. Both sexes, then, are prevented from expressing their emotional needs and responding honestly to each other by their own fears and society’s demands. Drawing on years of clinical research, the authors interweave theory with the stories of men and women they have met in the course of their work, and show the many ways in which the strictures on dependency affect their lives.