Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them
Susan Forward, Joan Torres, 1986
He adores her, calls when promised, and talks marriage after a month. A year later, she lives in a minefield: shouting over trifles, criticism, coldness as punishment, and everything is her fault. Psychotherapist Susan Forward examines how these relationships work, where the pattern comes from, and how to stop participating in it.
Who it is for
For anyone who loves someone around whom they constantly tiptoe, apologize, and doubt themselves, and anyone wanting to understand how a fairy-tale romance becomes a painful relationship.
If being with him feels this wonderful, he must be wonderful himself.
A dance in the living room
Imagine a living room, dim light, and music from A Star Is Born. Rosalind is forty-five, owns an antiques shop, has a grown son and two marriages behind her. The man dancing with her is Jim. Yesterday, friends brought her to hear him play in a jazz ensemble; today he has come to dinner for the first time. He holds her so close the room seems to float. Later, she will tell psychotherapist Susan Forward nothing more romantic ever happened to her.
Jim was equally besotted. He called all his friends, even his mother, to tell them about her. After their third date, Rosalind tried her name with his surname and canceled appointments to avoid missing his call. By the time she came to Forward, however, she was a bundle of nerves and her once-thriving shop faced bankruptcy.
Between these scenes lies the book Forward wrote in 1986 with Joan Torres. It concerns men who love their partners while causing immense pain, as though they hated them. Forward calls such a man a “misogynist,” a woman-hater. Most of her stories contain no beatings. They do contain jealousy of every friend, instant shifts from charm to rage, mockery of opinions and achievements, punishment through coldness, money, or silence, and the habit of blaming her for everything. Beside him, she lives in a minefield, constantly apologizing.
This is the author’s model and clinical experience, not a diagnosis of someone’s husband. But if the picture feels familiar, the book addresses the central question: why does love beginning as a fairy tale hurt so badly, and what can be done? Let us begin with the fairy tale itself.
The faster the romance, the less you see
Laura was thirty-four, successfully employed at a large cosmetics company. One evening at a restaurant, she stepped away to make a call and returned to find a handsome stranger at her table: he had noticed her and waited. His name was Bob. The next evening brought dinner by the ocean. He chose wine knowledgeably and looked at her as though absorbing every word. A month later, they lived together and discussed marriage.
Then Bob casually announced, “I’m not divorced yet.” He had felt divorced for ages, he said, so it made no difference. Laura was stunned, realizing he had lied from the start. Yet what seemed important then was not the lie, but that the divorce was nevertheless underway.
Forward believes a fast-moving romance always carries a hint of danger, precisely what makes it intoxicating. She compares it to riding: trotting is pleasant, but galloping thrills because you could fall at any moment. Childhood roller coasters captivate similarly: fast, frightening, and therefore wonderful.
The trouble is that galloping leaves no time to see who is beside you. Knowing someone takes time; trust and intimacy grow slowly. Forward calls this blindness romantic blinders. We look not at what he is like, but at how we feel beside him. Laura admired his eyes, the way he walked, and how he ordered wine. Never once did she say, “He is decent and honest.”
Early warning signals therefore pass unnoticed. Bob’s lie was a warning Laura did not want to see: she wanted to believe he was her dream man.
What follows in practice? Forward believes you can see a new person clearly only when the relationship moves more slowly. Strong feelings need not make you flee. They are a reason to slow down and observe how someone behaves when honesty is inconvenient.
About the author
Susan Forward, an American psychotherapist, wrote the bestsellers Toxic Parents and Emotional Blackmail. Joan Torres coauthored this book.
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