Introduction The relationship between men and women is in trouble, and it has been for over a generation. The relatively stable divorce rate over the past few decades indicates that the advent of couple's therapy in the 1950s has so far yielded nothing potent enough to affect the fate of the roughly one out of two couples who will see their marriage dissolve. We have enjoyed a period of unheralded creativity and prosperity. We marvel at new advances in technology and science that lengthen and strengthen our lives every day. No generation in history has taken so seriously issues of health and well-being -- both for ourselves and our children. And yet, nonetheless, we have never been lonelier. Our sense of community is breaking down, our sense of belonging has seldom felt weaker, and, silhouetted against this backdrop, couples that once loved one another have never had a more difficult time holding fast.For over forty years the enormously influential women's movement has examined the oppression of girls and women in our society, the corrosive force leveled against our daughters to make them conform -- and the psychological cost of girls' compliance.

We have just begun to extend similar empathy and support to our sons. And even now, as I write, it seems easier for us as a culture to empathize with boys than with grown men. But if we are to heal the enmity between the sexes -- collectively as a culture or individually in our own marriages -- we must begin to understand the forces that shape, and misshape, our husbands. The idea of opening our hearts to men will strike some women as opening the door to disempowerment. Being "soft" on men means to many a facile excuse for difficult, even dangerous behavior. There has been a split in our cultural attitude toward men. For a generation, feminists have held men responsible for privileged, insensitive, and at times offensive behaviors. But most feminists have not spoken to men's subjective experience of pain.

Psychologists and those in the men's movement, by contrast, have begun to look at the cultural gauntlet through which our sons must pass, and the damage it does to them. But, in all their empathy, they rarely acknowledge the power men wield. One camp speaks of the violence men do, the other of the violence done to them. If men and women are to learn how to preserve the natural state of love and respect each deserves, both aspects of masculinity must be addressed -- the wounding and the wound.Since the publication of my previous book,I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression,I have spent a fair amount of time on the road, speaking and giving workshops throughout the country to both health professionals and to the general public about men and what ails them. Wherever I have gone, I have been struck by a burgeoning desire, almost a sense of urgency, about "figuring men out" -- how we can help struggling sons, husbands, fathers, in much the same way that women collectively began helping daughters, wives, and mothers a generation ago.The latest research on boys and their development tells us that, despite our raised consciousness and good intentions, boys today, no less than ever before, are permeated with an inescapable set of highly constricting rules. Those boys who try to "step out of the box" place themselves in harm's way since, even today, our culture's tolerance for young men who deviate from what we deem masculine is limited, and our intolerance expresses itself in singularly ugly ways.

The great bind is that those boys who do not resist, who choose or who are coerced to comply, do not escape either. Avoiding attack from without, those who adopt the traditions of male stoicism and "self-reliance" risk injury to the deepest and most alive aspects of their own being. The consequence of opposition is psychological and often physical brutality. The consequence of compliance is emotional truncatio.