Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say

By: Dr. Warren Farrell

Narrated by: Dr. Warren Farrell

In Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, Dr. Warren Farrell teaches us how to handle personal criticism without becoming defensive. He explains how being defensive evolved biologically when criticism was the sign of an enemy--and “putting up our defenses” was necessary for physical survival. However, Farrell says, “Defensiveness is the Achilles’ Heel of love.”

In love, our primal need is to feel understood. In Dr. Farrell’s words, "I have never heard someone say, 'I want a divorce, my partner understands me.” Ironically, the deeper our love, the more vulnerable we feel, the more defensive we become. Soon, couples feel they are walking on eggshells. Raising children means less time for communication, but more reason to stay together. The result: passion fades, and we are legally married but physiologically divorced. Or in a minimum-security-prison marriage.

The solution? In Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say, Dr. Farrell teaches us how to emotionally associate being criticized with the potential for being loved. Since being defensive is biologically natural, Dr. Farrell creates an alternative method--similar to a “work-around” that we might create to avoid faulty hardwiring in our computer’s software.

Dr. Farrell’s methods are the culmination of thirty years of experience with thousands of men and women in workshops, groups and seminars. He shows how to use the strategies that create love at home to also produce success and respect in the workplace.

In this audio book, Dr. Farrell, selected by the Financial Times as one of the world’s top 100 Thought Leaders, personally summarized and reads the books content. A Book-of-the-Month Club section that has been praised by celebrities, therapists, and couples as brilliant. See warrenfarrell.com/136-2/.

©2000 Dr Warren Farrell (P)2000 Dr Warren Farrell

Critic reviews

"You can hardly read a sentence in this fascinating book without thinking: ‘Really? I didn’t know that!’ Warren Farrell is a true pioneer.” (Bernard Goldberg, reporter, CBS News)

“I learned more from the first hundred pages of this book than from anything I’ve ever read about how to communicate in a relationship.” (Cathy Guisewite, syndicated cartoonist, Cathy)

“Dr. Warren Farrell is one of the most original thinkers of our time.” (Nancy Friday, bestselling author Women on Top, etc.)

Very Helpful!

It has taken me a long time to recognize how to communicate with women, especially the women I married. I am ver hopeful this will help me with this important area.

Fantastic and unheard topic

Clear, well researched, encouraging and supportive stance towards men. I have recommended this book to all my male best friends.

Changed My Life. Loved Every Bit of This Book.

A must read. Eye opening. Thank you and much respect Dr. Warren Farrell. Definitely recommend this book.

An excellent guide for all men

The author does fantastically at combining experience with quantitative evidence. This book has left me with a new sense of responsibility as a man towards my own self development.

Warren's a great narrator. Powerful & fact based.

Interesting from start to finish. Warren has a really pleasant voice. Short, which is a pity, but that does make it easier to convince your girlfriend/wife to listen to it as well. Especially outlining how not just the laws but especially the media is so anti-men it's really sickening. Take the red pill, wake up and realize we got the shitty end of the stick. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT.

I’ve listened to it twice.

Very interesting perspective. Definitely goes against the grain of the feminist narrative by giving a voice to the problems and hardships men go through. Heard about this author from an interview he did with Jordan Peterson. Worth a listen.

Starts Great!

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

This book's first few chapters are really wonderful and get into some pretty clear gender differences and how men can suffer from having limited access to their own vulnerability and to friends and loved ones who create space for true authentic sharing. I love this because I do think men deserve to have our society rally behind them becoming more emotionally available, skilled and able to be better friends, lovers and communicators. I do think we can overlook this shortcoming or rigid role expectation with men. I removed some stars mostly because mid-way through the book it took a deviation from a social psychology bent to more of the authors memoirs and into some stronger gender politics that were clearly painful for the author. I didn't mind per se, but it took this book from a book I could refer to couples to a book I can't use other than for my own interest. Perhaps if I was teaching a class on Gender and Psychology it would be an interesting counterpart, but I'm not at the moment. So I just wish the author had a more distinct focus for this book... write either a memoir or a social psychology book.