Sure, we’ve all heard that it takes two to tango in a relationship, but that may not necessarily be the case. After more than 30 years of counseling couples, Robert Alter concluded that men are to blame for the problems in most marriages. That doesn’t mean that men can’t change and learn to be better partners. In his new book, “It's (Mostly) His Fault: For Women Who Are Fed Up and the Men Who Love Them,” Alter tells how men can assume more active roles in their relationships and how both spouses can communicate with each other with more honesty and candor. Here’s an excerpt:

Chapter 1
Hey! You’re in a relationship!

Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you. — Anne Lamott

Marriage is a relationship ... You’re no longer this one alone; your identity is in a relationship. — Joseph Campbell

Let’s face it, we men don’t know squat about relationships. We don’t really do relationships. We do work, we do sports, we do cars, we do wars, and we do sex (which is what often passes for relationship with some of us), but we don’t really do relationships.

“His idea of a relationship,” said Margo of her husband, Paul, in their first session, “is he comes home from a three-day business trip, tired and cranky, says a perfunctory hi to me, who’s standing there at the door to greet him, stoops down to hug the kids for a few seconds, then makes a beeline upstairs to shower, change his clothes, and come down a half hour later. He sits down with us at the table where he gobbles down his favorite meal, which I’ve spent two hours preparing for him, hardly says a word to us, not a word of thanks to me, then gets up and goes into the den and turns on the TV and falls asleep. If I question him about it, like, ‘Is this your idea of a relationship, Paul?’ he either looks at me like I have two heads, or he gets mad at me. I really don’t think he knows what I’m talking about. I’m not even sure he knows what the word ‘relationship’ means.”

What we men mostly do is alone. “I am a rock, I am an island” ... “Jo-Jo was a man who thought he was a loner” ... “Desperado, you’ve been out ridin’ fences” ... that sort of thing. Even relationships we’re in — like our marriages — we do them alone, or try to.

This drives women completely nuts.

Because women do relationships. They like relationships. They find their very identity in relationships and connections. In the same way that it is the nature of water to be wet, it is the nature of women to be relational.

This is somewhere between quite surprising and totally incomprehensible to most of us men.

But it makes sense, when you think about it.

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