234: Say Anything
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So Neil Chez, do you have a copy of your book, please read this for me there with you? Yes, I do, right in my greasy little claw. Perfect. Can I ask you to open up just to the opening page of the preface, to read from the preface? When you have something very important, but really tough to tell the man in your life, wouldn't it be great if you could just reach for a book that starts the conversation for you? Imagine being able to turn to the appropriate page, give an open book to the man you love and ask, please read this for me. What is it? Just read it, okay? Page 73, it's only a few lines. Once the man you love has the book in his hands, a glance will do the job. Each page is an emotional telegram. Neil Chez now's book is now long out of print, but back in the 1980s when it was published, it represented, I think, a kind of utopian end game for what self-help books could accomplish. Instead of explaining in a general way how you should handle this situation or that situation in your life, the book, please read this to me, cut to the chase, went to the next logical step. It actually gave you a script. You're in this situation? Say this. Here are the actual words you can use to kick off the conversation you need to have. I tried to come up with a book that would not just tell you how to communicate, but actually spark conversation. Let me just read some of these titles to give people a sense of what some of these are like. Page 111, "It's time to admit you don't have a drinking problem. You're an alcoholic." Page 82, "You act like Cary Grant in public and Archie Bunker at home." Page 134, "I think about marriage all the time." Page 148, "Maybe I'm not ready to have a baby." Page 136, "You'd probably prefer if I were an orphan." Let me ask you to read the one on page 135. This one is entitled, "It could be that I'm falling out of love," a difficult subject. Once I thought I loved you, now I'm not so sure. Yes, we've changed over time, but that's only part of it. I feel confused. I don't know what I feel. One minute I say to myself, "Stick it out. Make it work. Don't be a quitter." And I feel guilty. It's not in my power to change you that much I've learned, so I'm giving some serious thought to the only alternative left that I can think of, a trial separation. If you have another suggestion, I'd like to hear it. Over and over in this book, Chez Now and his co-author, Gareth Zursky, takes some of the most painful situations that people can have with each other and give surprisingly graceful one-minute speeches that a person could say or write or show to somebody else. There are a dozen about problems that people might have together in bed, tenor about dealing with each other's friends, tenor about the fights the couples have over money.
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