Sham

by Steve Salerno

  In a sense, SHAM has been “about relationships” since the 1960s, when Thomas A. Harris and his mentor, Eric Berne, began selling theories of “transactional analysis” as a better way of learning to engage with those around us. Today, though, SHAM targets the relationships sector with an unprecedented vigor. Once lightheartedly described as “advice to the lovelorn,” SHAM’s concerted efforts in the area of nurturing, fixing, and/or ending romantic relationships is what year after year attracts the greatest influx of new authors and other self-appointed experts. Each “expert” has his or her own special spiel or spin. Each hawks a steady stream of products and services to an audience of people desperately trying to work out the kinks in their love lives. In most cases the SHAM artists are targeting the same desperate audience, according to Jennifer Ortiz, publisher–relations manager for Marketdata Enterprises, which tracks the business side of the self-help industry. “ ‘Relationships’ is where you probably see the largest contingent of repeat customers,” Ortiz told me. “They’re always thinking the next book or seminar is going to make the difference.”

  Needless to say, that desperation mind-set is not lost on the gurus.

  THE TROUBLE WITH MARS AND VENUS

  SHAM’s most prominent relationships guru might well be John “Mars and Venus” Gray. It’s hard to imagine that during the ultra–politically correct 1990s someone could have built an uncontested SHAM franchise by reaffirming almost every stereotype about gender-identified emotions and behaviors. But that’s what John Gray did. While Gray-as-political-dissident is a bit of a stretch, David Blankenhorn remarks, “At a time when the women’s movement had been pressuring America to regard men and women as identical beneath the skin, he came right out and said it—men are from Mars, women are from Venus. What more is there to say?” Gray’s legions of fans, especially women in relationships, saw him as speaking to an elemental truth that sensible people knew in their hearts, even if they weren’t allowed to utter it publicly.

  The trouble with Gray, as with most SHAM gurus, is that he goes too far. On the basis of little or no science—at least that he shows his readers—he presumes to know everything about what makes men and women, respectively, tick. And he does so in purple prose that would mortify Jacqueline Susann herself. He speaks of a woman’s “hunger for love within her soul” as she “surrenders once again to the deepest longing within her feminine being.” Lying nearby, meanwhile, is a man who yearns for his woman’s “warm and wet responsiveness.”1

  Even once you get past the language, Gray’s specificity in describing the sexual differences between the genders is striking. Gray states that a woman engages in sex to experience a heightened form of love. A man has sex to be released “from all his frustrations.” Great sex “is soothing” to a woman. Great sex “strengthens” a man, who regards his woman’s fulfillment as his “ultimate quest and victory.”

  But Gray’s most eyebrow-raising contention may be this: “The difference between a man and a woman is that she doesn’t feel her strong desire for sex unless her need for love is first satisfied.”

  Is that so.

  In a 2003 study appearing in the Journal of Sex Research, Terri Fisher, PhD, a psychology professor at Ohio State University, sifted through questionnaires completed by 201 unmarried, heterosexual college students, 96 men and 105 women. The students were separated into three groups. All were instructed to complete a questionnaire about their sexual attitudes, experience, and behavior, and the age at which they first had sexual intercourse. Members of group 1 filled out the questionnaires while hooked up to a polygraph machine that, they were told, would reveal any attempts at dishonesty. (The machine was a ruse: It didn’t actually work, but the students didn’t know this.) Members of group 2 filled out their surveys alone in a room and were told their answers would be anonymous. Members of group 3 completed their surveys alone in a room, but with the researcher sitting right outside, with the door open. They were told the researcher might see their responses.

  When the answers were tabulated, it was clear that social influences had played a large role in shaping the responses. Women who thought others might see their answers reported an average of 2.6 sex partners; women who had privacy but were not subject to impeachment by the “lie detector” reported an average of 3.4 partners; and the women hooked up to the polygraph machine reported an average of 4.4 partners. Interestingly, the men’s answers didn’t vary very much regardless of the test conditions; average responses fell in a narrow range between 3.7 and 4 partners for all three groups. While the difference is small, it bears noting that, in this survey at least, the most sexually active women were more sexually active than the most sexually active men—4.4 partners for the women versus 4 partners for the men. And among the groups that were presumably most “honest”—those hooked up to the polygraphs—the sexual tendencies and attitudes expressed were roughly the same for men and women alike.

  “Women appear to feel pressure to adhere to sex-role expectations, which is to say, to be more relationship-oriented and less promiscuous,” Fisher told me. But she underscores that if her survey can be believed, only women’s attitudes differ from men’s—not their actual appetites or behaviors. To the extent women “differ” from men in their sex drive and proclivity for libertine behavior, Fisher concludes that it’s because of social expectations, not genetic code. She is now skeptical of most historical assumptions about women’s sexual attitudes. Other studies, as well as a number of telling public-opinion polls, are on Fisher’s side, not Gray’s.2 Perhaps both men and women are actually from Saturn.

  THE PROMISES OF DR. PHIL

  Phil McGraw first asserted a serious claim to the lonely-hearts territory in 2000, when he published Relationship Rescue. One of SHAM’s cleverest cross-promoters, McGraw that fall released his Relationship Rescue Workbook, in which he wrote, “The two books are designed to be companions.” Translation: “If you haven’t yet bought Relationship Rescue, get with the program.” Though the workbook was well received by Phil fanatics, some grumbled about the amount of material the two books share—a somewhat surprising development, since SHAM buyers have a history of uncomplainingly purchasing the same books from their favorite gurus over and over again.

  McGraw gives relationship-minded readers and viewers regular doses of SHAM’s usual black-or-white affirmations. For example, Relationship Rescue is a tour de force in the overly optimistic view of personal omnipotence that typifies, and derails, so much of Empowerment. “Your relationship is in trouble,” McGraw argues, “because you set it up that way. . . . You set it up that way by actively, consistently, and efficiently designing, programming, and choreographing your entire lifestyle to generate and then support a bad relationship. You have chosen to live in a way in which no other result could occur.”

  To make such sweeping remarks in the absence of context not only is philosophically flawed but may be psychologically irresponsible, according to Judith Wallerstein, PhD, a psychologist, researcher, and leading relationship expert. “There are people we meet, and sometimes marry, who turn out to be very different from what we thought they were,” Wallerstein told me. “Sometimes we turn out to be different from what they thought we were, or what we thought we were.” Indeed, there is such a thing as bad luck or being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong partner. There is such a thing as being duped or making an honest mistake. While preachers of Victimization eradicate notions of personal responsibility and therefore can offer easy ways out of difficult relationships, McGraw and others go so far in the opposite direction that they can leave individuals no choice but to consider themselves failures if they cannot make their relationships work. That is to say, McGraw’s Empowerment patter may ultimately lead to a sense of Victimization.

  Though McGraw’s simplistic advice does not serve individuals well, in the end he possesses that special talent, present in all great SHAM impresarios, to inspire blind faith in his followers. Regardless of what McGraw says, what fans hear is
“Deliver yourself unto me, body and soul, and I will lead ye to the promised land.”

  THE RULES

  It’s been a decade since a pair of then-married New Yorkers, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, ignited a cultural firestorm and gave currency to a set of long-whispered dating maxims with their New York Times number one best seller The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. Salon writer Mark McClusky lampooned the book as a “bizarre combination of Pavlovian psychology and Danielle Steel romance,” but Fein and Schneider have undeniably had a major impact on relationships in this country, and as a result on the relationships sector of SHAM.

  Fein and Schneider’s original man-hunting manifesto bespoke an abiding cynicism about men (and perhaps women and relationships as well) in codifying its thirty-five-point romantic formula, which the authors said had been handed down from mother to daughter since first being posited by a friend’s grandmother at the turn of the century. The Rules’ directive to women was simple: Play hard to get and you dramatically improve your odds of being, well, gotten. The authors admitted in one TV interview that this wasn’t exactly rocket science, that their book consisted of “stuff that every woman sort of knows instinctually.” For example, “Don’t accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday” is a code by which single women have lived for generations. But, said the authors, no one had formulated that mentality into a complete “dating system” and put it all down in black and white.

  That could be because The Rules sets forth one of the most diabolical stratagems for finding “true love” ever published. To begin with, some of Fein and Schneider’s rules seem awfully arbitrary: “End phone calls after 10 minutes.” And many seem awfully manipulative: “Don’t call him, and rarely return his calls.” Most rules are both arbitrary and manipulative: “If you are in a long-distance relationship, he must visit you at least three times before you visit him.” Others smack of something one might expect from Donald Trump: “Close the deal—Rules women do not date men for more than two years.” The authors also encouraged a Barbie doll approach to life that sounds patronizing (to women) and anachronistic and rankled not a few female reviewers. To wit: “Never leave the house without wearing makeup. Put lipstick on even if you go jogging!”

  Nonetheless, the book sold more than a half-million hardcover copies and begat the predictable series of follow-ups: The Rules II: More Rules to Live and Love By, The Rules for Marriage: Time-Tested Secrets for Making Your Marriage Work (released as Fein was filing for divorce from her husband of sixteen years), and most recently The Rules for Online Dating: Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right in Cyberspace. The sequels continue the authors’ tradition of arbitrariness and manipulation, while incorporating additional off-the-cuff canons that hardly could apply with every type of man (or woman) in every situation. From their book on marriage: “Give [your husband] 15 minutes alone when he comes home” because “you don’t want him to feel smothered.” And, they lectured wives, “Whether you like it or not, your husband determines your sex life. Whether your husband wants it all the time or is not that interested in sex, you will be happiest if you adjust yourself accordingly.” Some feminists accused Fein and Schneider of setting back women’s quest for sexual equality by several eons. Other critics deemed the “Rules” amoral. But the authors refused to apologize for their books. “It’s not about fairness,” Fein said in an interview. “It’s about what works.”

  Certainly it worked for the authors, spawning a cultlike generation of so-called Rules Girls who remained faithful to Fein and Schneider as they transformed themselves into The Rules Consultation Corp. (TRCC). Nowadays Fein and Schneider have a particularly strong online presence. An e-mail consultation with TRCC normally costs $150, paid in advance, but distressed daters can ask a “quick question” for $50. Phone consultations are available for $175 for forty-five minutes, after an initial fee of $200. Bargain-minded Rules Girls may be interested in Fein and Schneider’s package of six forty-five-minute phone consultations for $900 or eight consultations for $1,000. A woman who thinks she’s already got it together may even wish to get in on the action: She can become a Rules facilitator for $1,000, organizing her own workshops and support groups.

  A decade after Rules-mania hit, critics continue to wonder how anyone can expect to build a committed, trusting relationship on a foundation of gamesmanship and manipulation, if not outright deceit. “I understand the emphasis on creating that aura of mystery, and maybe there’s some validity to it,” Judith Wallerstein told me. “But when you make rules like ‘don’t tell him too much about yourself too soon,’ well, is he really getting to know the person he’s falling in love with?”

  In time, the book provoked an impassioned albeit underwhelming rebuttal from Barbara De Angelis, The Real Rules: How to Find the Right Man for the Real You. De Angelis’s advice? To meet a man who values you for who you are, be who you are.

  THE HIGH CONCEPT

  Even before The Rules and Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus emerged on the national scene, erstwhile marriage counselor Robin Norwood authored the successful book Women Who Love Too Much (1985) and the usual spate of follow-ups. Norwood came out of SHAM’s Recovery/Victimization sector, and her chapter titles show it: “If I Suffer for You, Will You Love Me?” “Loving the Man Who Doesn’t Love You Back,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Dying for Love,” and “When One Addiction Feeds Another” (which seems an appropriate title for the self-help movement itself). Most of the ills that plague women in relationships can be blamed on the family, according to Norwood. “We cannot cover in this one book the myriad ways families can be unhealthy,” she writes. “That would require several volumes of a different nature.” Like so many others preaching the gospel of Victimization, Norwood turns everything topsy-turvy, almost making it sound as if you’d be better off with leukemia than with the ability to love deeply.

  Even if Norwood’s perspective seems excessively dour, her success has inspired a plethora of imitators. Both Robin Norwood and John Gray reveal a key trait of some of the most successful SHAM gurus: the ability to find a punchy, “high-concept” approach to familiar territory. The importance of high concept is clear in Gray’s career: He outlined most of what would become his best-selling ideology in a prior work titled, prosaically enough, Men, Women, and Relationships. But it took the high-concept Mars/Venus label to put Gray on the map. Notable among today’s high-concept hopefuls is Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, author of Women Who Think Too Much. Upon first hearing the title, I thought her book would be a zesty send-up of Norwood’s book, but it turned out to be a serious, unabashedly derivative attempt to play off Norwood’s success.

  Here, in her own words, is Nolen-Hoeksema’s three-point program for helping women conquer the problem she references: “The first step to freedom is to break the grip of your thoughts so that they don’t continue to pull you down further, and eventually smother you. The second step is to climb out of the muck onto higher ground where you can see things more clearly and make good choices about what directions you should go in the future. The third step is to avoid falling into the trap of overthinking again.”

  Clearly, Nolen-Hoeksema doesn’t really mean that women “think” too much, in the sense of rational deliberation. Rather, she refers to some women’s excessive consciousness of their feelings and obsessive need to take the pulse of all relationships. A better title for her book would have been Women Who Love Too Much. But that was already taken.

  Other recent contenders underscore the importance of the high concept in a crowded self-help market. Gary D. Chapman produced The Five Love Languages (and, needless to say, a raft of spin-offs); the reader might wonder what those five languages are, but the answer turns out to be nothing the average SHAM reader hasn’t heard many times before. Mira Kirshenbaum came forward with Our Love Is Too Good to Feel So Bad, a title that, aside from being catchy, appeals to the common tendency to question a relationship; by the end of the book, however, one realizes that Kirshenbaum
has essentially rewritten her previous best seller, Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay. Sherry Argov has written Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—a Woman’s Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship; the plucky title might indicate a direct approach, but in fact the author constantly waffles and qualifies her statements in a way that undercuts the book’s meaning and practical application (for example, Argov exhorts readers to be “kind yet strong”).

  THE SINGULAR WORLD OF WOMEN’S MAGAZINES

  While stacks and stacks of books dispense relationship advice, the influence of women’s magazines cannot be overlooked. To no small degree these magazines devote themselves to preparing their readers to find men, please men, and keep men. Today’s trendiest and most popular women’s magazines also rely heavily on their Web sites and frequently drive readers there for amplification (sometimes including interactive features) on relationship-oriented themes. We’ll leave to others the larger political and social implications of a publishing movement that purported to empower women as a gender, then ended up teaching them largely how to paint themselves, primp themselves, and acquire enough sexual know-how to keep a man satisfied and at home. Instead we’ll focus on the content itself and its direct impact on those who consume it.

  The industry has come a long way since insiders referred to the keynote women’s publications as the “seven sisters,” and a feature in one of those “sisters,” “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” in Ladies’ Home Journal, represented the gold standard of relationship advice.3 Today’s front-runner in providing SHAM content would have to be Cosmopolitan, which in recent years has become notorious for its racy cover lines (“He Wants to Put His What Where?”) and frank reader-diagnostics (“Do You Turn Guys On? Take Our Simple Test”). Since its inception under Helen Gurley Brown, and especially later under Bonnie Fuller, Cosmo claimed the lucrative middle ground between the politically charged feminism of Ms. and the girlie, socially uninvolved narcissism of, say, Glamour or Mademoiselle. Over the years, Cosmo’s formula for success (especially at locking up the coveted eighteen-to-thirty-four advertising demographic) has nudged even its most conservative competitors toward the more licentious end of the scale, such that today, cover lines on once-staid Redbook feature promises of “The Best Sex Ever!” juxtaposed against the usual pie recipes and diet plans.