Both men and women ask the question 'what do women want?' To both it can feel that women live in one emotional world and men in another. The balance of healthy dependence and independence is something with which all couples grapple. The authors, psychotherapists for over thirty years in New York and London, discuss how social constructs of gender shape our deepest longings and our capacity for intimacy, inter-dependency and sexuality. Drawing on their clinical practices, the authors interweave new theory with the stories of men and women they have met in the course of their work, and show the many ways in which the strictures on dependency affect their lives.