But if you want something really powerful and deep, you've got to go beyond the "ordinary."

You've got to set aside your prejudices about men and women and relationships and marriage. You've got to set aside all the media and movie hype and statistics and court cases. You've got to set aside the "Hollywood" vision of marriage and relationship. All that stuff is just garbage that will be in your way!

But first you have to surrender your ideas that there are differences in the core needs of men and women, and that there are differences in the capacity and basic, inborn skill of men and women to be in relationships.

That we think or believe that way is due to cultural stereotyping. I'd like to ask you to put those ideas out of your head. Great Relationships proceed from the concept of total Relationship Equality and that in our true, core being, there is very little difference between individuals in what we all want from relationships. At our true, core self, that part of us that wants love, understanding and connection, it does not matter whether we are man or woman, old or young, nor what color or creed we come from.

In 25 years of working with families and couples I can say that I truly believe and have observed that men and women are basically equal in

--What they need in relationships --their core needs

--Ability to learn and absorb the skills necessary for Great Relationships

--Their ability to think, feel, understand and work with the Secrets of Great Relationships

If you have a problem with this, or think that, for example, women are superior in expression of feelings, or men in the expression of thinking-- or other such stereotypical views, I ask you each to lay down those prejudices right now and take up your marriage together as true and complete equals.

You'll get MUCH farther in your goal to have a Great Relationship and true satisfaction and happiness in life with a partner (and in all other areas of life as well) if you will simply lay aside the useless prejudicial distinctions between men and women, old and young, creeds and colors. If you insist on those kinds of discriminations, you are going to greatly inhibit your ability to get the kind of incredible, dramatic transformation that is required for a Great Relationship.

Why hang on to things which are completely in your way? Come on and join those of us who are eliminating these harmful and wasteful ways of thinking from our thinking and behavior. Men and women are created as complete souls in the eyes of the divine, neither is a superior being, and both are of absolute individual value.

As you will see, this principle of equality is going to challenge you far more than you suspect right now. It is a very large change in our world and is meeting significant resistance from both men and women. But that's temporary, and you can decide whether to sit stubbornly at the station and watch the rest of us ride away, or you can join us.

Please join with your spouse or relationship partner rather than struggling with outmoded and childish notions of difference between you, and start by letting go of your of these old mental attitudes.

Just think of your partner or spouse as a person just like you are, an individual, and not someone "different" from you who "could never understand you." But rather as someone you can completely relate to as an individual who is in the most important ways in life just like you.

If you do, you'll notice an immediate relief and much more freedom to relate to your partner or spouse as a true individual -- and be on your way to the possibility of a Great Relationship!