What the Beatles Taught Me About the Book I Wrote Alone

Co-authored by Galit Romanelli

I fell in love with the Beatles as a kid. Starting with Twist and Shout, like every other kid. As a teenager, it was the Sgt. Pepper psychedelic, mysterious, trippy feel that drew me. And since then, I keep rediscovering them every couple of decades.

Now in my fourth decade, I am a couples therapist discovering them again. This time it is not because of their music but because of one decision they made before any of the music existed.

When John Lennon and Paul McCartney were teenagers, long before the fame and the screaming crowds, they made an agreement. Everything either of them wrote would carry both names. Not Lennon. Not McCartney. Both.

Lennon-McCartney

It didn’t matter who wrote the verse or the bridge, the lyrics or the music. Both names went on it. They shook on this at 16, and they kept it.

Think about who these two men were. Two of the most talented songwriters who ever lived, each one able to write a complete song without the other. Each of them was whole. They chose to share the credit anyway.

That is rare. It is especially rare between two men.

Here is why. Most of us men grew up inside a hierarchy. Terry Real calls it psychological patriarchy, in which we separate the male from the female and position one above the other. You breathe it in. You internalize it. So we learn early to fight the other man. Because in a hierarchy, if I am not above you, I am below you. There is no third option. That is the price many men pay.

The training works. It works in the schoolyard, the workplace, the army. You climb. You win. Then you fall in love, and the same socialization turns into poison.

“Where there is hierarchy, there is no intimacy.” Galit Romanelli

Every relationship starts in a hierarchy. We have written about how many couples unconsciously set up a 95/70 dynamic, one partner valued at 95 percent, the other at 70, quietly dividing up who gets to be better at what. The work of evolving, maturing, and “remarrying” your partner is the slow move out of that hierarchy and into relational equilibrium. Hierarchy turned on its side becomes a spectrum.

So when two 16-year-old boys, full of talent and ego, chose to flatten the hierarchy between them before the music even started, they did something almost no man does. They blocked their own exits. They made it impossible to keep score. That liberated them to focus on the music and not on their ego.

I have seen couples fight over credit a thousand times in the clinic. But today I am not going to talk about them. Today I am going to talk about me.

I know all of this because I did exactly that. When it was time to write my book Feel Free Together-How to Remarry Your Partner, I wrote it alone. The truth is that the whole model in that book came from my marriage. Thanks to Galit I knew viscerally how it feels to unbalance your marriage and remarry and not just preach to couples the theory and idea. It was a joint effort full of blood, sweat, and tears, that helped us crystalize the relational blueprint that we now teach couples. Sixteen years together, and every step we have taken toward relational equality has asked me to give up some of my perceived height.

Galit never asked to be the co-author of the book. She did not fight me for it. She let me have it, because she knew I needed it for my own ego, in my process of “recovering” from the hierarchical masculinity I grew up in.

I was aware of the 95/70 mentality the whole time I was writing. In the acknowledgments at the end of the book I wrote:

“… This book is yours as much as it is mine. Thank you for understanding that I needed to write it alone, for my ego. The truth is, it is really our book.”

I wrote that. Then I continued to put my name on the cover.

I didn’t do Lennon-McCartney.

The Beatles were not clean of this either. They fought later. The egos came back. The money and the lawyers came in, and by the end Lennon and McCartney could barely stand each other. But they had blocked their own exits. The names held. Sixty years later, every one of those songs still says Lennon-McCartney. The pact outlived the friendship. They felt the same pull I felt. They were just smarter, earlier.

Here’s what I have learned. You can be only as happy as your least happy partner.

It ensures that you’ll be able to enjoy the relationship, without scorekeeping or competing.

Galit is finishing her Ph.D. right now. When she does, the degrees between us will be even. We are walking into a new era, and I can feel the old hierarchy creeping up on me. I am trying not to. I am slowly learning what Lennon and McCartney knew at 16 and hope to fully master before I’m 64.

So I will ask you what I am asking myself.

Where in your relationship are you collecting credit for something that belongs to both of you? Where are you the only name on the cover of something you couldn’t make alone?

It does not have to be a book. It could be the parenting move you take credit for. The change you call your idea. The thing you brought home and forgot whose it really was.

So where are you not releasing your relational hierarchy?

Galit Romanelli is a relationship coach, Ph.D.-candidate, and co-creator of The Remarriage Roadmap.

References

Real, T. (1997). I don’t want to talk about it: Overcoming the secret legacy of male depression. Scribner.

Originally published at https://www.psychologytoday.com.