The Pitfalls of Manhood with Terry Real

Summary

Podcast Summary: Fail Better with David Duchovny

Episode: The Pitfalls of Manhood with Terry Real
Date: August 19, 2025
Host: David Duchovny
Guest: Terry Real, therapist and author

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Main Theme

This episode dives into the often unspoken pitfalls of manhood, especially how societal and generational expectations around masculinity shape men’s ability to relate, fail, and ultimately heal. David Duchovny and renowned therapist and author Terry Real have an intimate, vulnerable discussion on inherited trauma, the myth of invulnerability, male depression, father-son dynamics, and the power and practice of relational living. The conversation is equal parts personal storytelling, therapeutic insight, and practical advice for breaking cycles and fostering true connection.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Terry Real’s Origins in Therapy and Masculinity

• Context: David invites Terry to share what led him down this path, relating it to the theme of failure and self-examination.
• Personal & Family Roots: Terry grew up with a violent, depressed father—a model of unhealthy masculine power. This made him question and seek out what “healthy power” for a man should look like.
  • “My dad was a depressed, violent guy. I grew up with a model of masculine power...that was dominating and abusive. That’s not right, so I had to figure out what right looks like. In some ways, that's been the riddle of my life.” — Terry (04:58)
• Swing between Power and Softness: He highlights a pendulum in men: some abandon power to avoid repeating their fathers, others swing back (the “manosphere”), but neither extreme is healthy.

2. Hubris, Humility, and Relational Power

• Performance vs. Conduit: Both men discuss how success can stoke grandiosity, yet the deepest joy comes from being a “conduit” for something larger, not owning the power directly.
  • “You stand in it (your power), but it passes through you, and it’s not yours... Be proud of your part of the cooperation, and the power isn't you. It passes through.” — Terry (07:41)
  • “Those times when I have felt like, you know, that really wasn’t me. It was just like I’m a conduit of something. I knew it came through.” — David (10:08)
• The Masculine Shift: Terry references the story of Parsifal and the Holy Grail to illustrate the shift from asking “What do you got for me?” (boyhood) to “How do I need to show up for you?” (manhood).
  • “That’s the shift from a boy to a man.” — Terry (12:24)
• Ancient Wisdom: David marvels at how myth and religion intuited these lessons long before psychology.

3. Male Depression & Disconnection

• Cause: Terry’s breakthrough came from recognizing that many men are “knocked out of relationship” by patriarchal socialization.
  • “Little boys feel things, but they know better than to express it. The code has landed on them... Each sex is asked to give up half our humanity. Girls can’t be strong, and boys can’t be vulnerable... It’s a lie. We all are both.” — Terry (19:33)
  • “We connect to each other through vulnerability...It leaves us lonely, admired, but not connected with. It's a recipe for disaster.” — Terry (20:50)
• David’s Experience: He shares how avoiding vulnerability led him not just to miss pain, “but also joy.”
  • “When you become invulnerable, it’s not just that you won’t feel pain; you also won’t feel joy.” — David (22:51)

4. Relational Joy vs. Individual Gratification

• Difference Explained: Real joy is found in connection, not personal achievement or gratification.
  • “Gratification is a short-term hit... Relational joy is a deeper down pleasure. That’s what makes us happy. That’s what we human beings are designed for.” — Terry (23:44)
• Poignant Parenting Moment: David describes being moved to tears when his son, as a young adult, genuinely asked about his dad’s well-being—an example of deep relational connection. (25:01)
  • “My son asked me about myself... I just burst into sobs. I remembered them because...they’re deep, they’re nurturing, they’re juicy. That’s life.” — David & Terry (25:34–27:46)
• Cycle-Breaking: Terry affirms that David’s vulnerability with his kids paved the way for such moments: “Every minute that you dared to do that with your kids is why he can pick up the phone at 22 and say, ‘Dad, how are you?’” — Terry (28:35)

5. Parenting in Relation: Steering on Ice

• Relational Parenting: Terry advises parents to resist the Superman ideal: just be there, responsive and loving, not perfect.
  • “Being a parent is steering on ice... You try something out...pay attention to the feedback and move with it.” — Terry (29:02)
• Being Real: “If you share your feelings and your kid is anxious, lay off. There’s no magic answer, just being in relationship and seeing how it goes.” — Terry (29:14)

6. Men’s Work, Icarus Syndrome, and ‘Quality vs. Quantity Time’

• The Icarus Syndrome: Men overcompensate in work as a means of providing—often at the expense of actual relationship with their family.
  • “You think you’re being a hero...they're sitting home going, ‘Where the hell’s Dad?’” — Terry (32:58)
• Debunking Quality Time: David and Terry agree that “quality time” is a myth. Connection arises in “sheer quantity” and the “in between” moments.
  • “Quality time isn’t a real thing. The revelations and the moments of relationship happen in the quantity of time.” — David (34:13)
  • “Quality time is a yuppie invention...Families operate in the corners...All relationships are about hanging out.” — Terry (34:28)

7. Terry’s Approach to Therapy & Addressing Personal Failure

• Relational Life Therapy (RLT):
  • Terry explains that his school of therapy is based on honesty, directness, and modeling relational behavior—eschewing clinical neutrality.
  • If he doesn’t “like” a client, he will address it skillfully and honestly:
    • “I'm with you and I don't like you...The difference between being at a bar...and being your therapist is: I allow myself to feel that, then I go up—what's he doing that's so assholey?...And I bring it back to you and deal with it...I try to reach beyond to the ‘relational guy’ inside.” — Terry (37:46)
• The Adaptive Child: Terry describes the “adaptive child” part of us—survival adaptations from early experience that sabotage adult relationships.
  • “Most people walk into my office living as the ‘adaptive child’... You needed it back then. Let's calm that little boy and get to a different part of you.” — Terry (42:06)

8. Family of Origin, Fawn Response, and Caretaking Patterns

• David’s Upbringing: Grew up with a mother both loving and volatile; he learned to “fix” and suppress his problems to protect her, a template that remained into adulthood.
  • “Anytime I'm out of relation, anytime I'm in confrontation, I feel a desperate fear that the other person is going to hurt themselves or give up.” — David (47:00)
• Caretaker Dynamics: Terry tunes in:
  • “The consequence...is that's your adaptive child. So you bring your caretaking into your relationships...It’s hard to be vulnerable.” — Terry (48:14)
  • This leads to habitual lying, presenting a perfect front to avoid burdening others—an intimacy blocker.

9. Pia Mellody’s Influence & Generational Healing

• Empathic Reversal: Terry describes how trauma gets transmitted, and how, in healing, we learn to feel empathy for our child-selves and hold perpetrators accountable.
  • “I call that now empathic reversal. The child has hyper empathy for the perpetrator and loses empathy for themselves. Pia's work reverses that—empathy for the little boy and holding the perpetrator accountable.” — Terry (53:43)
  • “You can change someone’s life in a few sessions by doing that work.” — Terry (54:03)

10. Forgiveness, Accountability, and Family Closure

• On Forgiveness: Terry rejects the language of “forgiveness”—prefers accountability and moving on without minimizing harm.
  • “It’s not okay, and it’ll never be. You’re not absolved. I will move on...You did a lot of damage, and you’re responsible for that damage.” — Terry (54:12)
• Generational Legacy: Terry shares his father’s deathbed words, urging his sons to do better—a moving moment of late-in-life honesty.
  • “When you’re where I am now, the only thing that matters is love. Everything else is bullshit.” — Terry (55:00)
• David’s Mother's Last Truth: David shares a deeply personal story about his mother’s final years and a moment of liberating truth, recognizing how family dynamics persist and how truth, even given obliquely or unintentionally, can offer release. (58:45)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [07:41] Terry: "You stand in it and it passes through you, and it's not yours."
• [10:08] David: "It's the most joyful moments and the least kind of ego driven moments. In fact, I come to question these moments when my ego gets satisfied."
• [19:33] Terry: "I talk about normal boyhood trauma under patriarchy... Each sex is asked to give up half our humanity."
• [22:51] David: "When you become invulnerable, it's not just the trade off that you're making is, yes, I won't feel pain, I won't feel weakness, but I also won't feel joy."
• [25:34] David: "I put the phone down because I burst into sobs that my son asked me about myself."
• [28:35] Terry: "The fact that you dared to do that with your kids is why he can pick up the phone at 22 and say, dad, how are you?"
• [32:58] Terry: "I call it the Icarus syndrome. You leave your wife and kids... you go so overboard at it that they're sitting home going, where the hell's Dad?"
• [34:24] David: "I realized that's bullshit. It's quantity time. Because quality time isn't a real thing."
• [42:06] Terry: "Let's take a look at that adaptive part of you. You needed it back then, let's calm that little boy down and get to a different part of you that can do better."
• [53:43] Terry: "Empathic reversal. The child has hyper empathy for the perpetrator and loses empathy for themselves."
• [55:00] Terry (Father's last words): "I could have done a lot better than I did. And my hope for you boys is that you do better than I did. And I gotta tell you... when you’re where I am now, the only thing that matters is love. Everything else is bullshit. You take it from me. It's about love."

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

• 03:01 — Terry Real’s personal/family roots and entering therapy
• 07:32-12:25 — Discussion of healthy power, humility, spiritual metaphors (“Parsifal”)
• 19:23-23:44 — Male depression, relational trauma, the myth of invulnerability
• 25:01-27:46 — Parental vulnerability: David’s story about his son
• 29:02 — Advice for being a relational parent
• 32:58-35:26 — Working at the expense of relation; “quantity vs. quality time”
• 37:46-39:46 — Terry’s therapy style, honesty with clients, adaptive child work
• 42:06-46:57 — Explanation of trauma/childhood adaptation in adult relationships
• 53:43-54:03 — Pia Mellody’s influence; empathic reversal and giving back “carried energy”
• 55:00-56:13 — Terry recounts his father’s last words: “only thing that matters is love”
• 58:45-61:16 — David’s story: his mother’s final “truth” and moment of liberation

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Tone and Takeaways

Throughout, the tone is frank, respectful, warm, and occasionally raw—with both host and guest modeling the vulnerable relational stance they advocate. The episode is less about straightforward “fixes” and more about awareness, repair, and the ongoing, imperfect project of failing, loving, and “failing better.” It’s an honest, moving exploration of why men—why all people—struggle with connection and what it means to break generational patterns by owning our humanity.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In:
This episode provides a deeply resonant, practical, and emotionally intelligent look at manhood, healing, and the relational work of living—and failing—better. Real-life stories, myth, and therapy wisdom blend to offer insight for anyone navigating family, masculinity, or the journey to honest connection.

Transcript

[A]

A 15 year old girl who chewed through a rope to escape a serial killer.

[B]

I used my front teeth to saw on the rope in my mouth.

[A]

He's been convicted of murdering two young women but suspected of many more.

[B]

Maybe there's another one in that area.

[A]

And now new leads that could solve these cold cases. They could be a victim that we have no idea he killed. Stolen Voices of Dole Valley breaks the silence on August 19th. Follow us now so you don't miss an episode.

[B]

Lemonade.

[A]

Hey, just a quick message before we get started. You can now listen to every episode of Fail Better Ad Free with Lemonade Premium on Apple Podcasts. You'll also get ad free access to and exclusive bonus content from shows like Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis Dreyfus, the Sarah Silverman Podcast and so many more. It's just $5.99 a month and a great way to support the work we do. Go ad free and get bonus content when you hit subscribe on this show in Apple Podcasts. Make life suck Less with fewer ads with Lemonada Premium. I'm David Duchovny and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Terry Real is an internationally recognized love and family therapist who says nothing is more important in our lives than our relationships. That's why his work focuses on helping people build meaningful ones. His best selling relationship books, I Don't Want to Talk about it and us getting past you and me to build a more loving Relationship explore themes like male depression and the toxic culture of individualism. We talk about what it looks like to break generational cycles so we don't screw up our kids. Terry's known for his unusual honesty and directness in couples therapy. His approach, called relational life therapy, has saved countless people on the brink of divorce. So much so he's been dubbed the turnaround guy. He's pretty much someone who helps you confront things you've been avoiding for years. He helped me do that. Today I ask him about passing down pain versus healing because we've all absorbed things from childhood that we're still living out as an adult. I hope you find this conversation as helpful as I found it for myself. Terry Real, I found, is the real deal. I'm sure I'm not the first person to say that. I enjoyed him as a person, as a therapeutic voice, as a human being. And I hope you will too. Hey, good morning Terry. Thanks for. Thanks for being with me.

[B]

Sure, it's fun. I admire your work by the way.

[A]

I admire yours. Well, thank you it's very interesting because there's so much that I want to kind of explore with you. There's so much in the two books that I've been able to get through, not get through in that way, but to approach in the short, short time I had leading up to this. I don't want to talk about it. And the new one, us. Good. There's so much in those and there's so many big ideas and there's so much sweeping knowledge in these things that I get scared because I don't want to grab for too much too soon. So kind of what I wanted to because, because the focus of the, the podcast is failure. And I think that it dovetails very well with your kind of thinking. I think I'm off to the side here. I think that's better with your kind of thinking because you talk about going from hubris to humility when you talk about, in the, in your books, you talk about the, the grandiosity of, of men in particular. And I was just wondering if we could start with you kind of explaining to people that maybe don't know your work, how you came to it personally through your own personal failures. Because that seems to me like Freud. You are a self diagnosed person, in your case, through couples therapy. In his case, you know, he's, he's the first patient.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

And I think that's the prototype that you're kind of approaching in this way. So, you know, how is it that you came to this crossroads, that you came to this kind of moment of looking in the mirror, which seems to me and saying, I seem to be part of a bigger problem, let's figure out myself. And maybe in that way I'll be figuring out something bigger.

[B]

Yeah, I think there are two things. One is me and the other is my dad. So in some ways let me start with my dad and then me. As you know from reading my books in part autobiographical, my dad was a depressed, violent guy. And so I grew up with a model of power, particularly masculine power. Not uncommon, unfortunately. That was dominating and abusive. It was not healthy and I had to figure out that's not right. So I was sort of left my own resources to figure out what right looks like. And in some ways that's been the riddle of my life. What does healthy power look like, particularly for a man? And like a lot of young men with abusive fathers also, I was a 60s kid. I went through a period of trying to divest of power. You see that now with young men. You know, I got soft and I tried to, like, oh, I don't want to be him. That didn't work. And there's a swing back and forth between, you know, guys who snag sensitive new age guys, and they're soft. And guess what? A lot of women don't love them. A lot of women like some power in their guy. And then there's this sort of blowback, you know, the manosphere. And that TV series, adolescence that was so frightening. And it was like, screw you. I'm going to be. Let's go back to the. So I was trying to figure it out along the way. Turns out that I had some grandiosity myself.

[A]

Well, this is. This is something that I wanted to ask you because if you put yourself in the position of therapist or the turnaround guy, which is kind of how I've seen you referred to, yeah, give me a weekend, I'll do it. You know, it's like, not only are you the turnaround guy, but you're going to do it in a weekend. Like, Jesus. There's. It's not grandiosity because you're not out there on a billboard, but there must be moments when you've gone, yeah, fuck, I am the shit.

[B]

Well, there's nothing wrong with saying I'm the shit, particularly if you are. Celebrate your skills. Well, actually, let me cut right to it, because I want to say what right relationship to power is, because I got taught. It took me a long time, and my friend Mel Buckles taught me, and my metaphor is art. Here's what he said. You stand in it. Don't shrink from it. Don't shrink from the bigness of it. You stand in it and it passes through you, and it's not yours. And here's what I tell people all the time, particularly men. It's like, you practice your scales and practice your scales and practice. You're an artist. You practice your craft. It's hard. You work hard. Saturday night rolls around, you sit on stage, you play the piano, and inspiration passes through you, and it's great and you feel it and everybody else does. Wonderful day. It's not your inspiration. You serve it at the same time. It wouldn't come to you if you hadn't done the donkey work of practice. Be proud of your part of the cooperation and the power isn't you. It passes through to me. That's what I finally figured out after about 40 years.

[A]

I think that I couldn't corroborate that more in my personal experience, 100% of both things, large and small, that has been my entire career as an actor has been one in educating my gut, not educating my head. And so that I walk onto a set and, you know, more or less I am going to allow my gut to make choices that I trust. And some days I plug into the power and some days, you know, I don't.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it's. I know, I know that it's. It's not me. And then I can just like tell you a certain aside, you know, that I write songs and I've realized that I can write a song at any time or not. But it's always floating. It's always floating here. And there is a great sense of, I think, what gets lost in the translation of that. Because on the, on the other side, you have this ego dominated kind of media culture where you're saying, I did this, I did that, look what I did. All me. We don't talk about the joy that exists in actually being self effacing.

[B]

Love it.

[A]

Do you know what I mean? It's like those, those times when I have felt like, you know, that really wasn't me. It was just like I'm a conduit of something. And I'm not even saying it was so fantastic, but I just felt it come through, you know, like I knew it came through.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Nobody. I don't even need anybody else to acknowledge it because that's not ego. It's just like I know I was part of the flow, whatever it was.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's the most joyful moments and the least kind of ego driven moments. In fact, I come to question these moments when my ego gets satisfied by some kind of an accomplishment. It's like, oh, there must be something wrong there, you know?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, you don't have to be too hard. Be proud of your part. My model is cooperation. Be proud of your part of it and don't grab it. It's not your. It's both. Stand in it. Own your craft and let it pass through you. If I may, at the end of. I don't want to talk about. Here's what I say about guys, a boy's question of the world is, what do you got for me? Gratitude. Yeah.

[A]

I have it written down here.

[B]

And the man's question is, how do I need to show up? What do you want from me?

[A]

Of service.

[B]

Yeah. At the end of the Holy Grail. Parsifal, the first medieval novel. So he's this young, about 400 pages, and he's trying to find the Grail. And after all these adventures The Grail comes to him. You don't find it. He finds you. There he is, and he's standing in front of the Grail. And there's this giant grail keeper, the knight. And the giant grail keeper looks at this young knight and says, you have one question. And young Percival says, who does the Grail serve? Bang, he's back out in the woods. You blew it. 300 more pages of witches and beasts and trials and blood, and he's back in the holy the Grail. And the grail keeper looks at him and says, you have one question. And Parcifle says, who serves the Grail now? You can stay. And that's the shift from a boy to a man.

[A]

Aren't you always amazed that religions and stories and myths got their before anything, that they were always waiting for us there, that they were there, that they had the answers before? Before psychology, before brain chemistry, or before all these other things that we've created in the last couple centuries?

[B]

Yeah, it's always been there. I mean, I have a spiritual practice and it's always been there. Unfortunately, there's also been, you know, hatred and bigotry and exclusion and all of that, too. It's not so clean, but there's a lot of wisdom. We're not the first people here.

[A]

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[B]

All right, well, let me do the last one, because that's complicated. So I created a school of therapy called Relational Life Therapy. And we were unusual. So actually, I'll answer the first question because I wrote. I don't want to talk about it. It was. I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed of my profession to say it was the first book ever written about male depression, ever. But I've always been a family therapist. I'm not one of these sort of psychologist types. And I almost didn't want to write the book about depression. Somebody came to me and asked me to, and I said, I think men are depressed because they're knocked out of relationship. And, like, hey, say that. And that's the book, right? And what's curative.

[A]

Wait, wait, wait one second. Because they're knocked out of relationship. Is that what you said?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can you just explain what that means? Because I'm not sure everybody would know. I'm not sure I know what that means.

[B]

I talk about normal boyhood trauma under patriarchy, which is the system we all live in under traditional masculinity. And a really good researcher, Judy Chu, was studying boys. It turns out little boys are more emotional than little girls, more sensitive, more full of feeling. If you got to Compare them by 3, 4, or 5 years old, boys still feel things, but they know better than to express it. The playground has done its job. The code has landed on them. That's trauma in traditional gender roles. Each sex is. Well, feminism has helped with girls, but traditionally, each sex is asked to give up half of our humanity, and everybody knows the deal. Girls can't be strong and smart, and boys can't be emotional and vulnerable. Well, guess what? That's a lie. We all are both. And the essence of traditional masculinity and David, is still true today. Feminism has changed girls some. But you ask a boy on a playground today about masculinity, you get exactly the same answer you got 50 years ago. Nothing's changed. Strong, independent, competent, can do. Vulnerable, dependent, connected, forget it. And the other thing about us guys is this code of being invulnerable is a lie. We're not invulnerable. All human beings are vulnerable. So we're trying to live up to this thing that it's not human to live up to. And actually we connect to each other through vulnerability. So it leaves us lonely, admired, but not connected with. It's just kind of a recipe for disaster.

[A]

I find that when I look back on my own emotional history that I thankfully didn't have parents that really enforced those particular stereotypes, especially my father. But my mother would have been more so the one that wanted me to be strong and independent and isolated. And she came from a very poor family in Scotland. And you just had to work hard. You had to work hard and be invulnerable. And I found the stakes for me were not just depression, which as you rightly say in your, in your book is not really a feeling. It's like the absence of feeling. But what I lost access to, again, I come back to what I said earlier was joy. You know, when you lose that, when, when you become that, when you become invulnerable, it's not just the trade off that you're making is, yes, I won't feel pain, I won't feel weakness, but I also won't feel joy.

[B]

I won't feel it.

[A]

And I think I won't feel. And I think that, that's another thing that I think gets lost in the, in the current culture wars. It's like, why can't men be joyful? And, and you know, it's like they can, they can, they can, but it doesn't come at the expense of anybody else.

[B]

Right. That's beautiful. So here's my language for it. Yeah, I deal with a lot of high rollers. I do, I do four pro bono and 10 paid. And my 10 paid are all, you know, guys like. And they're all miserable, Right. And I teach these guys the difference between. I'm glad this came up for our listeners. The difference between gratification and what I call relational joy. And gratification is great. It's a short term hit of, you get a good review, a girl flirts with you, you make some money. That's all. Gratifying, great, love it. Have a martini. Great. In his place Relational joy is a deeper down pleasure. That's about connection and being and just being in the relationship. Parenting is the one people can. Sometimes my kid is gratifying, sometimes he's a goddamn pain in the ass. Deeper down, hey, Terry, you know, I can do a time machine, and you could just be without a kid. Get out of here. It's not about gratification. It's deeper than that. I mean, a lot of the men that I work with have lived their whole lives out of gratification, and they have little to no sense of what relational joy is. But that's the pearl of. That's what makes us happy. That's what we human beings are designed for. And all of these traditional, you know, injunctions knock us out of relational. You cannot be invulnerable and connected at the same time. You're either in your armor or you're out.

[A]

That resonates with me so deeply, what I think of when you say that. I had this experience with my son, who's now 22, but when he was in college, I remember we were just talking on the phone, and he said, hey, how are you, dad? You know, how's. How's work? How you feeling? And I just. I put the phone down because I burst into sobs that my son asked me about myself. Like, it was. He wanted to have what you. What you're calling.

[B]

You're feeling it right now, right?

[A]

Yeah, Relational, like. And I couldn't step up to the plate. I couldn't say. I was like, I was just sitting there going, well, do I. Am I honest to say, well, you know, work is kind of blah. I'm not, you know, and I'm a little. I'm a little down about this. Like, should I really. Should I treat him like a friend now? What. What am I supposed to do? You know? And I. Because I want that honest relationship with my son. But I'm also aware of this image of father, son and how that's supposed to go and what's good for him. Like, would it be good for him to tell him, yeah, I'm a little depressed, or would be good for him saying, I'm fine, you know, like that. But it was that moment.

[B]

What did you do?

[A]

Him asking, we're on the edge of my sea state.

[B]

How's this turn out?

[A]

We'll do it in my. My private session with you? No, I think I hedged a little bit. I think I said, well, because. Because this was one of the things I was very, very cognizant of while my Kids were growing up because we had this, you know, supposedly charmed existence that we were all living under. You know, their parents were successful actors, celebrities, whatever. And, you know, we did get divorced, so that was something to deal with. But from anybody else, it was this charmed existence. And I would always go out of my way to. To let my kids know. It's tough. You know, I'm constantly. I'm not getting all the jobs that I want to get. It's not what you're seeing, you know, because I didn't want them to be hoodwinked by that. That image of domination, of world domination. So I'm. I've always kind of been in the habit of saying, you know, not so great, whatever, you know, and that's like, yeah, trying to be real, whatever. But I'm just saying that the moments when I have been is what you call in relation with my children or with somebody that I love. I remember them, and they're not dramatic moments, you know, I remember them because.

[B]

They'Re deep, they're nurturing. Yeah. They're juicy. That's life.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, may I say a few things, my friend? Okay. First of all, mission accomplished. David. The fact that you went through a time and, you know, you are a big star, and it would be easy to cloak yourself in that, and you made a deliberate effort to be a human being, to be vulnerable, share real. You know, I went out for this part, and somebody else got it. Every minute that you dared to do that with your kids is why he can pick up the phone at 22 and say, dad, how are you? And really mean it. You taught him that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So take that in. You taught him that. He's a good kid.

[A]

Yeah, he is.

[B]

You did that. You did that.

[A]

I will not take credit, but I will be a. I will take credit for being a conduit a little bit.

[B]

There you go. All right. And then, because I. I do want people to get some advice here, and if I may.

[A]

Yeah. Yes.

[B]

If I can. I did a podcast for the New York Times on bothering, and you can go to look it up. Kids don't want you to be Superman. We men are taught that you have to be Superman to be worthy of love. How about just be there and be loving? To be worthy of love? So about being relational as a parent, Being relational means you don't know what the hell you're doing. I didn't know what I was. I call it steering on. Being a parent is steering on ice. It's like approximate control. Being relational means you Try something out. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you pay attention to the feedback and move with it. So if you start sharing your feelings with this kid and they're loving it, and you can tell they're like a flower getting water. Keep it up. If you share some feelings with that kid and they start anxiously trying to solve it, taking care of you and, oh, I'm burdening this one and that kid, you lay off of. There's no magic answer. The answer is being in relationship and seeing how it goes and dealing with it. But generally speaking, yeah, go ahead.

[A]

Well, because you say at one point in. I think it's in us. You say, basically the brain is asking itself constantly, am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? And I think you repeat it four times. And I think especially in relationships with your children, that's a very important question that they're asking. And it really can inspire a person to be that safety which, you know, in your heart you can't be, you know, because you know that you can't control the safety of the world. But it's important for that kid to feel that. So is there a disjunction that happens at that point?

[B]

I mean, we all feel that as, as parents, you know, yeah, you're gonna die. Not for a long, long, long, long.

[A]

Maybe not ever. Maybe not.

[B]

And that's bullshit. Yeah, you could walk off the street and get it tomorrow, but that's not what the kid needs to hear from you. Of course.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But just once, how about sitting next to him on the stairs, holding his hand and saying, you know what, honey, I'm scared too. Let's sit here and be scared together. That's a beautiful thing. And there's safety in, hey, the world's fine. I'm going to take care of it. But there's also a very deep safety. And we're in this together, and we're not taught to do that, but it's a beautiful thing. Connecting is safety.

[A]

Yeah. You know, I grew up in a time, and I think this is something that a lot of people are susceptible to. We equate money with safety. You know, in many ways it can be, you know, it's a roof over your head. But I'm, I would make the mistake when my kids were young of getting out of relation to go to work, you know, and, and the, and the bargain that I made with myself was, well, I'm, I'm, I'm creating safety in the future for them by doing this. And I still have Certain, I don't know. Not guilt, but questions about the thinking. Not the thinking so much. I get the thinking, but it's my willingness to take that bargain, you know, my willingness to go out of relation and to go into work. Because relation can be so scary. Relation can be so unfamiliar.

[B]

Yeah, we guys are much more comfortable being worker bees. And I actually have a name. I have a name for everything. I have a name for this. I call it the Icarus. The Icarus syndrome. You leave your wife and kids. If you're heterosexual, you leave your wife and kids and you go off and slay dragons to be worthy of their love and to do the job of providing for them. And you go so overboard at it that they're sitting home going, where the hell's Dad? I miss dad. You think you're being a hero. And they're like, how about working 40 hours a week instead of 80 hours a week and coming home and playing Monopoly with us? How about that? We go overboard with it.

[A]

I had a realization when I was raising my kids because there was always that phrase that people would throw around, quality time. And at some point I realized that's bullshit. It's quantity time. Because quality time isn't a real thing. The revelations and the epiphanies and the moments of relationship happen in the quantity of time. Not because, like, hey, we're gonna go to Disneyland and we're gonna have this. These memories and we're gonna do this. No, it's when you're just. You're in the third hour of driving somewhere and somebody goes, hey, you know, you know, whatever, you know, that's when it happens.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

Sheer quantity, I think.

[B]

Yeah. I say all this. I say quality time is a yuppie invention.

[A]

I hate quality time so much. Thank you. Thank you.

[B]

Yeah. Where families operate is in the corners and the. In the intersection. And I use that example, quality time. You're going 80 hours and then you sit face to face with your 11 year old and say, so how are you? Good luck now. Yeah, you want to hear from your 11 year old? Drive him to hockey practice. And the third time you drive him, the first two, he's monosyllabic all of a sudden. The third time it's like, I wasn't chosen and I felt like shit. Oh, my God. Tell me. It's like it happens in the interstices. It happens in the hanging out. Families are about hanging. All relationships are about hanging out. All this sort of purposeful intimacy is yuppie crap, right? Yeah.

[A]

It used to be Kodak moments. And now it's, you know, Instagram moments. And it's like, ah, you know, it's just life is. Life is beautifully boring. You know, like, let's get to that as well. So just to double back on the idea of trying to ferret out this idea of you failing, you know, of you, of you confronting your own failures or, or say you don't consider it a failure if you have an instinctual repulsion to a somebody that comes to part of a couple.

[B]

Well, see. Okay, so to answer your first question, which is relevant to this one, I'm.

[A]

Glad you can remember it because I.

[B]

Can probably just a little.

[A]

We're going for quantity time here, not quality time.

[B]

Remember, I'm probably a shadeless add than you are, but a shade. So what I figured out about men was what's wrong is the lack of relationship. That's what's killing us. And so what's restorative is equipping men to move into relationships with themselves and with other people. That's what cures not analyzing your neurosis or not having a wonderful experience with me, your therapist, but learning how to live relationally on this planet. And so if that's the goal, let's bring in your family and let's use real time, the relationship you're in, to teach you how to do it better. So that's how I wound up shifting into couples work. Now, RLT Relational life therapy, which is what I've created, is very different from traditional therapy. And one of them is, we're humans, we don't do neutrality. We don't do that professional mask. I say, I don't know how to teach somebody how to be relational and not be relational with them. And I teach my students, we're taught not to tell the truth to our clients. We're taught to be nicey nicey. And what I tell my students is what you say at the water cooler after the session. I can't believe that guy was such a wimp. I can't believe he was. That's what you should be. That's the therapy. Go back and find a way of saying that in this session. So we tell the truth and we tell the truth about ourselves. So I'm with you and you're being an asshole and I don't like. I'm with you and I don't like you. Okay? The difference between being at a bar, I was with a bar. And you're acting like an asshole, I move if you're my client and you're acting like an asshole. I feel that. I allow myself to feel that, but then there's an antechamber. I feel it. And then I go up. It's like, okay, what I'm feeling with David is what everybody feels with David. What's he doing that's so assholey. And I go, okay, David, let me tell you what. What's going on between us, and I bring it back to you and deal with it. And the whole art of RLT is doing that in a way that's so skillful and loving that you can hear it.

[A]

And that's what you've been working at for 30 years.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Skill. Part of it.

[B]

Yeah. Hey, and the way I do it is, David, what are you doing? Do you know that what you're doing with me right now is kind of repulsive? You must know that. You're a smart guy. Tell me about that. What's that? I'm not the only one who feels what I'm feeling with you right now. How long you been doing it? So I'm trying to get. I'm trying to reach beyond that. I call it adaptive child. Part of you, you learn that somewhere. You use that. You needed that when you were a kid. Tell me about this. This is stupid. So I'm trying to reach into the relational guy inside. And over and over again, at the end of a session, I say to somebody, you're a good guy. You're behaving like a creep. Will you let me help rescue the real you from this nonsense?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Who says no to that?

[A]

Well, I'm laughing because I. I just want to take that, like, last 45 seconds as a clip to make it look like you're just calling me an that around.

[B]

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[A]

What I really appreciate in what you're doing is you're modeling, you know, and this is something that, as kids, this is what we're getting from our parents. And as. As if we didn't get the kind of modeling that is going to be healthy for us. Or lead us into some kind of happiness in life. Then we have to remodel ourselves. And you kind of are standing in for the model of. This is how you should be in relation to yourself. First of all, is to say, hey, not you're an asshole, buddy, but why do you think you're an asshole? Why. Why do you think you need to be an asshole? And maybe there was a time. There was a time, and being an asshole is the only way that you could have survived.

[B]

Maybe there was a time.

[A]

Maybe there was a time.

[B]

And let me be a little technical about it so I can teach folks. I talk about three parts of the human wise, adult, prefrontal cortex. That's the guy I'm reaching for. David, you're being an asshole. What's going. That's the smart part of you that knows better. Wounded child. Neurobiology. Subcortical, very young, primitive part of the brain. And then preverbal, almost. Yeah, preverbal.

[A]

Is that preverbal?

[B]

Just feeling it. 1 to 5, 0 to 5. And then what I call the adaptive child, which is what most of the people walk into my office living and thinking, that's an adult. And it's not. So fight, flight, or fix. And it's automatic. And it's what you learned as a kid to survive. And now you bring it into your relationships when you're triggered and you think that's the thing to do, I guess you're in a world of trouble. So the first thing I do is let's take a look at that adaptive part of you. You needed it back then let's figure out why you needed it, and let's calm that little boy down and get to a different part of you that can do better. The beauty is you don't have to let go of it. One of the things I say is when an inner child kicks up, you put them on your lap, you listen to them, and you take their sticky hands off the steering wheel. You listen to them, you form a relationship, and you demote them. And I teach people this all day long. I literally have little Terry. I know him well, about 8. But my wife, Belinda, we're both fighters. That's our adaptive children. Fight me. We both grew up in violent homes. Fuck you. Fuck you. So Belinda comes at me with anger. You know that one day a year, Belinda comes at me with anger. I take little Terry and I put him behind me. That little fighter's got to get her. I put him behind me, and I literally. I don't. I literally make a deal here's. My deal. Between her reactivity with Belinda's anger with somebody else might be something else. Between her reactivity and you is me. My big body, my adult self. You're protected back there. That's my part of the deal. Here's your part of the deal. Relax. You let me handle my wife, you'll make a mess of it. You let me do it. And that's moving out of the adaptive child part into the wise adult. And the beauty that I teach people is that I call it relational mindfulness. That shift out of the automatic fight, flight, or fix to thoughtful hold it. That can be cultivated, that can be grown, and that's the way out of this mess. Shifting out of your automatic reactivity and choosing something more skilled, loving. That's how you do it.

[A]

I have a couple of thoughts. I'm trying to write them down. Fuck. I think you're forgetting another F there, because you're talking to an entertainer here. Fawn. You forget about Fawn.

[B]

Fawn is fixed.

[A]

Oh, Fauna's face. Yeah, Fawn. I just learned recently. And I was like, yeah, Fawn, Fawn.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

When I feel myself fawning, then I'm like, stop it. Yeah, there's appreciation, there's acknowledgment, and then there's that other thing is this is.

[B]

All, like, brain size. This is subcortical. This is automatic. This is not the thoughtful part of your brain. And a fight, you fuck me, flight, I'm shutting down. I'm out of here. Which you can do while sitting in front of somebody. It's called stonewalling. Men are very good at that. And fix, which is Fawn. It's like you're anxious. Oh, my God, let me do what I need to do. And, you know, it's like, oh, lion, let me lick your paws so you don't eat me. And these are like, boom, boom, boom. They come from your childhood. They worked then. They're making a mess of things now.

[A]

Well, I. I grew up with a mother who was very dramatic, and she was a great mom, I have to say. A protector. Worked her ass off. Brilliant teacher. But she was depressed and volatile in a way I would say not. Not necessarily suicidal, but. But in that realm.

[B]

Wow. Scary. That's scary.

[A]

Well, this is. This is what I have come to deal with. You know, as I got older, I. I saw her as a human being, and I saw those problems as I felt sympathy. You know, I began to grow sympathy rather than fear of. Of it. But I still had to go back to. And still have to go back in my life constantly to any time I'm out of relation, as you would say, anytime I'm in confrontation, I feel a desperate fear that the other person is going to hurt themselves or give up or something. So that. And I really like what you're talking about because it's like fair fighting. I like the idea of fair fighting. But if I'm in a fair fight, I also have to know that I don't have the power to destroy that other person. Whatever I do, it's not going. I go for the resolution way too quickly because I hate being in that unresolved place because one of the resolutions might be, you're gone. You know, and that's something that I've dealt with.

[B]

You're a fixer.

[A]

Yes. Yeah.

[B]

And my guess is. So this is very common. I talk about what I call the unholy triad of patriarchy. You've got, and this will be exaggerated for your family, but you've got a man, a husband, a father who's shut down, busy at work or irresponsible or angry or whatever they are. You have a mom who isn't really satisfied and she hurts. And then you have a sensitive, sweet little boy. And that little boy feels his mother's pain. She doesn't have to do a thing. He feels it and he steps into the breach and he starts to try to up regulate his mom, make her feel better, and he becomes a caretaker. And then, if I may, tell me if I'm overstepping. The consequence of that is that's your adaptive child. So you bring your caretaking into your relationships, but caretaking is not quite intimate. It's caretaking. So it's hard to be vulnerable. You say if I'm vulnerable, if I dare lean into conflict, you're going to be like my mom and you're going to fall apart and I will have killed you. So there are normal aspects of relationship that that little boy with that mom would read as too scary. And you have to, you're saying it. You have to learn. I'm not that little boy. The person I'm with is not my mom. I can lean in and be a little aggressive and nobody's going to die. But you have to really work to bring yourself up out of that early conviction. Out of that.

[A]

Yeah. It also leads to kind of a habitual lying because you're not going to come to the other person with your problems because you don't want them to leave or be hurt or whatever with your imperfections, you know, and that, that eventually caught up with me in my life where I presented this kind of perfection or, or no problems, no problems at all. When in fact I had certain problems and I would pursue them, you know.

[B]

Elsewhere on my own.

[A]

Yeah. You know I, I and I had learned early on to keep whatever I thought was dark or unruly or chaotic or unresolved away from my mom because I didn't want, I didn't want to perturb her, you know. And that this became the template for my relationship to women and for my relationship to people. I would light a man as well, you know. So, you know. And actually this is kind of a full circle moment for you and me. I went away to the meadows and I met with Pia. Melody actually I got to sit with. And I believe you would say she's probably your greatest. Yeah. And can you speak a little bit about what you saw as her great insights and how they have come to flower in you or have you already been doing that?

[B]

Oh my God. RLT rests on the foundation of her work and extends it. But I also my thoughts about healthy self esteem, the three parts of the psyche, the adaptive child. It's all Pia boundaries. Her work is foundational for my work. The work she did with me is what she calls divesting of carried energy multi generational. I was depressed and when my father was beating me, he was depressed. His father was depressed, both angry and violent. And when he was beating me, Peter would say he was beating his depression into me. And I remember being a little boy, he would strap me, but it wasn't. Anyway he was 246 foot three and I was eight. He whacked the shit out of me and I remember feeling sorry for him while he was beating me. And I call that now empathic reversal. In all the child has hyper empathy for the perpetrator and loses empathy for themselves. I deserved it. And so Pia's work reverses that. You have empathy for the little boy and you hold the perpetrator accountable and you take on. This is a beautiful concept. When a parent is mishandling an emotion like my father's rage and sadness. A boundaryless child who's supposed to be boundaryless walks into that field and walks off with the parents feelings and it becomes an exaggerated feeling that plagues you for the rest of your life. And Pia did this beautiful work of re accessing the trauma experiences where that feeling got transmitted to me and giving it back to him. And it was amazing. That work is amazing. You can change someone's Life in a few sessions by doing that work, Belinda does it. And this.

[A]

And this doesn't preclude forgiveness of your father.

[B]

I don't like forgiveness. I don't like that word.

[A]

Oh, you don't like it. Can you tell me more about that?

[B]

It's a little too Christian for me. I'm Jewish. It's like. It's a little too much. Like it's okay.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, I'm with you.

[B]

It's not okay, and it'll never be.

[A]

I also don't know that it's possible. You know, we can say it, but it's another. How do we know it? I don't want.

[B]

It's not healthy. You're not absolved. I will move on. I will lay this to rest. I'm not going to.

[A]

I'll forget it.

[B]

I'm not going to.

[A]

I won't forget it either.

[B]

Yeah. I'm not going to nurse Grievance the rest of my life. I'm really sorry you behaved like that. And, you know, you aren't happy, but you did a lot of damage, and you're responsible for that damage. Sorry.

[A]

Can you tell us, you write in the book, but can you tell my listeners what your father's last words to you, though? What they were?

[B]

Yeah. You know, I say, david, I became a therapist. It's true. I became a therapist in order to have the skills to get through to this character so that I could have the conversation I needed to have with him so that I wouldn't become him. That was almost conscious in my mind. And I did almost. Yeah, I did have those conversations. And on his deathbed, he gathered me and my brother and he said, I'm really sorry. I could have done a lot better than I did. And my hope for you boys is that you do better than I did. And I gotta tell you guys. And he was a tough, you know, this was not a feeling I gotta tell you. And he was a day away from death when you were where I am now. The only thing that matters is love. Everything else is bullshit. You take it from me. It's about love. Took him a long time to get there.

[A]

It's beautiful. And you're like. And you're like. Now you tell me.

[B]

Yeah, right. A little. But I'll take it. I'd rather hear it than not hear it. A little late.

[A]

I want to share something with you. I really fear doing this because it's so intimate, but what the hell, go for it. Here we are because of. Of what you just said about Your dad? My mother died three years ago, almost three years ago now. And she suffered from dementia for six, seven, eight years before that. And we had to have a lot of caretakers for her, and one of them ended up stealing from us. And so there was missing money, and now there was a getting the police involved. And I went to my mother's apartment in New York, where she was living, and not alone. She had help. And I. And she was always desperately concerned with money. You know, she was a child of the Depression. Always. It was always, you're going to wind up in the gutter. That was always the phrase in my house. You're going to wind up in the gutter eating, like, Brussels sprouts, 34 cents a pound. You know, everything. I knew the price of everything going into my mouth per bite, you know, stuff like that. And again, you know, this is not to say this is a bad person. This is just to understand where she's coming from. And one of the brilliant things the caregiver who. Who did rip us off did was she went and she purchased, like, $5,000 worth of counterfeit bills. And when my mother used to sundown, which is what elderly people do, they get anxious in late afternoon, she would dump this fake money in my mom's lap, and it would soothe her. You know, it was like a brilliant move. I think it might work with me like you did with me today. It might work. But anyway, so I had to somehow tell my mother, who. Who had, you know, pretty severe dementia at this point, that the police were going to be looking at her bank account, you know, and I had to make clear to her that there was nothing that they. You know, she was not in trouble. And if she was healthy, my mother would have been really upset if there was any kind of activity in her bank account. But she didn't seem to care. She just. She thought, oh, okay, so the police will get here. So we're waiting for the cops to come and interview her. And, God, I'm afraid to tell you this.

[B]

Oh, this is beautiful, man. I'm right here.

[A]

And. And. And she goes, you're not going to get married, are you? And I was like, you know, she'd been like, the last four or five years, she was like, you're not gonna get married, are you? And I'd always say, no, I. I don't have any plans to get married. I don't. I'm divorced. I. And I was like. We had this time together. Now in this apartment, it's quiet, and I'm like, well, what. This is a weird question to be asking me, you know. And so I said, no, I don't have any plans to get married, but what would be so bad if I did get married? I mean, why don't you want, don't you want me to have companionship or, you know, a relationship? And she said no. And I said, why not? And she said, because then you couldn't marry me. And you talk about that thing that your dad gave you. I believe, even though she didn't know what she was saying anyway, she was giving me some kind of a truth, you know. And I just remember, like times stopped and I saw the dust motes, you know, kind of suspended in there, the sunlight, small apartment. And I thought, oh, you just kind of liberated me, you know, you just kind of gave me the truth and now I can like just let it go, you know. And there was no sense in her that she had said anything weird or, you know, she was just in that place where everything, you know, boundaries that you talked about were no longer real to her. It was just all this stuff.

[B]

Well, show you the truth of what it's always been. Yeah, your mind. You're here to service me.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So.

[B]

And it liberal. Tell me what it triggered in you. I mean, you could pass.

[A]

Well, because I always felt that was the truth, you know, And I was like, now I'm hearing it from the source, you know, even though she's not in her right mind, etc and all that things. And she's not a bad person, she's not an incestuous person and she's not these things that you could make up from somebody saying something like that. She merely needed me like that. And that was a problem for me, you know, that became a problem for me. So that's why I say it was liberating in that way.

[B]

Ah, beautiful.

[A]

I thank you for taking so much time with me today and I've really enjoyed not only hearing you explicate on your own work, but also just kind of having a, I guess what is a man to man talk that we've had. And I've appreciated you listening to me and I've appreciated you sharing personal things with me. So I feel really grateful to you for coming by today.

[B]

Me too. Really appreciative. I'd be happy to come back and let me just name. Because it's so rare and it's a wonderful thing. We were both vulnerable and honest and we felt connected. We were real. And God bless your willingness to do that and do it publicly. It is an antidote to all the bullshit that's going on and so needed. So bless you and your work and one wonderful, wonderful connection. Thank you so much.

[A]

Thank you Terry.

[B]

Bye.

[A]

What a lovely deep for me discussion. Was Terry real I've been sitting here thinking about the conversation and going back to the fact that when I first came out to LA in the late 80s, I was trying to be an actor and my best friend was out here. He was acting guy named Jason Beghe and we were kind of Interrogating is the wrong word because that makes it seem like we were methodical about it. But way back then we were wondering what it is to be a man. But we were in pain and in some way we identified it as a male pain. And then life took over and my career took off and I had less time to think about it. I had less time to dwell on my psychic pain, you know, more just like, okay, here's life is starting, here we go. But now I circle back. Now I'm doing this podcast many, many years later and I circle back and I'm still interrogating the same thing. I'm still looking in these places for answers or really looking for questions. And there's something to be said for honoring where your unconscious is pointing you. Thanks so much for listening to Fail Better. If you haven't subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now's the perfect time. Because guess what? You can listen completely ad free. Plus you'll understand unlock exclusive bonus content like the full version of my post interview thoughts that you won't hear anywhere else. That's more of my recaps on interviews with guests like Chris Carter and Emily Deschanel. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonadepremium.com to subscribe on any other app. That's lemonade premium.com don't miss out Fail Better its production of Lemonada Media, including coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Keegan Zema, Aria Brachi and Donnie Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Kupinski and Brad Davidson. The show is executive produced by Stephanie Whittles Wax, Jessica Cordova Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band, the lovely Colin Lee, Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian Modak. You can find us online at Lemonada Media and you can find me avid Duchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. Hi, I'm Erica Mahoney. You don't know me, but you know a version of my story. Because by now we've all felt the impact of senseless gun violence.

[B]

I think a stray bullet flew past.

[A]

Me because I hear the it was.

[B]

That horrible feeling of dread. Something's wrong.

[A]

Four years ago, my dad was killed in a mass shooting. My podcast, Senseless, is about moving forward after the unthinkable. Senseless from Lemonada Media, premiering June 17.