
A session with Terry Real, a marriage and family therapist, can get uncomfortable. He’s known to mirror and amplify the emotions of his clients, sometimes cursing and nearly yelling, often in an attempt to get men in touch with the emotions they’re not used to honoring. Real says men are often pushed to shut off their expression of vulnerability when they’re young as part of the process of becoming a man. That process, he says, can lead to myriad problems in their relationships. He sees it as his job to pull them back into vulnerability and intimacy, reconfiguring their understanding of masculinity in order to build more wholesome and connected families. In this episode, Real explains why vulnerability is so essential to healthy masculinity and why his work with men feels more urgent than ever. He explains why he thinks our current models of masculinity are broken and what it will take to build new ones. This episode was inspired by a New York Times Magazine piece, “How I Learne...
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Michael
Hey, it's Michael. A quick reminder. As we said last weekend, we're gonna be changing some things up here on Sundays to bring you something a little bit different, but something we think you're gonna appreciate. And that is Modern Love. Every Sunday for the next few weeks, you're gonna hear episodes from our phenomenal colleagues who make that show. If you don't know the show, every week, host Anna Martin and that team explores the world of our relationships. How we fall in love, how we fall out of love, sex, betrayal, the trouble spots in relationships. There are stories inspired by the long running NYT column called Modern Love. And we think it helps make sense of this other essential part of our lives. So we hope you'll spend time with these episodes. They are great. And as always, we'll see you right back here on Monday morning for the daily take a listen.
Anna Martin
Hey, it's Anna. Just a quick warning. There's a bit more swearing in this episode than usual. So if you're listening with kids, maybe wait until later. Love now.
Terry Real
And did you fall in love last fella? I love her. Love but stronger than anything. Can I love you more than anything there's to love.
Michael
Love.
Anna Martin
From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Today I'm talking to marriage and family therapist Terry Real.
Terry Real
Dan. This is what I think you mean to be saying right now. Fucking bullshit. No matter what I do for you, it's never enough.
Anna Martin
This is Terry reenacting one of his marriage counseling sessions.
Terry Real
And yeah, he said, yeah.
Anna Martin
Terry has just asked one of his clients named Daniel about the feelings he has during what have become typical but explosive arguments with his wife. Terry asks, if the feelings could talk, what would they say? And Daniel says back kind of meekly, I try really hard. I try to be a good person. But Terry thinks there's a deeper feeling there that, that Daniel's not letting onto. So he says it back to him, only stronger. Fucking bullshit.
Terry Real
I amplify emotion, particularly in men. They feel them initially very faintly. But the feelings aren't faint. It's just they're not used to honoring them.
Anna Martin
It's a bit unconventional, but this is something Terri does often. He holds up a kind of emotional mirror to the men that he works with, trying to get them in touch with what's underneath.
Terry Real
I'm loving Dan and telling the truth to him in the same breath. You deserve better than this. You're a good guy. Let's get you out of this.
Anna Martin
Terry is well known for this direct, confrontational, but still quite loving approach. And in this conversation, Daniel actually wrote about it for the New York Times Magazine in a piece called How I Learned that the Problem in My Marriage Was Me. And Daniel learned that because unlike a lot of couples therapists, Terri takes sides, tries to get to the truth of what's going on, what's behind a couple's behavior.
Terry Real
I started off my beat were couples on the brink of divorce that no one has been able to help. These women would drag these guys in and I would lean in and tell them, she's right, you're wrong. This is what's going to happen. If you don't shape up. This is what you could get. If you do, you're a good guy. This is terrible behavior. Let me reach in and help you, man. I mean this. You can do better than this. And the men would say, okay. And the women would just fold over and start to cry. They had dragged this poor sucker. The record so far was eight therapists and not one person backed up the woman and confronted the man. Not one. We're taught not to in therapy school. Not only are we not taught how to, we're actively taught that you don't do, that you don't tell truth to power under patriarchy.
Anna Martin
Terry's been doing this for more than 40 years. He calls his approach relational life therapy. And he's written several best selling books about it. And that whole time he's kept a particular focus on men. Because for Terry, the things he sees men struggle with, from the most mild problems to the most extreme behaviors, it all stems from something fundamentally broken about the way our culture defines masculinity. So today, Terry Real tells me what he's learned about masculinity that drove him to break the rules of therapy. He'll tell me how his own childhood showed him that our current models of masculinity don't work and what it will take to build new ones. And during our conversation, we talked a lot about what it means to be a man right now. Because to Terry, despite his 40 years with hundreds, if not thousands of clients, he says his mission of reaching men has never felt more urgent. Stay with us.
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Anna Martin
Terry Real welcome to Modern Love.
Terry Real
Thank you. It's wonderful to be here.
Anna Martin
Terri. You are, I think it's fair to say, an institution in your industry. You've been a marriage and family therapist for how long? For 40 years.
Terry Real
Yeah.
Anna Martin
That's a lot of. What's the exact number? Is it 40? Exactly?
Terry Real
42. About two years more than my marriage.
Anna Martin
Okay, let's not round down. Let's say you've been a marriage and family therapist for 42 years. How. How do couples end up in front of you? I have to be honest, I don't really feel like a guy would be calling you up and being like, hi, I need help with my marriage. So how do people end up in. In your office?
Terry Real
Yeah, that's. I like to say my books appear under pillows all over America. Here, honey, if you want a little action tonight, read this book. So yeah, no, a lot of the men that I see are what I call wife mandated referrals. And I don't mean to be marginalizing a same sex marriages, but the men I see. Here's a quote from Terry. Real shame. Based people have pain. Grandiose based people have trouble. They're not in pain. The people around them are in pain. And they come to see me when the trouble gets so great that either the people around them are dragging their butts in to see me or the crisis has opened up and they're desperately trying to save. That's mostly how it goes.
Anna Martin
And as I know from reading your work, shame based people in a relationship are often women in a relationship, and then the grandiose based people are often men. Is that right?
Terry Real
Often. You know, two out of three. Look, here's a maybe more nuanced. And this too is a broad generality, so take it with a grain of salt. But women in our culture is changing with feminism. But traditionally, women in our culture lead from the one down accommodating shame position and have covert grandiosity, whereas men lead from the one up superior position and have covert shame. And with women, they're depressed. They're depressed. With men, they're depressed. No, they're not.
Anna Martin
Right.
Terry Real
They're drinking.
Anna Martin
They stuff it down.
Terry Real
Yeah, yeah. And you don't see the pain. You see the flight into medication or grandiosity that avoids the pain. And so many of the difficulties we think of as, quote, unquote, typically male substance abuse, rage, affairs. I'm not saying all of them are fueled by depression, but many of them are. And underneath the depression is trauma. And the way we traditionally, quote, unquote, turn boys into men in underpaid is we teach them to disconnect. Disconnect from vulnerability, disconnect from their feelings, disconnect from others.
Anna Martin
The toxic individualism. Yeah.
Terry Real
Yeah. We call that learning to be independent. And the consequence of a disconnected boy is a disconnected man. We're not invulnerable. We're human. I tell the guys I work with, pretending to escape your own vulnerability is like trying to outrun your rectum.
Anna Martin
I actually read that line in your book, and I was hoping you'd say it out loud because it's just too good. Yeah, outrun your rectum. Perfect. Put that on a shirt, unless you.
Terry Real
Have it, has a way of following. So, no, of course we're all vulnerable. But trying to live up to that superhuman code, it leads every man vulnerable to anxiety and shame that they then don't admit because that would be weak. So the whole thing is just a mess. And the work I do, I say I feel like a surgeon reattaching nerves.
Anna Martin
You write about that process in, I think it's your first book, which was about male depression. That book is really fascinating. You write how male depression, as you describe it, often comes from these unacknowledged feelings and is often the root cause of many problems in marriages, in families. I want to talk more about that, but first I want to know More about why you decided to focus a lot of your practice on working with men specifically. And just to start at the beginning, when you were growing up, what did you think it meant to be a man?
Terry Real
I thought what it meant to be a man was to be raging and dominating and abusive like my father, and I wanted no part of it. My father used to beat me. I mean, you piss my father off, and he'd get out a pretty thick belt and whack the shit out of you. And one of the things I've realized 30 years after the fact was, unfortunately, my vulnerability or sensitivity was a trigger for my father. If he saw me being vulnerable or sensitive, he would go into a rage just when I needed him most. But he was very contemptuous of weakness and vulnerability. So he would never talk about his childhood. I knew it was very difficult. He lost his mother when he was 8. His father and he and his brother lived through the Depression in America. His father was kind of the black sheep of the family. Couldn't find work. They moved in with another relative. The relative was mean to my dad. And I got my dad to tell me, gosh, I was close to 30, that when he was what, 11ish? His father brought he and his brother, younger brother, into the garage and turned on the car and told him to go to sleep. And my father knew that there was something wrong, and he went back and forth with his dad and finally physically fought him. And he says his shoe cracked the window and he and his brother got out, and then he was banished. The next day.
Anna Martin
When he told you this story, did that change anything about how you saw your father? What did it. Did it shift something in your understanding? Did it make you understand something about him?
Terry Real
Yes, of course. It softened my heart, and I felt bad for him, and I understood immediately. And he said, my father was a passive man. My father was a weak man.
Anna Martin
Your father said that about his father?
Terry Real
That's right. And so he became the anti that and the anti. That was a macho. But I could understand why he would be contemptuous of what he deemed as.
Anna Martin
Weakness because it reminded him of his.
Terry Real
Own father, because his father's weakness threatened to kill him. It was murderous.
Anna Martin
Hmm. The way that you opened up space, as it were, encouraged your father to share, was that sort of the beginnings of Terry Real's approach to therapy with men? Like, did you seed anything in that conversation that we now see in your practice today?
Terry Real
Yeah, that's a beautiful question. We don't have to go into a lot of detail, but for two Years. Belinda and I and my kids.
Anna Martin
And Belinda's your wife? Yeah, yeah.
Terry Real
A great family therapist in her own right, I want to say. We were followed by a documentarian. And there's a docu series that's coming out about us. And one of the beginning scenes of the. Astoundingly enough, I was 34 years old, not married yet to Belinda, and my parents came for a week of family therapy with me.
Anna Martin
Wow. Whoa.
Terry Real
And we filmed it, and the film survived. And what you see in that, I hadn't seen it for 40 years.
Anna Martin
Wait, were you. Were you. Was someone doing family therapy on you, your mom and your dad, or were you doing family therapy on the three of you?
Terry Real
No, no, Someone was doing family therapy with us.
Anna Martin
Gotcha.
Terry Real
And what you see is after 10 minutes, I sidelined the therapist, who's pretty irrelevant, actually. And I move in to my dad and mom. I am doing relational life therapy with my parents at 34. You see it.
Anna Martin
What are you seeing yourself doing?
Terry Real
One of the core principles of RLT is what we call joining through the truth, confronting people, but in a way that's precise and loving so that they can hear it. One of the things that therapy school says about grandiose people in general and men in particular is, you know, don't tell truth to power. I believe my field colludes with patriarchy and protecting perpetrators. We have done a great job of helping people for 50 years come up from shame, but we've been ridiculously ineffective at helping people come down from grandiosity. And I knew that I had to do that. So there was a moment with my dad. He started crying. I get it. Forgive me. He talked about his mother who died. He talked about his exile, and he started crying, and he said, I haven't felt any of this. I haven't thought about this my whole life. Until you started probing Terry. And as he was crying, I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, you cry, old man. Every tear you cry is a tear I don't have to. That was pretty wise. A third, it bore.
Anna Martin
Watching yourself say those words now, 30. 30 years later.
Terry Real
Yes.
Anna Martin
Do they have new meaning to you?
Terry Real
Yes.
Anna Martin
Can you tell me about that?
Terry Real
Here's my most famous quote. If I. It's. I had a pretension to quote yourself, but I will.
Anna Martin
You can do it.
Terry Real
Thank you. Family pathology. Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to their Ancestors and spares the children that follow.
Anna Martin
And you were doing that in this moment. You were facing the flames, or your father was facing the flames, or both of you were.
Terry Real
We both were. It was a rare moment. We both were.
Anna Martin
That's a remarkable scene you just shared, and I really appreciate you telling us about it. And it is remarkable. I mean, you say it's wise for 34. This is the beginning of your practice. Like you were just starting to develop this approach to working with men. And I find it pretty remarkable that one of the first men you practiced this on, or did this with rather, was your own father. That feels apt and healing and quite difficult.
Terry Real
Apt and healing and difficult. I'll tell you this. I am the son of a depressed, angry father. He was the son of a depressed, angry father. I have two boys, 35, 37. Neither of them say that and neither will their children. And that is the greatest accomplishment of my life.
Anna Martin
Can I ask you, Terri, like, as you developed and honed in on this relational approach to therapy and developed this focus, is it right to call it a focus on men, a specialty? Is it right to call it a focus?
Terry Real
Sure. Yeah. No, I consider myself a relationship expert and an expert on male psychology.
Anna Martin
As you developed this focus on male psychology, you've talked a bit about the sort of larger therapeutic community, but how did your colleagues respond? I feel like it's just speaking for me. I feel like it's easy to look at men, especially white men, and say, comparatively, this group of people has way more privilege, as you've noted, than other groups in society. So did anyone say, like, you know, did you ever get pushback on that focus, that sort of, I don't know, privileging, as it were, of that experience?
Terry Real
Am I mansplaining?
Anna Martin
No, I more so just mean, like, did anyone say, like, why focus on this group of people who already has so much power? Although what I'm hearing you say is because this group of people has so much power. That's why I'm interested in focusing on them.
Terry Real
Well, yes and no. I mean, power, yes. Miserableness. Also, I think one of the revolutionary things I said, and I really want to give a shout out to some beautiful early feminist psychologists, the folks at the Stone Center, Jean Baker, Miller, but most of all, Carol Gilligan, my dear friend, who are man loving feminists. And they as well. I was really, and to some degree am one of the few male voices saying patriarchy is a system that does damage to everybody. Yes, men are on top and women are on the bottom. But if that's your idea of what's on the top, you know, not to. Whatever. But there was a. I won't say who, but there was an expert on, you know, TV talking about aspirational masculinity and. And how all these young men are looking at Elon Musk. Yeah, sure. Richest man in the world. Send people to Mars. Fantastic. You want to be married to that guy? Most people don't. And if that's what you want to aspire to, I don't want to get too close to you.
Anna Martin
Well, you're bringing up something that I wanted to ask you about, which is like, I'm really curious, your perspective on what masculinity means right now. We talked about your early understandings of it, and this is a concept certainly I feel like human society has wrestled with since maybe the dawn of human society. It does feel to me, though, that we are at a kind of flashpoint culturally, at least in the United States, where men who hold on to traditional values of masculinity are lashing out. They're reasserting those values. They're ascending to power in some cases. What are you seeing in the year 2025? What. What is going on with men? Big question, Terry. But I feel like you're the person to ask this to.
Terry Real
You know, not to be grandiose myself, but I want to take ownership. I am the person to ask this to, and I'll tell you why. There are no models. There are no models of healthy relational masculinity.
Anna Martin
None.
Terry Real
Yeah. And, you know, boys and men are floundering. Everybody knows that. But look, someone described my work as women have had a revolution, and now men have to deal with it. The response to the challenge that women are presenting to men in their marriages, in the job market, in education, has largely been blowback. A resurgence of the most traditional and, frankly, unappealing aspects of traditional patriarchy. Just dominance and bullying. That ain't it. And so I don't want women to stand down from their demands. I want men to stand up and meet them. What women are asking for from men is relationality, is learning to be intimate, is opening up your heart and sharing your feelings, being vulnerable, being soft when your partner's vulnerable, being responsible. These are all wonderful things for guys. Stop whining and let me teach you how to do it. And the conundrum for men is what you learned about what it means to be a strong man. As a boy guarantees you'll be seen as a lousy husband. As a man, you cannot be invulnerable and intimate at the same time. So when I help men move into open heartedness, connection, the expression of feeling, compassion, responsibility, giving. I am expl. I name this with. I'm explicitly reconfiguring masculinity with them.
Anna Martin
I mean, you're talking about these models of masculinity. And I'm thinking about the models that are out there right now, especially kind of ascendant ones that are very different from what you're laying out. I'm thinking specifically about the manosphere, as it's called. These are podcasts, YouTube channels, online forums, influencers that are really pushing traditional masculinity. Do you ever see that kind of stuff? And what do you feel when you do see it?
Terry Real
You want my mature, therapeutic self or you want my New Jersey self?
Anna Martin
You can give me your New Jersey self.
Terry Real
I want to throttle them.
Anna Martin
And what would the therapeutic self say?
Terry Real
People with simple ideas will not have a hard time getting an audience, but they're. These are carnival barkers who are leading our young men down the path of suicide. You know the TV show Adolescence, right?
Anna Martin
Yeah, it's big right now and all.
Terry Real
The press it got. You cannot reassert your masculinity through dominance and bullying and violence. That is not the answer. It's just not.
Anna Martin
We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Terry reels hope for the future and what he thinks it will take for men to get there.
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Anna Martin
Terry, I'm curious whether this mission of reaching men feels more urgent to you now than it has before.
Terry Real
Oh, my God. I mean, I would say the house is burning. That's not a metaphor. Our planet is burning. I start off my last book, us, with what the father of family therapy, the great anthropologist Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead's husband, who is truly the creator of family therapy Basin, called our Western civilization's philosophical error. And that's this, that we stand apart from nature. That's individualism. That's what the word individual means. We stand apart from nature. That's what I call toxic individualism. And we control nature. That's patriarchy. And whether the nature we think we can and should control is our bodies, our marriages, our kids, our country, the planet. The delusion of dominance is suicidal at this point.
Anna Martin
I mean, you've written before about some of the progress you've seen men make over the years. You wrote once that millennial men in particular were the most gender progressive generation maybe ever. And given what we've been talking about, the resurgence of traditional masculinity, the manosphere, I just wonder, like, does that trend feel like it's reversing for you right now?
Terry Real
Yes, it does, 100%. It's a backlash, It's a resurgence. And frankly, I think it's sort of the death. It's the last gasp of a model of power and masculinity that, look, relationality is the card I've got in my back pocket. And that's what we're both born for. That's what we're designed for, and that's what will keep us in this planet alive. The dominance model makes for miserable people, miserable marriages, miserable families, and will choke the planet Earth, man.
Anna Martin
I mean, but it seems like that is the direction that we're headed. I mean, you said that this is kind of the last gas gas, but I don't know. It doesn't feel like a last gasp. It feels like perhaps this approach to the world is gaining steam.
Terry Real
Well, it is gaining steam in the moment. I believe that an accurate reflection of reality will prevail. The dysfunctionality of this approach will become more and more clear, and people will move into something more mature and nuanced. The issue is, you know, how many generations is that going to take and what kind of shape will we be in? What I work with, with the guys I work with, is what I call learning to become family men. And what I say is a boy's question of the world is, what do you got? For me, it's gratification. What do you got? For me, a man's question of the world is what do you need? What do you need? And being a family man means what's central here is not you and your needs. What's central here is the team and what they need from you. I talk to many of the men I work with about the distinction between gratification and what I call relational joy. And gratification is just what you think it is. It's a short term hit of pleasure. Taking a drink, smoking, smoke in a joint, a pretty girl flirts with you, you make a killing that day in the stock market, your kid gets an A. Great. I like pleasure in its place. Relational joy, which I have to teach so many of the men I work with. Even what it is, relational joy is a deeper down pleasure that comes just from being in the relationship and being connected. And sometimes it's gratifying, sometimes it's a pain in the neck. You know, I tell a story of my Beautiful Alexander, now 35. When he was little, I was giving him a timeout and we didn't have locks. And so I was holding his bedroom door shut. I mean, this guy was like maybe 2 foot 2 foot 3 and that door on the other side trying to get over. I mean, it was like poultry. There were lightning was coming out of that. I mean, the earth.
Anna Martin
You were holding the door shut because he was inside because he needed to be in timeout and you didn't have a lock on the door. I can see this scene.
Terry Real
Yeah. And he. That little guy is trying to get it open. And I'm telling you, it's all so. A part of me wanted to just throw. I'm truly. I talk about normal hatred in families. A part of me wanted to just throw him through the window. I was so mad. Yet a deeper down part was like, you, mighty little spirit, you.
Anna Martin
Wow.
Terry Real
You're going to do great. And what. What so many of the men in our culture don't understand is the simple joy of being and connection.
Anna Martin
Terri, I have just a couple more questions for you. Here's a big one. Why should men listen to what you have to say?
Terry Real
Men should listen to what I'm saying because it's in your interest too.
Anna Martin
Hmm?
Terry Real
You will be happier. Your marriage will be happier. You will change the legacy that you pass on to your children. And listen, I know how important that is to you out there, whoever's listening. That guy, the American dream everybody talks about. What is the. The American dream is the dream that our children will have it better than we did. When we think about that, we almost always think about that in terms of Material success. But I want you to think about your children having a better legacy than you had.
Anna Martin
I think men will listen.
Terry Real
You know, the thing is that I'm right.
Anna Martin
The thing is that I'm right. I love. I mean, I love it.
Terry Real
Yes.
Anna Martin
Terri, you've mentioned your wife Belinda, who's also a family therapist.
Terry Real
Brilliant. Brilliant therapist. Yes.
Anna Martin
Can I ask you, like, a thing I find really remarkable and frankly soothing about talking to you is you have an answer and usually, like a phrase or you've written a book as an answer to so many of my questions. But of course, you know, no one has all of the answers. And we are constantly working on ourselves and I. I guess, really to close. What is something that you are working on in yourself and in your marriage to Belinda?
Terry Real
No. This is hilarious. So in families, there are famous stories, and here's one that was true then, and I'm still working on it now. When my kids were teenagers, they're in their 30s now, they both joined hands and kind of bounced up to me and said, dad, are you aware of the fact that when we confront you with something we're critical about, that you're dismissive of us? And I looked at this. Absolutely true. And I looked at him and I said, that's ridiculous.
Anna Martin
I'll do that.
Terry Real
Stop it.
Anna Martin
Yeah.
Terry Real
So let's just leave it there.
Anna Martin
That is so sweet. Terry Real. Thank you so much for this conversation. It gave me a lot to think about, and I'm grateful.
Terry Real
I am very grateful. It's been a blast talking to you. I really appreciate it.
Anna Martin
Terry Real, everyone. This episode was produced by Davis Land. It was edited by our executive producer, Jen Poyant. Production management by Christina Josa. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music in this episode by Diane Wong, Pat McCusker and Dan Powell. This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez, with studio support from Maddie Masiello and Nick Pittman. Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Lisa Tobin, Wendy Dore, Emily Lang, Mihima Chablani and Jeffrey Miranda. And to our video team, Brooke Minters, Felice Leone, Michael Cordero and Sawyer Roquet. The Modern Love column is Eddie by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we'll have the instructions in our show notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.
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Summary of “Modern Love”: Why Boys and Men Are Floundering, According to Relationship Therapist Terry Real
Episode Title: ‘Modern Love’: Why Boys and Men Are Floundering, According to Relationship Therapist Terry Real
Release Date: May 25, 2025
Podcast: The Daily by The New York Times
Host/Author: Michael Barbaro
Guest: Terry Real, Marriage and Family Therapist
The episode opens with a brief transition from The Daily to Modern Love, a companion podcast produced by the same team. Hosted by Anna Martin, Modern Love explores various facets of relationships, drawing inspiration from the New York Times column of the same name.
Michael Barbaro (00:33) introduces the shift to Modern Love, highlighting its focus on relationships, including themes like love, betrayal, and intimacy.
Anna Martin (01:26) provides a lighthearted warning about increased language content due to the episode’s depth and emotional intensity.
2.1. Reenacting Therapy Sessions
The episode features a dramatized snippet of Terry Real's therapy session with a client named Daniel.
Terry Real (01:36): “And did you fall in love last fella? I love her. Love but stronger than anything. Can I love you more than anything there's to love.”
Anna Martin (01:48) explains that Real uses a direct and confrontational style to help men access deeper emotions. At [02:15], Terry challenges Daniel's superficial responses by amplifying his emotions: “Fucking bullshit. No matter what I do for you, it's never enough.”
2.2. Relational Life Therapy (RLT)
Terry Real elaborates on his unique approach to therapy, which emphasizes honesty and confronting underlying emotions, particularly in men.
Terry Real (02:49): “I amplify emotion, particularly in men. They feel them initially very faintly. But the feelings aren't faint. It's just they're not used to honoring them.”
Anna Martin (03:03) notes how Real effectively holds an emotional mirror to his clients, encouraging them to face their true feelings.
3.1. Cultural Definition of Masculinity
Terry Real discusses how societal expectations of masculinity contribute to men's struggles in modern relationships and personal well-being.
3.2. The Impact of Patriarchy
Real critiques the patriarchal system, emphasizing its detrimental effects on both men and women.
Terry Real (21:31): “...patriarchy is a system that does damage to everybody. Yes, men are on top and women are on the bottom. But if that's your idea of what's on the top, you know, not to...”
Anna Martin (24:01) probes the resurgence of traditional masculinity, to which Real responds by highlighting the lack of healthy relational models.
3.3. The Floundering of Boys and Men
Real asserts that boys and men today lack constructive models of masculinity, leading to widespread emotional and relational issues.
Terry Real (25:10): “There are no models of healthy relational masculinity.”
Anna Martin (24:52): “What are you seeing in the year 2025? What. What is going on with men?”
Terry Real (27:12): “You know, boys and men are floundering. Everybody knows that.”
4.1. Terry Real’s Background
Real shares his personal history, detailing how his father's abusive behavior and his own experiences shaped his therapeutic approach.
Terry Real (12:35): “I thought what it meant to be a man was to be raging and dominating and abusive like my father, and I wanted no part of it.”
Anna Martin (14:35): “When he told you this story, did that change anything about how you saw your father?”
Terry Real (19:21) presents his well-known quote: “Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods...”
4.2. Breaking Generational Cycles
Real emphasizes the importance of confronting and healing familial patterns to prevent the perpetuation of emotional dysfunction.
Terry Real (20:10): “It was a rare moment. We both were.”
Anna Martin (21:31): “Is it right to call it a focus?”
Terry Real (21:41): “…I am one of the few male voices saying patriarchy is a system that does damage to everybody.”
5.1. The Resurgence of Traditional Masculinity
Real discusses the rise of the “manosphere” and its harmful impact on young men, advocating for a shift towards relational masculinity.
Anna Martin (27:16): “I mean, you're talking about these models of masculinity. And I'm thinking about the models that are out there right now...”
Terry Real (27:55) expresses frustration: “People with simple ideas will not have a hard time getting an audience, but they're... these are carnival barkers who are leading our young men down the path of suicide.”
5.2. Vision for Healthy Masculinity
Real outlines his vision for a healthier model of masculinity centered on relationality, vulnerability, and responsibility.
Terry Real (30:34): “Oh, my God. I mean, I would say the house is burning. That's not a metaphor. Our planet is burning.”
Terry Real (32:56): “It's a backlash, it's a resurgence... dominance model makes for miserable people, miserable marriages, miserable families, and will choke the planet Earth, man.”
Relational Joy vs. Gratification: Real differentiates between short-term pleasures and deeper relational satisfaction.
In the concluding part of the episode, Real reflects on his ongoing personal and professional development.
Anna Martin (37:32): Asks about what Real is currently working on in himself and his marriage.
Terry Real (38:01): Admits to his own shortcomings humorously, acknowledging areas for improvement in his relationships.
The episode wraps up with expressions of gratitude between Anna Martin and Terry Real, highlighting the depth and introspection brought forth through the conversation.
Terry Real (19:21): “Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames.”
Terry Real (10:11): “They’re drinking. They stuff it down.”
Terry Real (11:22): “Trying to escape your own vulnerability is like trying to outrun your rectum.”
Terry Real (32:56): “The dominance model makes for miserable people, miserable marriages, miserable families, and will choke the planet Earth, man.”
Challenges in Modern Masculinity: Real delves into how traditional definitions of masculinity hinder men’s emotional health and relational fulfillment.
Relational Life Therapy (RLT): Emphasizes honesty, confrontation, and emotional amplification to help men connect with their deeper feelings.
Cultural Backlash: Addresses the rise of movements promoting traditional masculinity and counters them with arguments for relational and vulnerable manhood.
Personal Narrative: Real’s own experiences with an abusive father and his journey towards therapy provide a foundational backdrop for his professional insights.
Future of Masculinity: Offers a hopeful yet urgent call for redefining masculinity to foster healthier relationships and societal well-being.
Terry Real articulates a compelling case for the urgent need to redefine masculinity in contemporary society. By fostering emotional vulnerability and relationality, men can overcome the entrenched patterns of toxic masculinity that lead to personal and societal dysfunction. Real’s approach challenges both men and the broader cultural norms to embrace a more nuanced and emotionally connected form of manhood, ensuring healthier relationships and a more harmonious world.