Terry Real: Healing Male Depression
“Before our boys have learned to read, they have already read the stoic code of masculinity and are conforming to it.” says Terry Real, world-renowned family therapist, speaker, best-selling author and founder of the Relational Life Institute, where he offers workshops for couples, individuals, parents and therapists. He is also a dear friend. While he’s best known for his couples work, decades ago, he wrote the landmark book on male depression, which I cannot recommend enough. It’s called, I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, and with it, Real established himself as one of the most respected voices in the treatment of men and the healing of their relationships with the world. In this episode, we talk about why depression is “illegal” for men, the cultural programming of boys, and forced detachment in the name of autonomy. Our culture of individualism, Real says, has done as much damage as our culture of patriarchy—leaving men little room for the type of connection and relationality that we humans live for. He leaves us with the steps for deprogramming ourselves from patriarchal thinking and parenting as well as the ways in which we can support the men in our lives in service of deeper connection and the pursuit of greater relational joy.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Exploring Terry’s theory of male depression…(2:30)
The cultural programming of boys…(12:50)
Active trauma, passive trauma, and the severing of connection in the name of autonomy …(19:50)
Icarus syndrome and learning to find relational joy…(37:08)
MORE FROM TERRY REAL:
Take Terry's Online Course - Staying in Love: The Art of Fierce Intimacy
DIG DEEPER:
Find an RLT Certified Therapist Near You
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE LOEHNEN:
Obviously we've had many conversations and I've had the privilege of interviewing you many times, and I cannot wait to interview you again for your new book coming because you are so prescient and ahead of the time. And I, and I actually, today, I want to talk to you about, I Don’t Want to Talk About It. Is that the first book you ever wrote?
TERRY REAL:
Yeah. 1997. It was prescient.
ELISE:
I mean, it was so prescient and it's such a powerful and beautiful book that I cannot recommend to enough people. And it's so funny that you're saying that your next book is about, I guess, interdependence, because the thing that…I really want to write a book about codependence, interdependence, and independence at some point in the next decade, but yours will be another hallmark book. Because I write about, I Don’t Want to Talk About It and your theory of male depression in the book that I'm about to turn in. I can't believe I never read it because I've focused so much of my attention on your later work around couples. And because I think this book is from the micro to the macro. And your model of male depression is such a perfect expression of not all of our social ills, but so many. It's such a like slice of how this dysfunction has shown up in our patriarchal society and in our relationships and how we parent boys
TERRY:
All of the above. Thank you. I feel quite appreciated hearing that.
ELISE:
So let's start, let's start, let's start. When I read your theory of male depression, which is, let me see if I can get it right, but essentially it's trauma. And I want to talk about trauma in the way that you define it as passive or active, because I think that's very typically wrapped in some sort of addictive defense,
TERRY:
Grandiose defense from one, from one down to one up, it could be addiction, substance abuse. It could be an action like gambling or sex. And unfortunately for no small portion of man, it could be violence, right?
ELISE:
And it's covert. The depression is covert. And so that's why it's been for the most part…I'm curious to know if this is still the case, but I thought it was wild when you add it up. You know, women are more diagnosed with overt depression because we are more expressive and we're trained to talk about our feelings. We might not be able to identify our feelings very well, but we talk about it. And so we're more likely to be diagnosed as overt. There's not as much stigma for women. But men are not very likely to be diagnosed with overt depression. But then when you tallied addiction, personality disorders, domestic violence, the two equal out.
TERRY:
If you look at depressed men, depressed women, it looks like women are two to four times more depressed than men. What I say about covert depression in a nutshell is you don't see the depression. You see the maneuvers that the man is making to escape the depression. You see the footprints of the depression. So addiction, acting out, isolation and withdrawal, and attack. These are the things that you, that you look for in this. You see, depression is illegal for men. It's not un-womanly to be depressed. Both men and women have the stigma of depression, but men have a compound stigma because it's unmanly. Look, feelings themselves are unmanly. Having them is unmanly. And being brought down by them because you're too weak to handle them is ridiculously unmanly. So one of the things I say of course, you know, is that the essence of traditional masculinity is invulnerability. The more invulnerable you are, the more manly you are; the more vulnerable you are, the more girly you are. And of course, that's just a bold faced lie. Men are just as vulnerable as women are. Humans are vulnerable creatures. I say to the guys, I work with that trying to escape your vulnerability is like running from your own anus.
It has a way of following you around. But we do. And men deny vulnerability, and then they deny depression. They certainly don't get help for it. I wrote in the book, a man is as likely to ask for help for depression as he is to ask for directions. And so we have to figure out what to do about that because these men need help.
ELISE:
And so typically I'm assuming in your practice, which I know is, is it fully couples or do you still do individual work? You do individual work and group work. But I think probably for most men, they're really only ever called to the mat to address it when they're in relationship. Either they're hitting rock bottom in some way in their life, or they're in relationship and it, and it does show up in ways that are completely unacceptable, threatening, or shut down. Yeah. Where then there, and then is that at some, in some ways an intervention on, we can work on this relationship, but you need to go and work on yourself?
TERRY:
Yeah, it's both. But you know, a lot of men will…let me coach the women who are listening. If you're with a depressed man who is refusing to get help, don't fight him about getting him into individual therapy, get them into couples therapy. Tell him he may not have an issue, but the two of you have an issue and you've made an appointment with such and such and you expect him to get his butt in there. And then once you're in front of a mental health professional, then you say, I think my partner has a clinical depression, let me tell you why. And let's talk about what we're going to do about it. But don't fight him to get his own therapist, bring him along.
ELISE:
So interesting though, just in the context of my own relationship, not to overshare, but I have in the past. But when we went to couples therapy, it was the first time that Rob had heard that he was depressed. It was so interesting. And it was an immediate reaction from, it was Stan Tatkin. And he was like, “Rob, you're depressed. I think you've been depressed for your entire life”. And it was a revelation, I think for both of us, because in part, because the script for men is missing, and no one had stopped to look at his sort of the manifestation of it to be like, this isn't normal. Like this is… and I use normal, not in a denigrating way, but in a way. I think that we can diagnose our partners though. I know we're told not to, but also sometimes you just need an objective person in the room who can look at the dynamics and understand, but do you feel like most therapists are aware of male depression and the way that you've modeled it?
TERRY:
More than when I wrote the book, for sure. There's a movement afoot in the APA to distinguish male depression from female depression, because it, it shows up differently in men than women. And that's starting to be more generally recognized. The particulars, you know, I have my version and some other people have slight differences, but they're pretty slight. It is genuinely recognized in psychology that men and women express depression differently. That's becoming more recognized now. But not by your general therapist on the street. This is, you know, in academia. Um, no most people will miss it including therapists. And here's why, because it's shameful. And so look, you're the partner of a depressed man. I bet you can relate to this. You feel like if you confront them too directly or too hard on their depression, it's like you're unmasking them. You're humiliating them. And they're likely going to blow up or leave or fall apart if you do that. Women are just as shy about confronting the man's depression as the man is, but it's different. The man doesn't want to, the woman's afraid of hurting her partner or causing a blow up.
ELISE:
And, and I think, and you write about this so beautifully in the context of your own life, that once you sort of pull that defense and then the covert depression, which is sort of holding that nut of trauma in the center of the body, whether they can address it or ready to,
TERRY:
There's trauma, there's depression, which is a response to the trauma. And then there's adaptation to the depression in drinking or womanizing or acting out or whatever, which then fuels relational difficulties. And for many men is the relational difficulties that then trigger them getting into therapy. And then you have to wind the whole thing down.
ELISE:
Right. And so when you pull out the pin of those adaptive mechanisms, which you write about sort of in the context of your own life and in the case studies in the book. So when you address the addiction, you address the affairs, whatever it may be. And there's no longer that security blanket or crutch, that allows the covert depression to become overt, which is the wasteland. I think you describe it as like, you have to get through this and you, you have a beautiful line: The cure for sadness is grief, but that these men have to let it come up.
TERRY:
The cure for a covert depression is an overt depression. And then we have to cure the overt depression. But it's a two-step process. First, this sort of acting out or addictive or dysfunctional behaviors have to settle down. The defenses against the depression. Then the man feels that depression and that's often a pretty hairy time for everybody. He needs a lot of support, maybe medication. I'm a big fan of medication generally for depression. And then you wind it down. The thing is that we haven't talked about yet is the core beneath the relational difficulties beneath the problematic adaptations, like drinking or womanizing or whatever. And then beneath the depression is trauma. And just as I maintain that the depression is different for men and women. Trauma is often different for men and women. The way that boys get hurt in this culture is ubiquitous and predictable and patterned. It’s called patriarchy.
ELISE:
Yes. Preach. Yes. So I want to talk about that sort of the cultural programming of boys. You talk about it as this need to turn boys and to men.
TERRY:
Haven’t you ever heard that phrase?
ELISE:
Yeah. From you! But I've heard it in the culture.
TERRY:
Yeah. But how much, how much, uh, have you heard in the culture that we need to turn girls into women, right? Because girls naturally turn into women, but don’t boys naturally turn into men? I guess not. I guess you have to do this surgery on them to get them, to let go of their dependencies and feelings and mothers and boyish ways and be initiated into the stoicism of manhood. Boys left alone will become men. Just like girls left alone will become women. The question is what kind of man is this boy going to become? And that’s where we all come in.
ELISE:
Right. And this forced attachment from mothers, this idea that love in some ways, needs to be not eradicated, but heavily boundaried. That you need to untie those apron strings and let your boys go. I mean, I've heard you say many times, like we have to dramatically counteract that narrative and keep our boys close.
TERRY:
Keep our boys clothes. I'll tell you a story from my own life. I have two sons, a 34 and 31. 31 is about to be a doctor and also a researcher, a PhD MD. Anyway, he was having some sexual insecurities, whatever, and he talked to his mom about it. And he tells his therapist that he talked to his mom about a sexual insecurity. The therapist, uh, a classic individualist says to him, “Alexander boundaries, boundaries. Why are you talking to your mother about your sex life?” And God, you don't mess with Alexander. Alexander said, “Well, she's a certified sex therapist. She's a certified sex addiction therapist. She's one of the most famous therapists in the country. And she just about one of my best friends. Why wouldn't I tell her?”
ELISE:
It is true. I mean, I don't want to talk to my parents about sex either, but that you have to wonder how much of that is a cultural construct. Like we're we also are missing, and this is a tangent, but we have no culture of initiation. We have no sort of collective parenting anymore. We have no sort of like aunties and uncles who also initiate and teach children about these things in a way that's protective and parental. So, hey, I applaud him!
TERRY:
You know, not, I'm not advocating the boys talk to their mothers about sex, particularly, but I use it as an example of our…look, the whole patriarchal culture, which very much includes the field of psychology has this myth about individuation, separation, and autonomy. And if you really look at it, the idea here in the traditional literature, including psychological psychoanalytic literature, if you leave a boy and a mother to their own resources, it will be at least emotionally, if not physically, incestrious forever. The boy will never pull away from the regressive suck of an enmeshing mother. What an insulting image of motherhood that is. And it takes the father to step between the boy and the mother and pull him out of her grasp and teach them how to be a man. Gay, a gay and lesbian kids. Kids from gay and lesbian families? Well forget them. They're lost. Single parent families? Boys raised by mothers? Well forget them. They're theyre disempowered. It's all disempowering toxic bullshit. Boys don't need a man to learn how to be a boy. Boys need adults to teach them how to be an adult period. End of story,
ELISE:
Terry, I love you, but it's true. It's like, and then these things become almost… speaking of enmeshment, the cultural differences are then equated as natural, right? That women are relational and men are not. And as you point out in the book, you know, there is spades of research to suggest that boys are sometimes needier, more attached than than little girls.
TERRY:
Yeah, if you look at Judy Chu’s research, little boys are more emotional and more sensitive than little girls of the same age. Their hearts are more on their sleeves until four and five. And by three, four, and five, according to this research and others, they don't feel any less. They will over time, but they know better than to express it. They know the rules of the game. They know how to navigate the playground. And one of the things I say at least is before our boys have learned to read, they have already read the stoic code of masculinity and are conforming to it at three, four or five. But the wound to girls is at the edge of adolescence. If you read Carol Gilligan, it’s 12, 11, 13, but think about, think about a wound at 12, 11, 13 versus one at 3, 4, 5. It's almost pre-verbal. It is so deep. And so in the cells of our men, this wound of essentially abandonment, I had a guy I'll let you talk. I had a guy who, I mean, this isn't funny. I had a guy who was crying like a baby. He was an offender. He used to masturbate in public and I'm winding down his story. And he remembered being four years old and having his father line up the whole family in this ritual, and take the blanket that he had from babyhood and burn it at four.
ELISE:
Uh, God, you know, I know I, at the end, I'll give information for the, I know you're doing a webinar with Carol Gilligan who wrote In a Different Voice. She’s an incredible, I guess, researcher and feminist about girls losing their voice effectively in the studies where they look at how women start to fear disconnection, and they don't want to stand out because they think that they'll lose their relationships. And as you mentioned, it happens a little bit later, this desire to conform and belong and not be the tall poppy. But let's talk a little bit more about that trauma. Cause you talked about it as being distinct from the trauma that girls experienced. And you also talk about the difference between passive and active trauma, which I think is so incredibly well put because we think of trauma as, you know, did your father beat you? If not, does it count.
TERRY:
Right? How about mommy, mommy? I just fell off my bike and hurt my knee is bleeding. “Okay, let me just finish this martini, honey. I'll be right over right.” That doesn't count as trauma? It does to me. Active trauma, which is the one we always think about is about something that was there that shouldn't have been there. Somebody’s rage, or sexuality, or overconfidence or whatever passive trauma or neglect is about what should have been there that wasn't there. And when I get guys walking in at all, I grew up in the perfect family, you know? Oh, okay. Tell me about this. Look, good parenting, consists of three things. I got this and the idea of passive trauma, by the way, from one of my great mentors, a woman named Pia Mellody. Anyway, I would say be good parenting consists of nurture, guidance, and limits.
Okay, good. Then we go through the five domains of human experience. So Joe, let's talk about physical. Were you cuddled, were you hugged, were you kissed, were you taught to take care of your body, et cetera, et cetera. So, oh yeah. That's usually an easy one. Let, let, let's do intellectual. Did they do homework with you, did they care about your mind? Okay. Now let's do the emotional. Were a lot of feelings in your family? No. Who did you turn to Joe? When you were hurt or frightened or upset? I turned to me. Right. At about how old? As far back as I can remember. Right? I'll tell you why Joe turned to him because at a time when he was so young, he can't even remember it. He tried a couple, three times to turn to his parents and he saw what they got. And then he determined there was no water in that stone and started taking care of himself. This is ubiquitous early. This is part of what it means. This is the burning of the blanket. It's the severing of connection in the name of blessed autonomy. It's insane.
ELISE:
It is insane. And you write something to the extent of like there's violence is not telling your child that you love them, which I know maybe has changed, but was, as you say, quite ubiquitous, you know. You ask a lot of men, like, did your father tell you that he loved you? And the answer is never. Or on his death bed, you know, or at my wedding.
TERRY:
He didn't have to tell me. I just knew it. Yeah. Right. So all of this is abuse. All of this is neglect. All of this is injury. But along with all this…when a father says to a son, “Stop crying.” As far as I'm concerned in that moment, that father is an instrument of the culture. You see culture, doesn't get…how does culture get transmitted? It's not some abstract that you get in an online course on patriarchy. Culture is transmitted through people. It is transmitted in families. And when that man was burning his son's blanket, that was patriarchy burning that blanket. When that father says to his son, you're too old to cry, you need to calm down. That's patriarchy talking to that boy. The way these things get transmitted is through particular interactions with actual people, parents and vulnerable boys. And not just that, let's talk about the kids in the playground. Let's talk about school and teachers and coaches. It's everywhere.
ELISE:
As a protection against that. Is it enough, you know, as a parent of two little boys, is it enough to be sort of anti-patriarchal in your parenting to stave that off? Or, I mean, obviously it's, it's any sort of weaponized masculinity is dangerous, particularly if you have a really tender, open boy, but is it, I guess it's it helps, right?
TERRY:
I bet. I bet you do. How old are your kids?
ELISE:
Five and eight. They're so adorable and so tender. And it's really interesting. Max, my oldest is a walking feeling. He is just an emotive, like so easy to set off. And it's really triggering for my husband at times. You know, like he really struggles. He will remove himself rather than sort of tell him not to cry, whereas I'm like just, you know, let it, let it out. But it is interesting to watch him fight that instinct. Because I think that's probably what came at him was a shutdown.
TERRY:
Yes. It's not an instinct. It's a replay of what happened to him as a child. I guarantee it. There's nothing instinctive about it. This isn't nature. This is mankind's imposition of rules and narratives on little tender people.
ELISE:
So how does that deprogramming happen? And then when you're working on trauma, particularly in men who wouldn't even know how to identify it as such is the awareness of it enough? Or do you find that the men you work with who are sort of in this layered covert/overt depression have somewhat of a black box of understanding of what's actually there?
TERRY:
Well, we open up the box. That's my job. That's what I do for a living. I'm a box opener.
ELISE:
Get out that box cutter.
TERRY:
Someone once called me, the husband whisper. I thought that was the best.
ELISE:
And it exists in everyone.
TERRY:
Listen, I'll tell you how it goes. I'll be sitting with the world's most down guy, head, head, head, head. No feelings, no heart, nothing. And I'll say, okay, listen, we got to get you into your feelings. Here's a piece of paper on the piece of paper or seven primary emotions. Name them, joy, pain, anger, fear, shame, guilt, love. Joy, pain, anger, fear, shame, guilt, love. Those are primary emotions. Like primary colors. I say there are millions of feelings, just like colors, but these are the essential one. Look at that list Joe, take a breath. What are you feeling right now as you're sitting in that chair? I guess I'm a little nervous I'm going to fuck this up. Right, that's fear, Joe. Where's that in your body? Kind of in my chest. Okay. What's the sensation? You know, butterfly kind of thing. Yeah. If those butterflies could speak, what would they say right now? Uh, I guess I don't want to be judged by, you know. What are you feeling as you say that, Joe? I don't know why, but I feel a little sad.
Hey Joe, congratulations. You have feelings now. Look at the list. What else are you feeling and what else and what else? And by the time that guy has got through five feelings, I get to the punchline. Joe, you're not shut down. You're a passionate man. This is my favorite line. Your feelings never left. You left them. They've been percolating this whole time. All you have to do is turn the satellite dish in and listen to them. You're a highly feeling, full, passionate. And at that point, if Joe isn’t in tears, his wife is.
ELISE:
I'm in tears now. It's so, but that somatic expression, which I feel like is missing from so much therapy, which is sort of like: Tell me about your childhood, tell me, you know, but that, that moment, I mean, this, it, it works on me. I think so many of us, you know, men are too, or when I actually feel into my body and talk to it, it's wild, what I am keeping at bay. And, but I can only imagine how revelatory that would be for a man. Cause as you know, to quote Harriet Lerner, it's like the women are the overfunctioners emotionally, right? Like we do all the emotional housekeeping typically for our partners, where they don't know how to process their feelings. So we tell them how to process their feelings. Is that accurate?
TERRY:
How does that work for everybody? Yeah. Really great. Let me tell you what you're feeling pal. I'm sure you're going to enjoy this. Listen,
ELISE:
Rob loves it when I do that.
TERRY:
It's funny because I talk about in our culture, a broad generalization, lots of variations. Okay. Understood. But in our culture, men tend to lead from the one-up superior position and have covert, hidden shame and insecurity. Women tend to lead with the insecure shame position and have covert, grandiosity and superiority. And you know what it is? We know more than you do about how to love and have relationships. So honey, why don't you just sit back and let me tell you what to do.
ELISE:
Yes.
TERRY:
Good luck.
ELISE:
No, totally. But don't you think… I had lunch with a friend, sort of a child who works with children yesterday. I don't know if you've ever met Joe Newman, but he was saying, you know, he talks a lot about the model of power and approval with children. They're either seeking approval or they're seeking power. And it's again, it's also very patriarchal in the way that people were raised, but he just made sort of an aside where he was like, men have had 2,000, 3,000 years of mentorship and training in how to wield and hoard and hold power. And meanwhile, you have women, right? Who have thad 3000 years of mentorship and how to be relational. And it's, it is in some ways has been our only form of power.
TERRY:
Elise, I got to push back.
ELISE:
Do it.
TERRY:
Okay. Are women more relational than men. Yes and no. Are women more relational than men? Have they been raised to think about relationships, learn the skills of relationships and so forth. Yes. But if I think Carol and I talk about this… Carol Gilligan has a wonderful phrase. “There is no relationship without voice, and there is no voice without relationship.” And I'm sorry to tell you if I think of relationships as forthright, straightforward sharing and negotiation, no… women don't make it. You ever see my great,Great Fat Greek Wedding movie? I don't know if you’ve seen it, but there's this one scene that everybody felt was so cute where the mother and the family says, man is the head of the household. Woman is the neck where the neck moves, the head moves. And everybody thinks that's really adorable.
And I was ready to throw up. It's a celebration of manipulation. And if men wield direct power in the traditional setup, women wield indirect power. I don't blame women for that. It's the only power they could wield, but let's be clear. Women have not just been shrinking angels in all of this. And also I got to tell you Elise, there's no shortage of superior, abusive, attacking women. The difference is that when women attack almost always they attack from the victim position. You hurt me. So I get to hurt you back, which is crazy thinking, but very common. That's what Pia calls offending from the victim position. I have no shame about hurting you because you hurt me first. And when women attack, they attack as self-righteous indignant victims.
ELISE:
That's that feels very resonant and true. And as does the manipulative part, I feel like as a child, I very, very, very quickly learned…I would probably have called it being persuasive, but I certainly learned how to maneuver in a very covert way to get my needs met.
TERRY:
Had to, I would say, because being forthright as a woman, wasn't going to get you anywhere. But hey, I got great news because we're in the 21st century. And the trick is to empower women to have full voice in their relationships and empower men to sit still open up their ears, open up their hearts, and listen and respond and understand. This is what my new book is about. Understand that it's in your interest to listen and respond to your partner. It's good for you. Not just them.
ELISE:
When people come to you. And I think, you know, you talked about the offender, sort of the masturbator on the bench and his burnt blanket and you look at society, right? And you look at all of these boys who are mowing down children with machine guns. And you look at the extreme, you know, the domestic abuse, which is almost, I mean, let's say it's epidemic and weighted very heavily towards men. And then, you know, you talk to, which is like how men, when you think about turning boys into men, we also turn them into soldiers, right? Like we also create this culture. That's like, oh, violence is your destiny. And we're going to glorify it in the process through GI Joe and war stories. And I mean, it's crazy. I am, I'll just say I'm a very imperfect parent and the stuff sometimes that I'm like, what game are you playing? Like, what is that like, where did that come from? It's everywhere.
TERRY:
First of all, there are a couple of things that you'll see everywhere. One is boy's adventure stories almost always tend to start with the death of their mother. I don't know if you've noticed that, but think about it. Parts of it, even Bambi for crying out loud, it starts with the death of his mother. The boy adventure is leave mom, enter into the world, and prove your worth, prove your mettle. You know, I deal with very high powered guys. They’re my beat, very, very successful driven men. And they're all subject to what I call the Icarus syndrome, which is this. They leave hearth and home to work 80, 90 hours at their corporate job, to prove themselves worthy of belonging in their hearth and home. They're the ones who left to begin with. It's such a scam. It is such a bitter pill for everybody.
This man is often the world working like a slave, trying to prove his worthiness of love while his wife and kids, or husband and kids, or nonbinary person and kids, whatever is sitting at home going, where the hell are you? There are so many anti-relational structures that is part of masculine culture. Intimacy is not a part of traditional masculinity, which is why so many heterosexual couples are having so much difficulty. Women want men to be more emotionally connected and open and expressive and compassionate to them then we raise boys to be able to be. There's an dysfunction between the socialization into masculinity and what women are wanting from men and marriage these days.
ELISE
So these men, these Icaruses, is then their defense, they're adaptation, workaholism. Do they even know really how to be at home and be at risk? Or is that inherently incredibly uncomfortable for them? Like they don't really know how to be in relation so they flee to the office. How much of it is driven out of their own discomfort versus the requirements of their corporate law firm?
TERRY:
Oh, it's, it's all their own discomfort. Well, that's not true. I mean, I say to guys all the time, if you give it to your career, absolutely everything you could give to your career, you'll be divorced. You'll be successful, but you'll be divorced. So every man and women now have to kind of chip it, to pay Pete, rob Peter to pay Paul. And when you're at work, you wish you with kids. When your with kids, you think you should be at work, people are suffering through this, but here's the thing. Can I tell you a story? I'm dealing with a guy he's worth millions and millions and millions. He's only in his forties. He's a classic masculine story. German. He's macho. He's tough. He's built. He's got a gorgeous wife, you know? And, uh, he had only had one problem. He's never felt joy in his life.
And I tell him, I tell him a story about a guy, just like him, who I met, who told me in his fifties that he had finally gotten his family to the point where he could commit suicide and leave them in good conscience. So I say to this guy, what comes closest to joy, even if it's just for a minute and God bless him. He says, well, I don't do well with my wife. And I don't do well with friends, but I do like playing with my kids. And that was the opening. Tell me what it feels like to be on your hands and knees playing horsey with your kids. It feels like a million bucks. Can I tell you why that is? Because you're connected because it's relational. The distinction that I make with a lot of men, I really want to get this in this talk today, is a distinction between gratification and relational joy.
Gratification, which is what many men live their lives for, is pleasure. You know, you get the big hit. You make a ton in the stock market. Some pretty girl is smiling at you. It's great. And pleasure is fine in its place. Underneath that there's a deeper pleasure. And it's not about gratification. Sometimes the person you're with is gratifying. Sometimes they’re a pain in the ass, but if somebody said to you, would you like to get out of this? You'd shoot them. Because the joy is just in being there. It's a joy in being and being connected. I tell the story of my little one. Same Alexander. When he was little, he was a pistol, and I was giving him a time out and I was holding the door shut. We don't have, we didn't have locks.
And he was trying to get it open on the other side. I mean, the guy was like three foot. And I'm telling you, man, the house was shaking. I mean, clouds were forming. Lightning was coming out of it. And I hated him. I wanted to throw him right through the window. And another part of me was feeling, oh, you mighty little spirit. You you're going to do just fine. So most many, many of the men that I work with have little to no parking space for relational joy. They don't even know what it is and I have to teach it to them. But here's the beauty. Relationship is what we're born for. Connection is what the human being is designed for. And once I can get these men into the jet stream of connection and relationality, they take off.
ELISE:
And it's that simple?
TERRY:
Well, the art is getting them into that jet stream. Yes, it is that simple because connection and relationality satisfies. Love is what we're here for. Everything else is everything else.
ELISE:
Yeah. So interesting. Like I think when I hear you, cause I have my own armors, probably workaholism and busy-ness, which I use as a shield. And then I, when I think about my kids, because I don't really enjoy playing with my kids in that way, but I love being with my kids. Right? Like when they're on my lap, when they're cuddling, when they're wanting to show me a video or reading a book, I just like that heart…the thing that you describe is that I think that relational joy, like I feel into my heart, which sounds so cheesy, but forgive me.
TERRY:
No, no, no. You know what I would say. You're feeling it right now. Well take a minute and I'm going to be fair, but take a minute and let yourself feel what you feel.
ELISE:
Uh, it is sustaining. Like that's all I want. Are those like putting them to bed.
TERRY:
It’s what we live for. Whether it's that or walking with your lover, holding hands, or having a heart to heart with a friend…human connection is what we live for.
ELISE:
And when we trace that back, I mean that's pre-culture, right? Like that is what do you think that that is? What is that?
TERRY:
That's evolution.
ELISE:
It's evolution. It's, it's how we survive. It's our interdependence and collective need to help each other.
TERRY:
We're not, I mean, this is my new book. We're, we're not individuals. The, the culture of individualism has done as much damage as the culture of patriarchy. We don't self-regulate. That's a myth. We use other people to regulate and they use us to regulate. If you want to look at a completely freestanding individual, look at someone who's been in solitary confinement. That's a freestanding individual. And they're crazy. You go mad.
ELISE:
We'll save that conversation for March when your next book comes out. I can't wait. But it's…can we even address how do we solve? And maybe all of these things happen concurrently, but how are we, and do you feel hopeful that we're deprogramming ourselves from this patriarchal thinking sort of one man, one boy at a time?
TERRY:
Yes, that's right. One family at a time. Look what I want you to do. What you can do as a mom or a dad is you can teach your kids to be what I call gender literate. Which means if you express yourself as a boy fully, depending on how it is, you might get grief for it. And let me help you deal with that. If you choose to not express yourself and conform, you'll conform and you won't get grief, but you won't have expressed yourself. And in any given moment, where are you on the spectrum and what do you want to choose? My kids came home from Santa Domingo with corn rows in their hair and they were going to school and my older one couldn't handle it. And we took them out. And the younger one went with as a whole head in cornrows. But we said to them, if you go with that in your hair, you may be the toast of the town, or you may be the butt of ridicule. Are you prepared for that? And one said no. And one said yes. And they were both fine. That's what I'm teaching our boys to be gender literate.
ELISE:
So much of it, but requires like a certain faith, right? Like this ability, which I think we lack sometimes in ourselves of like, I am just going to hold the space. It's that moment that you described with Alexander on the other side of the door, when you were like, he's going to be fine. How do we parent from that place of knowing, not knowing maybe, but like, and not believing…
TERRY:
Listen, one of the main things I want to tell you is if you've been listening to this talk for the last hour, don't try and do it alone. Don't do it as an individual. Have your allies, have your troops, have your girlfriends, have playdates, try and find other progressive families to hang out with. I like to ask people to create a gender, progressive relationship, loving subculture around their family, friends. And you can train your friends and other family members how to interact with your boy. So that will go a long way. And also, hey, you know what? How about changing the culture? How about going into school and starting a committee on bullying, which is almost all male, and or on boys and how to help them. And how about paying some attention to this underserved population called boys and men?
ELISE
Yeah. I know it's for our own self preservation too really socially, you know, because this is, it's not trending in the right direction in terms of who is wreaking harm on society.
TERRY:
I think that it's, um, I think it's mixed. I think that we're at war right now. I think masculinity is at war with itself, and on the one hand, you have a lot of push for progressive changes in men. The younger the man, the more progressive he will tend to be in terms of gender. On the other hand, you have people like Trump and you know, uber-conservative, right. And they're at war right now. And the stakes are very high on which side wins. I got to tell you that. So don't just sit there and be a good mom. Think about how you might impact the culture in your community, in your neighborhood, in your school.
ELISE:
I guess that was a more general call, but yes, I agree. It is really on all of us. Okay. So Terry, obviously, it's really hard to see you. I know you train therapists and you have resources. So where should people start?
TERRY:
Coming to my website? It's just my name: terryreal.com. I've got a great course if I say so myself, it's the first online course for the general public I've ever done on basic, essential, relationship skills. How to stand up for yourself with love. How to listen and get yourself out of the way, and really be compassionate to your partner. How to respond with generosity. How to make peace. How to cherish your partner. What to do when your partner is being a jerk and you're not. And how to sustain a connection through radical honesty with each other, but skilled, radical honesty. Those are the basic skills like that.
ELISE:
Do you have to do it with your partner? Can you do it alone?
TERRY:
Do it alone. Singles do this. Relationships or relationships, whether it's your partner, your boss, your dog, your kid, your girlfriend, same skills.
ELISE:
Cats are easy. All right, I'm going to go take it. So thank you for that.
TERRY:
Thank you. It's called staying in love and you can get it on my website.
ELISE:
Well, if you guys can't tell I'm a Terry Real mega-fan. I think he is so brilliant and I cannot, he's written many great books. The later books that he's written have been primarily about relationships and obviously these themes hold, but I just want to put in another plug. It's a book from the nineties, but, I Don’t Want to Talk About It, which is his first book. And in it, he also talks about his own experience in life. His struggles with addiction, anger, his very hard childhood with an abusive father and then his process of healing and the ways in which he had to walk that wasteland and let that covert depression become overt. And as he writes, he got through it, but it's hard. And I think that that's really what we're asking so many men to do is to let go, let go of this idea of what it is to be a man, let go of the incredible amount of sadness and despair that's lodged in people's bodies from a lifetime of repression and to just let it happen.
And it requires, I think, you know, he’s friends with bell hooks. I'm sure many of you have read bell hooks, but it requires an acknowledgement of the way that the patriarchy damages man and not to slip into himpathy to quote Kate Manne, which is when we grant more sympathy to men who hurt people than we do to the women who are often their victims. But it's incumbent on us I think, to allow that boys and men are hurting, and that is why they in turn hurt. So I really, and as you can tell from Terry, it's such an engaging read full of really, really interesting and beautiful moving stories. I also want to give a plug, as he mentioned, he's doing this webinar with Carol Gilligan. She’s sort of one of the names that comes up from almost any therapist or any feminist.
She wrote this book called In a Different Voice, which is oft-quoted. And so they're doing a seminar and this is the information for how to get it. You can opt in, you can text your email address to 415-813-1025. That's for the Carol Gilligan seminar that she's doing with Terry. Most of the stuff that he does is for other therapists besides his books and he has many books and he has a new one coming out in March. So he'll be back to talk about that. Thanks again for listening.