Terry Real: Bringing Our “Wise Adults” Into Relationship

Written By Elise Fissmer

“I talk about dysfunctional relational stances that we repeat over and over again. For example, angry pursuit is an oxymoron. Angry pursuit is complaining about how the person isn't close to you. You will never get them closer to you. It is dysfunctional. That's what dysfunctional means. It doesn't work. It'll never get you what you want. And the first phase of the therapy that we do, relational life therapy. And in some ways, the first phase of this book is identifying what your repetitive, adaptive child relational stance is the thing you do over and over and over again,automatically knee jerk. I talk about whoosh comes up like a wave. I just gotta do this. I've gotta fix this person. I've gotta stand enough for myself. I gotta get outta here. And that is the hallmark of your adoptive child that is automatic andcompulsive. And this whole book is about moving beyond that part of you into the wise adult part of you, that can take a breath and do something, not automatic, but chosen deliberate, more skillful.” So says bestselling author and renowned marriage counselor Terry Real. His new book, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, combines new findings in neuroscience and his vast experience working with couples on the brink of disaster to give readers the skills necessary to move their relationship from a dysfunctional you vs. me into a more collaborative “us.”

There is no such thing as working on a relationship, Terry tells us, in order to work on healing the system, we must heal the individual parts. So many of us, he says, grew up without adequate emotional support, and the techniques we developed to survive in those environments as children, can go on to poison our intimate relationships. Though we may not remember the trauma, our knee-jerk reactions to distressing situations and relational conflict push our learned adaptive strategies into overdrive. 

Terry’s science-backed toolkit helps individuals move beyond their involuntary response, which tends to be rigid, harsh, and unforgiving; and come into their potential as a wise adult - one who stops, thinks, and reflects; able to tap into a more collaborative self for the betterment of the relationship. Through deep individual work, nurturing our inner child, and choosing to go against our impulses rather than indulging them; we can transform ourselves and save our relationships.  

TRANSCRIPT:

(Edited slightly for clarity, though still a rough transcript!)

ELISE LOEHNEN:

Let's talk about interdependence. Let's talk about Us. Well, first of all, I'm sure you've been very busy helping couples navigate COVID, and togetherness and existential ideas. Has it been different what's been coming out of relationships or is it just concentrated, or is it better?

TERRY REAL:

Well, first of all, uh, there's a real cutoff, how has COVID affected relationships with, or without kids? Because COVID with kids is gonna challenge, you know? Yeah. Certainly everybody's homeschooled. So that’s been an added stress for most families having the kids home. Now they're back at school. Thank goodness. But that was tough. COVID in general and COVID in couples without kids and, uh, interesting my language for it, Elise is that it's an amplifier. It's like, whatever you had going, is now going more intensely. And, if you were a fighting couple, you're fighting more. If you're loving couple, you're loving more. But the, the one thing that I found, which is really interesting is that, people had bet on their careers and not to be sexist, but I'm gonna say particularly men, found COVID, to some degree…getting rid of the commute and out of the office meant more time at home with your family. And lo and behold, everybody liked it. The men liked it and the family liked it. And, um, now I'm dealing with they're revving back up again. And how do we keep this sense of warmth and togetherness in the face of going back to the office, because what I found that, you know, this is true when men get sick with disabled men, uh, women retire, uh, when they're out of the rat race, they tend to gravitate to become more relational, like retired, older retire become more relational. They start remembering birthdays and showing up at little kids parties and, and disabled. I cut my teeth at, uh, at the VA and disabled war veterans were often sociometric stars. So there was an inverse proportion to the putting all your eggs in the basket of work performance, and how connected you were to smelling the flowers and playing with your grandkid and being with your partner. So I think COVID has got many ways.

ELISE:

Yeah, no, it's definitely, um, been interesting. So I thought it was so fun to read Us and to get your perspective on understanding couples when they come in and that sort of central question that you ask yourself, what part, what part am I talking to? Who, so, can you explain that?

TERRY:

Yeah, here's my line. When I sit with a couple, or any client or, or even a work group, you know, in a corporation, as I'm speaking to someone, my first question is not, what are the external stressors? You know, that's what couples will come be in-laws, money, sex, the kids, whatever the pandemic, I don't care that much. I mean, I'll listen, that's just sort of the, the media, that's, that's the medium through which the dynamic plays itself out the content, but I don't really care. The good couple can handle stress. The most important question is not even what's the choreography, which is very important in couple's therapy. You know, the more she, we say, the more, the more, the more she pursues, the more he distances, the more he distances, the more she pursues that's their repetitive, vicious circle, very important, but not the most important. The most important question is this: Which part of you am I speaking to? Am I speaking to the prefrontal cortex part of the brain, the most mature part of the brain in individual's development, the latest part of the brain to develop in the human species, the wise adult part of you, I call it here and now feed on the floor are present, able to stop think, reflect, make deliberate conscious choices, the mature best part of you.

Or am I speaking to the two other parts of you? And I speak about what I call the wounded child, part of you, very famous and trauma work, which tends to be a very young part of us three, four or five years old. And that's the part of us that was on the receiving end of the abuse or the neglect that we survive, just experienced it and the wounded child part of us, when I do imagine you live work, and I have people access that part, uh, tends to be overwhelmed. Just the, the, the little girl part of you that wants to crawl up on somebody's lap and be held and cry for about a thousand years. That's the wounded child part between these, these two parts and where most people live. Most of their lives is what I call the adaptive child part of you.

This is, uh, what a great mentor called a kid and grownups. It's the version of an adult that you cobbled together in the absence of healthy parenting and the adapter child, part of us is an immature version of a grownup, and it tends to be black and white, rigid, harsh, unforgiving compulsive. Whereas the wise adult part of us understands nuance and gray and is not relentless, but forgiving and is a more mature adult. And the adaptive child. Part of us is automatic. It has everything to do with our childhood roles in our family. It has everything to do with our trauma, you know, um, uh, one of my Pia Mellody, uh, I had fond of quoting him. He's very quotable. And he said, once you, you rarely see the wound, you see the scar. Mm. And the wounded child part of us is the wound.

The, the, the, oh my God, I'm overwhelmed. The scar is, uh, I'm hurt. And therefore I'm going to fight you or I'm hurt. And so therefore I'm going to please you, or I'm hurt, and therefore I'm going to fix you or, or, or, or, or, and it, it, the book us leads the reader through, uh, a re learning to have a relationship with your own adoptive child. What are your responses? Here's the quick generic that all of your listeners can do right now, listening. Ready? And I'm gonna ask you to out yourself too. Okay. I knee Jack's, uh, look, it's very nuanced and in particular, but building blocks, fight flight or fix, you need your, ah, you're a helper. You're a caretaker. One of my gals.

ELISE:

My motto is I'm upset until you're not.

TERRY:

Yeah, there you go. That's a fixer, right. Fighter is, screw me, screw you. And let me be clear. You can be six inches away. Somebody in fleeing that's called stonewalling and a fixer is yes. Uh, all, uh, of those blessed quote, codependent women, most therapists, myself included. Uh, I'm only okay if you're okay. They're not okay. I will do cartwheels to get you to be okay, because it's the only way I will feel good. This is different than a mature, responsible working on the relationship that comes from a different part of us. This is knee jerk, compulsive, anxiety driven. Oh my God. Oh my God. But me take it away. So, uh, I would like our listeners, uh, to pause right now, and to just out themselves, to themselves, uh, your knee jerk response, fight flight, or fix, what are you? And if you're in a relationship, what would you tag your partner as gay a, your adaptive child?

But it's much more sophisticated than that. I talk about dysfunctional relational stances that would repeat over and over again. For example, here's one your, to my heart, um, angry, uh, pursuit, angry pursuit is an oxymoron. Angry pursuit will never get complaining about how the person isn't close to. You will never get then closer to you. It is dysfunctional. It doesn't, that's what dysfunctional means. It doesn't work. It'll never get you what you want. And the first phase of the therapy that we do, relational life therapy. And in some ways, the first phase of this book is identifying what your repetitive, adaptive child, uh, relational stance is the thing you do over and over and over again, uh, automatically knee jerk. I talk about whoosh comes up like a wave. I just gotta do this. I've gotta fix this person. I've gotta stand enough for myself. I gotta get outta here. And that is the hallmark of your adoptive child that is automatic and, and compulsive. And this whole book is about moving beyond that part of you into the wise adult part of you, that can take a breath and do something, not automatic, but chosen deliberate, more skillful. You know, I, um, I gave workshop around the country and, uh, uh, my favorite slide in the workshop deck was this one other workshops teach you skills. We deal with a part of you that won't use them.

ELISE:

So true. I was thinking, I'm thinking now. So I'm a fixer. My husband is, is a stonewaller. Sohe just shuts down. And my response when I'm thinking of the, I don't know if I'd call it angry pursuer, but I just talk. So I, this desperate need to be understood. And so I'm just rationalizing and talking. And when we've done couples therapy with Stan Takin, he's like, least like, why are you still talking?

TERRY:

No one is listening. We all stopped five minutes, but let's talk about that since you're being so open. Look, there's a little girl part of you that did not get listened to and perhaps with not great consequences, certainly with a lot of loneliness. And maybe you had things to say that it to be said, and either mom or dad, or your family or someone would've been a hell of a lot better off, if they'd only heard you. You know, children are true tellers. And so you have this deep, well, if you, you can pass on this, but what was it that you need needed to say that didn't get to.

ELISE:

As a child?

TERRY:

Yeah.

ELISE

Um, I think it was just wjat needed to be fixed.

TERRY:

Who needed to be fixed?

ELISE:

Oh, that's an interesting question. I mean, I spent so much time alone and in nature. Thank God. But I think I just wanted to feel understood. Like I think I just wanted to share and I think it was loneliness. I think it was a desire to be seen by someone other than my horse.

TERRY:

Yeah. Yeah. Thank God. Your horse and your parents weren't aligned with you. They couldn't, they couldn't, they didn't give you the feeling that, uh, they were with you. That they could see you.

ELISE:

Uh, I feel like as a child of, you know, I was born in the late seventies, grew up in the eighties, sort of that era of benign neglect. So I don't know if I was unusual, but my dad, my parents were busy. My mom has workaholic tendencies, even though she didn't have a job, she numbs through work. So I spent a lot of time playing by myself.

TERRY:

Yeah.

ELISE:

And I joined my dad in a lot of the things that he wanted to do. So I spent a lot of time with my parents in that way, but it was more side by side and less, like tell me everything you're thinking. Does that make sense?

TERRY:

So I would say if I may, do you tell me when we've gone too far, you as a child endured a tremendous amount of emotional abandonment. And what gets triggered in you when you don't feel the connection, when your partners, stonewall, is not the adult you going, this is a pain in the ass, is that little girl who is flooded with abandonment and gets very frightened and feels like she's gonna die. You know, one of the things I say to people in this circumstance, abandonment is. Adults don't don't get abandoned. Adults get left. Abandonment is a childhood feeling.

ELISE:

Yeah.

TERRY:

Abandonment means if you leave me, I die. And when you have a lot of abandonment in your childhood, that's what gets triggered. That's why it's so compulsive. That's why you're still talking after nobody's listening, because it's scary to just sit and be unlistened to.

ELISE:

Yeah.

TERRY:

And so what was happening to you? And thank you for being so open, it's wonderful to be with you in this way. What's happening to you is your trauma trigger. And what that means is that something in the present there's happening, that's close enough to what happened in the past that you get confused, your nervous system gets confused, your body gets confused. You know, you don't remember trauma, you relive it. Make that point in the book, the vet who hears a car, backfire, spins around with the gun in his hand is in thinking I'm walking down main street, remembering combat his body is back in combat. Your present is being overtaken by your past. And that's trauma triggering. And that's what makes life so dicey for couples. And so when your husband, isn't listening to you because he is walled off, which is his adaptive child, based on whatever happened to him, you get trauma triggered.

You don't say, oh, I'm being rejected right now. You say I'm gonna die. And that little girl that gets desperate, and then the adaptive child kicks in and says, oh, I'll want him back. I'll want him back. I'll be pleasing. I'll be engaging. I'll be smart. I'll be whatever the adaptive strategies are. And that the overdrive and the problem is when your adaptive child meets his adaptive child. And the two wise adult parts of you can go have a beer. I mean, they're not even in the room anymore. And these two adaptive children are, are bashing it out with each other. Belinda and I were both fighters. Both of our children are fighters. And so we're like, screw you, screw you, screw you, screw you.

And meanwhile, the real Belinda and Terry can like, you know, go watch a movie. And, but these two, so the what's so critical is understanding this isn't part of our humanity. But that the adaptive child is not who you really are. There's an older, wiser, more mature part of you. But for example can say, well, my husband in his adaptive child right now is a closed system, is not listening to dancing and saying, that's kind of disappointing and lonely, but, uh, I'm gonna go, you know, watch a show on TV or call a girlfriend. And it's growing and basketball, freedom. That's liberation. It, it, it, it, it, it breaks you from that circuit where you're like Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, driven by fear. And it's healing. You are walking away from that means that you are tending to that scared little girl. And you are telling that little girl it's okay. He may desert you, but I'm not deserting you. We're gonna be okay. That is the way out of these repetitive patterns that in,

ELISE:

Do you feel in your experience, you know, obviously you're treating the relationship, but within the treating of the relationship, I would imagine that the healing of the individual becomes paramount. And I know people then usually pursue their own therapy, but is that is like by healing the system, do the parts start to reintegrate.

TERRY:

It's actually the other way around. I work on the system by working on the two partners in the system, the work is in the people. The there's no such thing as working on the relationship you work. I, I work on Elise and I work on your own, you know, uh, there's a great story about the great Zen master, uh, a couple, the, the whole, uh, Zendo, uh, was begging him to see this ripple fighting couple that was high up in the organization. They were killing each other. And the community was very worried about them. And he says, look, I'm not a couple's therapist. Someone said, leave me alone. And they said, please, please, please leave me. So the story goes, they came to him and they bow, and they said, please help us. We, we, we fight like cats and dogs and he looked at them and said, okay, um, gimme the fight. Don't take care of it. Who's got the fight.

And that's the story. So there is no me, you can't work on the relationship, you can only work on the two people in it. Yeah. RLT life therapy is really different from other couple's therapy. In that we do deep individual work. We do trauma work. We do inner child work while the other partner is sitting next to you. And I gotta tell you, and I tell right stories of this in the book. It is so moving. You know, I I'll tell you my classic story about adaptive children and how it works in a couple. This is the story I tell all the time, true story. You know, I specialize on couples on the brink of divorce that no one that's my beat. So a couple come in on the brink of divorce. He's a pathological liar. He's one of the first stories in the book. She says, if you ask him what brand of shoes he's wearing, he'll tell you they're sneakers. I mean, he just lies about everything.

Okay? So I have a saying, uh, show me the thumbprint. And I'll tell you about the thumb. Give me the relational stance. That's the end of the see-saw the kid was on. And I'll tell you about parent. That was on the other end of that seesaw. So this guy was a champion evader. He was the kind of guy saying, boy, the sky is blue. I go, well, a Marine, you know, it's like, he wasn't gonna gimme anything after about four of these. I say to him who tried to control you growing up? Right? I want you to think like I do, he was a, he had a black belt in evasion. So I'm a relational therapist. So I think relationally. So my next question is, okay, who was he trying to evade? Who tried to control you growing up? Sure enough, my father, he was a military man, ran around straight. How he ate, how he sat the clothes. He wore the courses. He took the friends, he had everything. I said, how did you adapt to this insanely controlling old man? And he looked at me and he smiled. And he said, I lied.

I have a saying that adaptive becomes maladaptive. Now I teach my students and we train thousands of, of students around the world. Now I teach my students always be respectful of the intelligence of that adaptive child. You did. You, you learned to be a fixer. You did exactly what you needed to do to protect yourself or get those supplies or take care of yourself the best way you could at the age you were doing it. Good for you. Brilliant little girl. Fantastic. But adaptive then maladaptive now. Your partner is not your parent. You're not that little girl. If your partner is shop closed, you can go off and arrange flowers or read a book. You don't need 'em at the old girl need, but you grown up don't need. And so, uh, uh, we float all this absolutely true story. They come back two weeks later and say, okay, we're all good.

All right. I said, there's a story here. Tell me the story. They go absolutely true. Between sessions. The wife sent him to a grocery store to get, we'll say 12 things and true to form. He came back with 11 and she says, where's the pumpernickel. And he says, every muscle and nerve in my body was screaming to say they were out of it. And I took a breath and looked at my, and I said, I forgot. The true story. She burst into tears. And she said, I've been waiting for this moment for years. That's recovery.

ELISE

The three questions or three questions that you ask, right? Who did you see do this? Who did it to you? Who did you do it to? And no one stopped you. I know it's a slight variation on that. Right? And is that when people are repeating, obviously he was in reaction to his father, but when people repeat abusive behavior or repeat a pattern, is that how you identify it?

TERRY:

Who did it to you? Who'd you see do it? Or who did you do it to and no one stopped you? By, by the way, I wanna go back to that moment where he looks at his wife and says, I forgot. Yeah, that's, that's the moment. My dear wife, the great family therapist, Belinda Berman calls, a moment of relational heroism. I love that phrase when every muscle and nerve in your body is screaming to do the same old, same old, and you take a breath and in this moment you choose to do it differently. That's the prefrontal cortex that thinking and not acting automatically. And say something about that. That's the way out. That's the way outta this mess, to stop and think and choose.

Okay. So who did it to you is obvious. Who did you see do it as obvious? Who did you do it to when no one stopped you? That's called false empowerment. And, one of the things that RLT is known for,if I can, what, uh, I think my contributions to the field is, uh, my attention to just issues of shame, the one down inferior, but equal attention to grandiosity. The one up superior for 50 years, psychotherapy, self-help have focused on helping people up from the one down of shame, but we've done a terrible job of helping people come down from the one up of grandiosity. And when you work with couples and when you work with men, you've got to know how to help people come down from that entitlement or selfishness or aggression and attack. So I had a guy in his forties subject to ridiculous. I mean, he was, well, all, he would literally destroy entire room, subject to total rage attack. Who was the rager in your family Noah? Who did you see do this Noah? Who did you do it to? And no one stopped you. Yeah. I've been having temper tantrums since I was four years old. Well, what did your parents do when you had a temper tantrum? Uh, uh, nothing. Uh, well actually mostly they eventually would give me what I wanted. Right. That's why you're still having them in your forties.

So I now have to parent you in ways that four year old, four year old little boy should have been parented. And a lot of my book is dedicated to working with issues both individually in the couple and in society, because grandiosity as a culture could be killing us as we're sitting here. The essence of grandiosity is superiority being above it, being above the rules. And I don't wanna get too abstract, but along with a lot of practical part of the book, it's also a critique of what I call the toxic culture of individualism. I even write about the history of the idea of individualism. And as the history, it was cooked up by a bunch of white, rich men. This idea of the individual and the essence of individuality of individualism is that we stand apart from nature.

And it fuses with the tradition of patriarchy, which I've also written about for 40 years, which says that not only are we apart from nature, that's what it means to be an individual. And I'm separate I'm apart. That's what the word means. Not only are we apart from nature, but we are above nature and we control it. We dominate it. Whether the nature we're trying to control is our partners or our kids or our bodies. I've gotta lose 10 pounds or our minds. I've gotta stop thinking some negative control control, control, power over power over is a toxic delusion. And the whole essence of coming into what I call Us consciousness is trading in the delusion that you are of nature and above it for what I call the ecological humility of understanding that you are in nature and you depend upon it. You know, our relationships are our biosphere.

We breathe it. And I say, you can choose to your biosphere by having a temper tantrum like this guy over here, but you'll breathe in that pollution in your wife's withdrawal or coldness or retaliation. It's inevitable. You can't escape it. You're not outside the system, you're in it. And so when we stop thinking about win, lose zero sum, I give into her, he gives into me and we start thinking about, let me take care of this biosphere called my relationship that I live in, not as a sacrifice to my partner, but as enlightened self-interest, it's good for me. Happy spouse, happy house. Then all the rules change. Everything changes like I, if some guy will say to me, well, what should I work so hard to make her happy? At which point I lean in and say, well, uh, you live with her.

ELISE:

Your feeling about grandiosity is slightly different too, right? Because you know, the, the cold statement is, oh, really? Grandiosity covers extreme shame. And you argue that that's about half of it.

TERRY:

Yeah. Yeah. That, that's what they actually read the book. That's, uh, that's what the research indicates. Half of narcissists have underlying shame that they're escaping, and what the researchers, the other half just think they're better than you and me. They just do. And what I write about is an, a Pia Mellody. This concept, grandiosity can be an escape from shame, but it can also be a legacy of false and empowerment. This guy who had temper tantrums and his family rewarded him for them by giving in, that's called false empowerment. We've spent a ton of time on shame, but very little time on false empowerment. Can I tell you a story?

ELISE:

Yes.

TERRY:

Here's my story. So I live in Boston. I'm from Jersey, but I live in Boston and, uh, my ADHD darling son is having one of his very first play dates, about three, four, and another kid comes over and it sounds like you wanna play hockey, hockey. You wanna do hockey. You wanna get stick, wanna get a puck, wanna go outside, wanna wanna throw a puck around? How about some hockey? I play hockey. This goes on for about three hours. The kid leave. Justin comes bringing over to me like Tigger. And he says to me, do you think the kid had a good time? And I look at my little son and I go, no. And he’s stunned. And I say to him, honey, let me teach you something. If you wanna do what you wanna do, be alone. The minute you invite somebody into your world, you have to pay some attention to what they wanna do. And I swear, Elise, dead true. My little four year old looks up at me and goes: Too much hockey? Now also true. Fast forward. Chris is on the brink of divorce. Well, he takes his wife to the Caribbean for five days for some much needed R and R the five days sounds like this, Hey, you wanna have sex? You wanna be close? Wanna get physical, wanna be intimate. In my office, I turned to is Chris. I say, how was the trip? And she goes, it was terrible. And Chris is stunned. Absolutely true. You know what I did with Chris?

ELISE:

No.

TERRY:

I told him the Justin story.

ELISE:

Too much hockey,

TERRY:

That too much hockey, too, too much sex. And I said, then, listen, there's a word for what I was doing with my four year old son. It's called parenting. It's what you deserved and did not get. And because you didn't get that installed in you at four or five years, you to schlep the Boston, pay me an arm leg, and I'll install it. Now, poor guy, I'm sorry this happened to you. And this is an attitude when I'm working with grandiosity, particularly with men, poor guy, and the language I often uses. Oh, you were set up to, oh, of course you were set up to be the asshole that you are now. I'm so sorry for you. You know, very rarely in my field. Does an offender get held with both accountability and compassion at the same time.

Either they're beat the hell out. I mean, not to whatever, but look at Will Smith. They're beat the hell out of, or they're excused the hell out of. But I knew when I started working with abusive men, having been raised by an abusive man, but I had to find a way to hold them accountably and lovingly in the same breath. And this idea that grandiosity comes from trauma, that false empowerment is a form of trauma to a child. It's not a favor to them, allows me to look at what they, as, not what they ever asked for as what they were trained to do. Uh, and as having disastrous consequences for them, let's unwind it. You know, I came home with a bad report card at, I think second or third grade. And my dad who was a rager, you never knew what he would do.

He threw the report card on the ground and he laughed. And he said, it's just because those assholes don't know what to do with your, you’re too bright for them. That was no favor to me. I didn't get good grades until I was in college. I had to go to a community college to get A's and B’s because my entire school career I gotten B's and F's, and I went from there up to a state school and got out of my family. But I would drop into school once a week because I was so brilliant. And those assholes didn't know what to do with me. That was not a favor, that was trauma.

ELISE:

And that's an example of false empowerment, right? Yeah. And so I know you write about, um, you write about that enmeshment, the way that a child can become also falsely empowered by becoming their parents' caregiver, like extremely in an extreme way that's incest, right. Or molestation, like you're so special.

TERRY:

The hero, the fixer, the caretaker, the surrogate spouse, the family pride. One of the things I say is the most destructive phrase in the English language is: Honey, you understand me more than your father. That is no favor. So understanding that false empowerment is no favor to a child that it sets you up as a grown-up for grandiosity. And that grandiosity is a scourge, really can help a lot of people. Shame feels bad, but the dirty secret in therapy is that grandiosity feels good. Intoxication is grandiosity acting out as grand making out with your secretary is grand. And you have to think your way down from grandiosity. Cause it feels good. And you feel entitled to grandiosity. It impairs through judgment. Think about mania and bipolar disorder. That's crack natural grandiosity. So, I'll tell you a story.

ELISE:

Yay.

TERRY:

I talk to people about living a contempt free life that you don't put up with, superiority coming in your direction and you don't indulge it going out that you don't indulge contempt in either direction, either at you, by others, at you, by you or at you dishing out to others. And grandiosity is a form of contempt. I'm in Boston. I'm a new Yorker and Boston has a it on record, the worst drivers in the country. And, and in New York, somebody will cut you off and be a pig, but then they'll scoot off at 60 miles an hour in Boston, somebody cuts you off and then drops down the 20 miles an hour makes you sit there, passive aggressive. So somebody will do that. And I'll be doing that star wars, laser beam thing. I'll be looking at their fat when head through the wind and I'll be in utter contempt and rage.

And when I was younger, I would pull aside from a person like, roll, down my window and scream. And nowadays this is a story I tell all my grandiose clients nowadays, I'll look at that fat little head. And I'll say to myself, as I breathe myself down from the rage and contempt, I will say to myself, you don't deserve this. You may deserve somebody screaming at you for the way you drive, but I deserve it. I'm not breathing myself down from grandiosity and contempt of rage for your sake. I'm doing it for my sake. You know what? I grew up in a contempt drenched family. I internalized that contempt and it became the core of a depression I've wrestled with for 60 years. I've played out that contempt in my relationships, been a jerk and done a lot of not today. I don't need it. Uh, so, uh, in this moment, on this day, uh, you drive the way you drive and, and that's the way you come down for grand for your own sake.

ELISE:

As you know, I've interviewed you about this book, I Don’t Want to Talk About It. It's not your first book. It's the most important book, I think for any mother of sons, any man. It's about the legacy of male depression and how it manifests in covert ways, which has sort of slipped through society. I know people come to you on the brink of divorce and I thought, I think this is, is fascinating. I'm looking for this tooth. So you write some do end in divorce to be sure, but statistically, most don't two thirds of marriages survived. The hit thought. That was fascinating. Obviously infidelity is one symptom of a marriage that's in the dark night of its soul, but in what you see, can you, what, how, how frequently can you bring a couple back from the edge?

TERRY:

Look, when it comes to infidelity, I have no interest in helping the couple survive. I'm after bigger game. I want to use this crisis as a springboard for transformation of each of the two individuals and the relationship itself. So, um, I'm treating, uh, a guy a couple now all where the guy, uh, was a grandiose titled, workaholic, enormously successful, great athlete was a decorated athlete spent if he wasn't, uh, working on his multi-billion dollar industries, he was, uh, working on his body, not really present for his wife, not really present for his kids. Didn't feel much when I first met him, had like a lot of the guys I worked with virtually no interior. It's like a camera, no internal space. We very little reflection, no feelings. And, um, and he acted out, uh, with his trainer, duh. And then when he had to deal with his kids who hated him and his wife who threw him out, it suddenly had dawned on him that there was more to the world than what he'd been obsessed with. He woke up.

You know, I don't do 50, 50. I'm not neutral. I take sides. The wife's main quote unquote contribution was that she was there, but at a deeper level, she allowed it. So many of the women I work with accommodate the behaviors they have no business putting up with. And then the guy just doesn't dirt the end. Anyway, she's what happened. So he had been barking up the wrong tree as a whole life. And she had been putting up with, uh, a level of distance and a lack of care that frankly, a healthy woman would've fought over. That was how it worked between them. So she found her voice. She was pissed as a rat and had to come down off of the ledge of just rage and your get me on here and learn how to use that voice on an ongoing basis in the marriage, rather than one giant blow up 20 years into it.

And he had to learn how to be relational. He had no idea how to be relational. Here's something I talk about in the book that I work with with a lot of my guys, my captain industry guys, the after child lives for gratification and safety, the wise adult has a sense of what I call relational joy. Relational joy is a deeper down pleasure. That's just about being in the relationship and be connected. Sometimes the relationship's gratifying. Think about parenting. Sometimes it's the pain in the ass, but the deeper down joy of just being there with this person goes beyond whether it's gratifying or not. A lot of the men that I treat have no idea what they've lived, their entire lives for gratification. And I awaken them to this deeper down pleasure than spring comes. I had a guy, this isn't Bruce Springsteen who wrote the forward.

So, but I was working with a guy who was a rock ‘n roller. And he said, when he was on stage, he was alive. And when he was home, he was like a computer on sleep mode. He was just, and he was depressed and his four kids, but daddy had didn't leave alone, alone. He was barely there for his wife. And then he got back on stage. And so I began to talk to him about gratification versus relational joy, which he'd had none of, none of him in his childhood. He did the trauma work and he talked to his little boy and he, he, he did what I work with. A lot of men, I call it learning to be a family man, learning to give and not just good. And when his kids would go, daddy, daddy, daddy started saying yes. And slowly, slowly, slowly, uh, in the so story.

So he came in one day, true story. And he said, I just spent the best day in my life. This is a guy where hundreds of millions of book playing the arenas and tens of them. I had the best day in my life. Okay, I'll bite, what was it? He said, my wife and my kids. And I spent all day, Sunday from seven in the morning to seven at night in our PJ’s playing the most sadistic game of monopoly you can imagine. And it was the best day in my life. And I tell that story to my guys because they don't know what that day feels like until they do the work of, reading a book like mine, getting a therapist and learning what real connection and joy can do for you.

 

Elise Fissmer
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