Terry Real is a pioneering couples therapist who developed a pretty transformational approach that he calls Relational Life Therapy.

He’s written a handful of books, including the New York Times bestseller Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship.

I think Terry is one of the most compelling voices on male depression, relational health, the patriarchy, and how our intimate relationship dynamics both reflect and shape our culture. His work has been formative to me personally and certainly to how I thought about and wrote On Our Best Behavior.

Today, Terry shares his approach to understanding relational dynamics, and healing and strengthening our most important relationships.

He explains why he’s not a fan of the term narcissism, and why he prefers instead to work with people on grandiosity. In his work with couples, Terry often teaches one partner how to come down from a one-up superiority position—while empowering the partner in a one-down position to lean in and speak up—as he says—with love, not harshness. And Terry does this, in part, by showing how it’s in everyone’s personal interest, as well as the interest of the relationship.

Oh, and he uses a lot of amazing catch phrases and stories in the process—many of which are quite funny.

We also talk about why it’s so hard for many men to be vulnerable, other barriers to intimacy, and how Terry helps people deal with shame, as well as contempt, so that we all might experience more relational joy. 

Terry Real’s Website

Follow Terry on Instagram

Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression

Terry on Pulling the Thread: “Healing Male Depression”

Terry on Pulling the Thread: “Bringing Our Wise Adults into Relationship”

ELISE:

I guess where I want to start with you, and this is not our first rodeo, and all of our previous conversations will be linked in the show notes, and we've gone into male depression, which is one of my favorite Terry Real topics and relational health in general, but that I see you as a rare bird for many reasons, but your work as a cultural therapist and your collaborations with the late bell hooks and ongoing collaboration with people like Carol Gilligan is unfortunately very rare, right? Because you pull this aperture out to understand this toxic brew that we find ourselves in, and then you examine those relational dynamics up close through the microscope. When you look at our totally bizarro world and face transplants and trad wives and the manosphere and Trump, it's just like, what's happening? It is archetypal. Yeah. And I feel like you kind of know what's happening.

I have a hunch.

TERRY:

I do know what's happening. Why don't we start with that?

ELISE:

Yeah, let's do it.

TERRY:

Okay. Let me tell you what's happening.

ELISE:

Yes. Tell me what's happening.

TERRY:

Patriarchy has come roaring back with a vengeance. That's what's happening. When I was at hippie, one of my pals was Richie Adelman and he became a high school teacher, but he joked when he was in high school, of course, he was stoned on pot all day. And he'd be sitting in the back reading a comic book and the history teacher would say, "What do you think is going on historically in this particular moment, say pre-civil war or whatever?" And Richie would raise his head and go, "I think at the bottom line, it's economic. You're right." And then six months, "What do you think, Mr. Adelman?" "I think it's economic. "You're right. He didn't have to get straight for one class nor interrupt his comic book. "What's going on? Ready?"

ELISE:

Yes.

TERRY:

The resurgence of male dominance.

ELISE:

Yeah.

TERRY:

"You're right. Six months later, what's going on? The resurgence of male dominance. "You're right. Listen, Peter Veinhart, a very interesting commentator about Israel, Palestine, said," I have two words that will explain the rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA right. You know what the two words are? President Obama. America elects its first Black president, and the next thing we know, there is a swing to the right like we've never seen in this country. Feminism. When Obama and Michelle were holding court, nobody was all that interested in hearing from me. The rise of MAGA has been great for my career because we all though, "Hey, we've got it knocked. Fights won. It's not perfect." And then all of a sudden, boom, two steps forward, five steps back. So what's going on? Selfishness, dominance, power, and greed. That's what's going on. In other words, masculinity writ large has returned.

ELISE:

So do you think when we see rise of feminism, Obama, et cetera, that that inherently was the problem or was it the follow-up of asking society to address its longstanding racism, its longstanding misogyny, things like time's up, me too. Do you think that that pressure of wanting some sort of justice or restoration of justice, that that was it? Or do you think it was just enough, scary enough to see a different culture reflected back? Or do you feel like it really got activated when people were made to feel like they were bad or that in the case of these men that their power was on some sort of timeline?

TERRY:

The power is on some sort of timeline. Make no mistake about it. Someone once described my work, relational life therapy, as women have had a revolution and now men have to deal with it. And so what does that mean? Well, women, look, it's women who institute divorce. It's women who fuel the self-help movement. I'll bet your audience is largely women. It's women who carry the dissatisfaction because it's women who want more. Here's what's going on. Jane Austin's day, you needed a man and you needed to get married or you're going to be in your uncle's cabin somewhere living a miserable life. You needed that breadwinning man. That was the deal. And it was bifurcated. Women took care of home and kids and men tried to function at the highest level possible to fight the dragons and bring food home to their families. And that was the polarity.

That broke up, started with World War II, and then feminism came along. And now women don't need men in this. They want them. I love Carol Gilligan. I love Jane Fonda. I love Inster V now. I love my palace there for because they're all men loving feminists and I'm a man loving feminist myself. Yes. But what RLT is distinct about is the so-called narcissist. I dislike that label a lot. I like to say if somebody walks in my office and they say, "My therapist tells me I'm a narcissist," I say, "Well, your therapist doesn't like you very much." I don't use the word narcissism. I talk about grandiosity and selfishness. Narcissism, I don't know what to do with it. One-up superiority, entitlement. I know how to talk people down from that. And selfishness, I know how to tell people how to wake up and learn to be more relational and connected to themselves, the world, the people around them.

That's what RLT does, relational life therapy, teaching people how to live a relational life. So we take the one down and empower them to lean up and speak up, but with love, not harshness. And we take the one up and teach them, "My friend is in your interest to come down." I talk about poison privilege. "Come down off your high horse, give up some of your bullying privileges. They're real, but they're poison for you. It's better for you to open your heart and join the human race than it is to sit up there with all your toys and people listen. And you're right, it's where we started off. To me, what I'm most proud of in my 40 years of work is what we call in family therapy isomorphism. It's multilayered. Coming out of the delusion of dominance and separateness and waking up to relationality, what I call ecological wisdom.

You're not above... Our relationships are our biosphere. You've heard me say this a million times. Our relationship, we're in them. And the father of family therapy, the great Gregory Basin, anthropologist, said, "I've devoted my life to trying to correct humankind's philosophical mistake." What is that mistake? That we are separate from nature and that we can control nature, both deluded, essential to patriarchy. It's what individualism. Individualism means I'm separate from nature and patriarchy means I'm in control of nature. And guess what? They are suicidal, psychotic delusions. So in RLT, literally I'm working with a couple and I'm helping somebody realize that it's in my interest, my enlightened self interest to take care of my biosphere. It's in my interest to come down from my privilege. It's in my interest to find some spine and lean in and confront my partner who's treating me horribly. It's not one of us wins, one of us loses.

It's we're taking care of the bios. Here's how I say it.

It's true. I work with tough guys. This is my big. I get these big burly guys. They go, "Why should I have to work so hard to please my wife?" And I go, "Knock, knock, you live with her." That's a revolution. That's a revolution. "Hey, President Trump, knock, knock. We live here. Why don't we want to take over Greenland? They're not going to be happy with us if we do. "When you start thinking ecologically, the synonyms, thinking ecologically, thinking relationally are just two ways of saying the same thing. So the first thing we offer is a new vision, interdependence, interconnectedness, enlightened self interest. This is not about one wins, one loses. You've heard me. I've had a million saying the answer to who's right and who's wrong is who cares. But that's leaving our culture and that's new territory. Who's right? Who's wrong? It doesn't matter, honey.

How are we going to work this thing in a way that works for both of us? We're a team. That's the way out of this mess. And that is the answer to the extremes on both sides. Now, let me say something else about the backlash. Righteous indignation is a mild form of contempt and grandiosity. And there's a difference between saying, "This is not my value system with ownership and humility and saying you're deplorable." And the self-righteous indignation, grandiosity feels good and it's easy to indulge. It's easy to be self-righteously indignant, go online and get a hundred followers or a thousand. It's a good drug grandiosity. It feels good. Contempt feels good. And guess what? Contempt is the one thing that is completely shared by the left and the right. And where men are right is, "Hey, I'm sick of being shamed for who I am.

I'm sick of it." Unfortunately, it's like, "Okay, let's move towards something more loving to everybody." No, let's go back to the 50s and I'm going to start swinging my big dick around and reassert all of the privileges you tell me are bad. So screw you, I'm going back. We can't go back. We have to go forward. But in this individualistic culture for everybody, left, right, men, women, all genders, we moved from disempowerment to individual empowerment. I was weak, now I'm strong, go screw yourself. And the left says that about the right. The right says that about the left. Early feminism said that about men, and men got fed up. We worked with a beautiful DEI consultant. I think she's a gift, Duran Young. And Duran, you know how people send email and they have a little tag at the end of it? Her tag reads like this, "Shame is not an effective social activist strategy." That's how she signs every email, and that's what she taught us.

So we come down on all sides and let's find a way to be with one another. I heard the great Ken Hardy, a wonderful clinician, writes a lot about race and healing racial issues. He is himself a Black American. And he said when he got all of the anti - DEI flooding literature that was hitting all of the universities and stuff, he looked at it and he said, "There's a little warm spot in my heart for these people because what do they keep saying? We want less liberal sort of monopoly and we would like more of a diversity of opinion."

ELISE:

I know, right?

TERRY:

I looked at it, they're killing DEI because they want more diversity. Well, I can relate to that. So we are very adept at finding the best part of someone and inviting them to leave the individualistic patriarchal bullshit, whether you're one up or one down and open up to the healing, incredible creativity, eroticism, joy of community. Carol Gilligan, you cannot love from the one up, you cannot love from the one down. Love demands democracy. What my work is about is intimacy and what intimacy about is being with, not to the side, not below, not above, but with. That has the power to save each of us and maybe this goddamn planet.

ELISE:

How's

TERRY:

That?

ELISE:

No, I mean, it's beautiful. And I think that you talked about this suicidal urge, which we see reflected in the demise of our intimate relationships, particularly in this dynamic that you're talking about when you're dealing with someone who's grandiose or someone who, as you say, offends from the victim perspective or that's pia melody, right?

TERRY:

Yeah, offending from the victim.

ELISE:

Yeah. Yeah.

TERRY:

But - You hurt me. I get to hurt you twice as hard back and you deserve it.

ELISE:

You deserve it.

TERRY:

What we need to understand is that one up contempt, judgment, retaliation, control feels good, but it's poison for us. And that's whether you're coming up from the one down victim position or whether you're riding in the entitled position and afraid that those Black people are going to take your privileges away from you. Wherever you are, you have to understand that one up and one down is poison for you. Come into healthy self-esteem, which is same as I'm no better or no worse than anybody else. I'm just as imperfect as you are.

ELISE:

Right. When you look at the rates of mortality amongst single men, divorced, widowed, single, they croak, right? They die without relationships. So they're on a suicidal march too in this quest for dominance, power, control. And so it's very appropriate that you refer to it as poison. You can't exist without relationships. Yeah.

TERRY:

No, I've been saying this for 40 years and research has finally caught up. I mean, what we have in our back pockets, us progressives, is this. We're born to be relational. It's what the species is designed for. It's the only thing that makes us happy. And I mean, incredible study after... There was one in Dartmouth. How quickly somebody got out of the hospital after surgery was directly proportionate to how many visitors they had.

ELISE:

Wow.

TERRY:

The more visitors, the quicker they got out. And there's this one study, literally hundreds of studies that tell us our bodies work best when we have intimate connection. Our psyches work best. It's just what we're designed for. I call it relational joy, the beauty of just being connected. And God and her wisdom has put me and my wife Belinda up close and personal to people that everybody worships, rock stars and billionaires. I treat these guys and they're miserable. There's an old story, The Myth of the Mad King, and it's about the king who was the richest, most powerful man in the world, and he's living in this almost unimaginably luxurious palace, but he's paranoid. He thinks people are out to get him. So he spends his life in the dungeon of the palace. Folks like Trump Orban or an abuser in his own family or an abuser in her own family.

It doesn't really matter what body you're in, but people moving into that dominant position get gratification, but they don't get relational joy. And I deal with guys who fly into their goddamn private jets and they are miserable. Their kids don't want to have anything to do with them. They're on their third marriage and I teach them, you are full of gratification, short-term pleasure. This culture runs on gratification. This culture has lost the wisdom of relational joy, the deeper pleasure parents get this, the deeper pleasure of just being there and being connected, and sometimes it's gratifying, sometimes it's a pain in the ass. It's got nothing to do with that. It's deeper than that. That relational joy is not cherished in this culture. It's not taught. And I literally, I mean, one out of four clients I see for whatever they can pay, but three out of four pay through the nose.

These guys come in on their big jets. They have never experienced relational joy. I'm dealing now with a guy, he just spent three days with his father in the hospital. His father had a heart operation, and he carried his father, he wiped his father's butt, he's arranging for help for his mom. He's talking to his mother about what it's like to see her partner of 50 years deteriorate. He was capable of none of this three months ago, and his heart is open and he's never felt... The work I do is known for producing dramatic change, transformative change quickly. Here's how you do it. I don't do it. Relationality does it. Once you move somebody from disconnection into connection, like that man with his father in the hospital, connection feels so much better to us that once somebody gets a taste of it, they go, "Oh, this is good.

How do I get more of that?" And that's how I taught people out of grandiosity. This is better. This is even better than your living room full of toys.

ELISE:

Do you think that when you think about these men who you have firsthand experience with, I observe them and what's happening in the culture, and I might know a couple of them, but I don't have the intimacy or the access that you do, and I see them as almost solely run on fear, in part because the more gratification or whatever that they achieve, the more toys they accumulate, the more money, the more power, and you look at them and you're like, "How could you feel any scarcity?" And yet they're terrified.

TERRY:

They all want more. They all want more.

ELISE:

Yeah, they all want more. And what is that? I think it's fear, but you would know. Yeah.

TERRY:

No, it's also appetite.

ELISE:

Oh, interesting.

TERRY:

The great Bruce Springsteen, all men want to be rich, rich men want to be kings, and the king looks around and wants to be king of everything. It's endless. It's a sieve. My own family therapist taught me this 40 years ago. He said, "As you become successful," which I never particularly expected to be, but here I am, "As you become successful," he said, "You don't feel more confident. It's just that your reference group changes. You're still one down, but now you're one down to Tiger Woods." And honest to God, at least, I mean, it's crazy to say this, but I was on goddamn Oprah Winfrey. I had a bestselling book, and I literally could not sleep one night because I felt so bad about myself that I didn't have my own TV show like Dr. Phil. It's endless. You're a sieve.

ELISE:

I wish you had been Dr. Phil. I think we would've been in a better place, but maybe you didn't know what you know now, but...

TERRY:

You're a sieve. You can drink all you want, but it just pours right out of you. That will not satisfy. Connection satisfies toys, gratification, women, drugs, whatever you're self-medicating with, good luck. I like to say your self-medication is drinking saltwater for thirst. It leaves you worse than you started.

ELISE:

What is that hungry ghost though, besides being insatiable, what does it believe it's going To find.

TERRY:

Well, here's the fear part. You're either one up or one down. That's the world of masculinity, which patriarchy is masculinity writ large. So you're either a winner or a loser. I mean, Trump goes to a cemetery of World War II vets who are dead and calls them losers. It's just what?

ELISE:

Yeah.

TERRY:

John McCain, who I don't love his politics, but the man was in a Vietnamese prison, they opened the door and said, "You can leave." And he said, "No, I'll stay here with my men." And Trump says, "I prefer soldiers who weren't captured. Thank you." One up and one down. So in the world of men, which is patriarchy, you can be in a woman's body and how many women voted for -

ELISE:

Yeah. How many patriarchal women literally surround him? I mean, they keep getting fired, but it's all patriarchal women. It's the Phyllis Schlaflys of this day.

TERRY:

Yeah. Yeah. So women participate in it. I get these young men, there's a grain of truth in this too. I am sensitive and no woman wants to date me. Yeah. Well, maybe you need a little more flexibility. Maybe it's a moment for sensitivity as a moment to throw somebody against the wall and have sex with them consensually. But oh, I'm too sensitive. Forgive me for being, but here's one of my -

ELISE:

No, but it's the balance, this balance between masculine and feminine that's part of what it is to be human.

TERRY:

Yeah. I don't even call it masculine and feminine because

ELISE:

It feels too gendered.

TERRY:

Who gets to decide which is which? But here's my story. It's one of my favorite stories. We had the privilege, Belinda, me and the kids of being in Masai land. They were nine and seven, now they're almost 40. And the people who took us, ran a company, helped this village with a school. They were beloved in this village. So I had access and I had a men's group with the elders for three nights running. We talked about everything. Women, God, liked. They were so smart, these guys. It was just breathtaking. I said to them, there's this, I'm going to mispronounce it, but there's a volcano that they live at the foot of Dolingling guy or something. And all the tour books will tell you they worship the volcano. The volcano's God. So I say to them, "Do you worship this volcano?" And they cracked up and it went from English to Swahili to Messiah to Swahili to English.

And they said to me, "Hey, do you go to church?" Synagogue. "Yeah, I go to church." They said, "Well, when you go to church, do you worship the bricks?" They said, "It's a holy place. It's not God. It's a sacred place. What is the matter with you, idiot?" Anyway, so I say to them, every encounter was like that. I say to them in the US, there's a big debate about what makes a Mirani, a warrior man, one word, what makes a good Mirani? Some people say a good Mirani is strong, ferocious. Some of them say a good Morani is sweet and sensitive.What do you guys think? What makes a good Morani? It's absolutely true. It's one of the great moments in my life. This little guy stands up, has to be 150, like four foot two. He sticks his little finger out, and he sounds totally pissed off at me.

And he says word for word, he said, "I have no interest in talking to you about what makes a good Morani. I could care less, but I will talk to you about what makes a great Morani." He said, "When the moment calls for fierceness, a good Morani will kill you, don't cross him. When the moment calls for tenderness, a good Morani will lay down his sword," which they do carry sword and shield, "Lay down his sword and shield and be sweet like a little smiling baby." He said, "A great Morani is a man who knows which woman is which." That's my model. Wholeness and flexibility. I want men to be strong and sensitive. I want women to be smart and sexy. I want us to be whole, flexible and adaptable to what's in front of us, all genders. Let's break up the goddamn binary. It's not necessary.

ELISE:

Yeah. No, I am with you 100%. And that adaptive ability, I mean, I just think about what happens in your office walls, how that's extended to the culture, how much better that interdependence or flexibility feels. What does that start looking like in a family system in a way that can be ascribed to... It's that the person who's assuming the one down starts to have a voice because as Carol Gilligan says, there's no relationship without voice, and that the person who's grandiose, selfish, dominating starts to open their heart. Why is that so scary and hard?

TERRY:

For a man?

ELISE:

Yes.

TERRY:

Oh yeah, you're so sweet. It's like I would go to conferences and people would say, "Yeah, we need to work with men. Men think that therapy is feminine. Hey, we respect masculinity. We're not going to shake you up or challenge you in your manhood. We want you to open up, talk about your feelings and be vulnerable." Oh yeah, great. That's not feminine. Who the hell are you trying to kid? But women across the West, because we know they no longer need men like they did in Jane Austin's day, want men, but what do they want? They want intimacy. We've never wanted more from our relationships than we do right now, and that's mostly women leading the charge. The catch-22 and why there's so much trouble in divorce right now, women are asking men in hetero relationships for a level of vulnerability and emotional connectedness that the way we raise boys under patriarchy to this day hasn't changed, forbids.

The essence of masculinity is in vulnerability. Just look around, listen to Trump, listen to his henchmen, listen to Pete. It's all about strength, strength, strength, dominance, dominance, that vulnerability is disowned. What it means to be a man is to not be a girl. And then you turn around and you go, oh, I want you to be intimate with me. Be soft and compassionate to my vulnerabilities and share yours. Yeah, good luck with that. So when I see a guy in my office and all of our students, could you have a little compassion and perspective? When you ask a man to open his heart and be vulnerable and connected, you're asking literally nothing less than for this man to reconfigure masculinity itself. That's the challenge. And yeah, the backlash is comfortable. Screw you. I'm not going to do that work. Well, good luck with that. But also let's have a little compassion for how big that ask is.

I want you to move into parts of yourself. You've read my books for many men were literally physically beaten out of them as children. My dad tried to beat the vulnerability out of me. I was treating a guy who was an offender. He used to masturbate in public. He was an exhibitionist and he was busted. And I go back to his, this is not an excuse, but I go back to his childhood. His new dad, his stepfather, assembles his family in rural Texas. They all go out on the porch. He takes this young boy's blankie, decides he's too old for it, literally physically rips it out of his hands, puts it in a trash basket, puts gas on it and gives him a match to light it. You ready? He's four years old.

Now he's a perpetrator. Where does this come from? We have to stop this. Here's another one. My client came in and said, "You want to know the transmission of patriarchy? Listen to this. I was at my kid's hockey game." It's Boston, so everybody's crazy hockey. I was at my kid's hockey game when 10 years old. The other team, the dad of one of the kids was a coach. The kid wasn't playing well. The dad is in front of everybody, screaming at him, full voice, on the ice in front of his teammates, in front of all the parents. Kid starts to cry. He starts screaming at him for crying. Kid throws off his glove and walks off the ice, escaping his dad, goes up into the stands and sits next to his mother. His mother goes to put her arm around him and the kid punches his mother in the face.

ELISE:

Oh my God.

TERRY:

Welcome to patriarchy.

ELISE:

Yeah. Well -

TERRY:

This shit gets passed on.

ELISE:

As you say, wounded boys become wounding men, and that really puts a bow on it. So no, I mean, I love men too, deeply.

TERRY:

I like that about

ELISE:

You. Yeah, no, I do. I love men. I'm married to a man, I have a brother, I have two boys. And I know we're not using these words, but I feel like I grew up in a way where I was able to cultivate that more, I would call it masculine energy, but that ability to be more balanced in who I am. And even so, I was thinking about this idea of trust, which I know is sort of core to if I am vulnerable, if I develop the skills to remake myself in not such a patriarchal way, will you -

TERRY:

Catch me.

ELISE:

Yeah. Can you catch me? Right.

TERRY:

That cuts both ways. For the one down, look, I say leading men and women all gender into intimacy is synonymous with leading them beyond patriarchy because patriarchy was never built for intimacy. So for men, there's lots of variations, please understood, but the cultural trope is they lead with grandiosity and have covert shame. Women lead with shame and have covert grandiosity. That's a whole other story. But anyway, so the vulnerability for men is opening up your heart, coming out of your wall, coming down off your perch, being a human with other humans. The vulnerability for the one in the more traditionally feminine position, the traditional feminine role is a combination of resentment. And then feminism came along and you move from disempowerment to what I call individual empowerment, which just individualistic culture adores, including 12-step feminism therapy. I was weak, now I'm strong, go screw yourself.

And everybody cheers. Wrong. I was weak. Now I'm strong. I love you. We're a team. This is what I need from you. Let's work together and make that happen. Whole different world. Nobody teaches that in this culture. So for women to move out of the traditional feminine side of the binary, which is accommodating and resentful and not shift over to the traditional masculine side, which is empowered and go fuck yourself, but to really break up the loving power is the essence of the new skills that we teach. You don't have to be harsh to be powerful. You can cherish your partner and stand up for yourself in the same breath. But I have to teach people how to do this. This culture. Elise, here's door A. Hey Elise, don't talk to me like that. I don't like it. Fair enough. Here's door B. Hey Elise, I really care about you sweetheart.

The way you're talking to me right now, I'm having trouble hearing. I want to hear. Could you tone it down and be a little softer, kinder maybe so I can hear what you have to say? Two ways of saying the same thing, but which of those two is going to work? I have to teach people that because under patriarchy, it's either the traditional feminine, go along and hate it or it's traditional masculine. I'm tired of this bullshit. I'm not having any of it. You can be powerful and loving in the same breath, but that's a revolution.

You're the only hetero woman who does it. Listen, that is what women do under patriarchy. That's your job. Your job is to upregulate the disowned fragility of your mate.

ELISE:

Oh God, it's true. It is. I know.

TERRY:

Here's my message to women. Management is not intimacy. Sorry, pal.

ELISE:

No.

TERRY:

But for women to let go of management and to learn to be forthright is, that's the trust thing. It's like, oh my God, can I tell the truth and stand up for myself in a skilled loving way and will my partner not run out the door or blow up at me? I talk about three rings of patriarchy. The first is the binary. This is feminine, this is masculine. The second is the values. Feminine values are devalued. Masculine values are adored. The relationship between masculine and feminine is content. What it means to be a man is to be contemptuous of things feminine. I'm not a girl, that's a man. That's why it's so hard for men to be intimate. Open your heart and be vulnerable. I stopped doing that on the playground. I learned not to do that when I was four. And then the third ring I call the core collusion, which is if you're on the feminine side, could be a child with an abusive parent, could be a woman to a man, could be two guys in a gay relationship.

If you're on the feminine side, you don't tell the truth to power. Bad idea. You up-regulate the power. You don't tell the truth to them. I call this the core collusion. You manage the grandiose person, you don't confront them. And that's true for the women I see in my office, and it's true for this culture at large, and it's true for the field of psychotherapy. We say, "Oh, we can't treat narcissists. You don't even deal with narcissists. You don't even know how to lean in and say you're being an asshole. Knock it off in a way that works. I can do that. RLT can do that." RLT breaks that core collusion of silence and management.

ELISE:

And I love that you take sides. I want to dig deeper on this. One, is narcissism just as a bucket. It's been denuded of all meaning and we just throw it around. Or do you feel like it makes it so it's like this person has an untreatable diagnosis and they're unreachable?

TERRY:

Yeah. I mean, I ain't even name. The new flavor of the month for women is the victim of a narcissistic partner and is hopeless and the therapy says that they're untreatable, so I guess I should leave. That is individual empowerment to the max, and it breaks up... The bane of my existence as a couples therapist are individual therapists who individually empower their clients right out of potentially workable marriages. It's like, hello. So oh, my narcissist is untreatable. Bring them to me, honey. We treat so-called narcissist breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but not in traditional closed door talk therapy. I love George Valiant, a great psychiatrist in Boston, back so many years ago when people smoked in public, he said, "There are two kinds of people in the world. There's a guy who goes into an elevator, gets claustrophobic and turns green. There's a guy who walks in an elevator, lights up a big fat stogie and everybody around him turns green.

Shame, grandiosity." And the guy with a stogie is like, "What's your problem? This is an expensive event. You guys are all wimps. So I need to treat the guy with a cigar. Guess what I do? I bring the other people in the elevator into my office with me to talk to the guy because he doesn't get it. But one of the first things we do when we deal with grandiose people is we bring in the system around them.

ELISE:

What does that mean? That's telling stories? What does that look like? Or is that just you reflecting back to them as someone that they respect, like you're a dick?

TERRY:

No. Our preference when we're dealing with a grandiose client is to bring in their partners, empower the one down partner to stand up to them, and then use that as leverage to help bring the person down. Either way, it could be any gender, but that's the dynamic. We empower the one... This is why we take sides. We're not neutral. For years, I dealt with couples on the brink of divorce and no one else was able to help. They didn't help because they never helped the one down one come up and the one up one come down. So communication skills, I'm going to tell you I hate you, what, more skillfully? No, you're going to come down and you've got to come up. That's the word. We're not going to do that. But literally, I'll look at a brand new therapist in training and it's like, we'll make it heteronormative.

Mrs. Jones, what's the issue? Oh, well, he drinks two martinis a night. He yells and screams at the kids. I've been walking around on eggshells. I hate them. I don't want to have sex with them. Great. Mr. Jones, what's the issue? Well, she's kind of dizzy and she's often 15, 20 minutes late. Okay. Well, you both have issues. I mean, are you kidding me? But that's what we're taught in therapy school. Everything's fifty fifty. It defies common sense. Come on, wake up. So no, the one down one, find some spine. That's your vulnerability. Take a risk and tell the truth. I'll teach you how to do it skillfully. The one up one, listen to them. It's in your interest to listen to them. What they're telling you is true. Let me help you come down. Your kids will be better, your marriage will be better, and you'll live 10 years longer.

I can show it to you in black and white.

ELISE:

Yeah. I was thinking about, I got up to take my husband to the airport this morning, and he's going to see his mom and to pick up our oldest from camp, and I don't know why I would carry guilt about him making this trip instead of me, but it's funny. I was thinking about this conversation with you, and I'm trying to be conscious of my own behavior, and I was thinking on the way home as I was driving, I was like, "I should probably make them a dinner reservation." And then I was like, "That is such a fucking weird move, Elise." And if Rob did that to you, you would be like, "Okay, weirdo control link monster." I mean, why would I do that? But yet that's my instinct, right?

TERRY:

It's about 2,000 years worth of patriarchy. I mean, you think you're in charge of the biosphere.

ELISE:

I think I'm in charge. I don't have any trust in anyone else. And he did not ask me to take - No. Obviously, most of this is me generating my own ideas, Terry, and taking action on them, but I think I'm in charge. That makes me covertly grandiose.

TERRY:

Remember I said men have overt grandiosity and covert shame. Women have overt shame. So I'm ashamed that I can go pick up my daughter AWOL, let my husband do it. So I'm going to make up for that by arranging a corrective experience for my family. I'm not going to ask them if they want it. I'm just going to shove it down their throats because I know better than they do what be relational look like. That's women. Here's the catch-22. Let me say this directly. Hey, ladies, all of you listening to me right now, let me give it to you. Ready? I've been listening to women for 40 years. You do know more about relationships than most men. Relationality is literally emotionally and sometimes even physically beaten out of little boys. You are groomed into society to know more about relationships and want more from them than most men.

I give it to you. Here's the trap. You are not your partner's teacher. You're not their coach. You are not the expert. What's your husband's name, first name?

ELISE:

Rob.

TERRY:

Rob. You are not the expert on Rob's growth into relationality. Here's what you're the expert on, Elise. Speak with humility from the eye. This is what I would like, not this is what you need to do, you sucker. And that's where early feminism went wrong. Men are allergic to being told what to do, but women are sitting there going, I do know more. Yeah, but let go of that objective voice. You're not the authority. Can I tell you a story?

ELISE:

Of course. Yeah.

TERRY:

Yeah. So when I talk about waking up to ecological wisdom and learning to move relationally instead of patriarchally, individualistically, here's a story I tell. True. One session, here's the fight. So I mean, I'm a New Yorker. Her to him, you're a reckless driver. Him to her, you're overly nervous. I wonder if anybody listening has ever encountered that. Okay. So this is the voice of objectivity. You're a reckless driver, you're overly nervous. And then what do they do? They marshal their evidence and argue their case. "Well, you do this, you do that, you do that. I know, but I'm in total control. You're wrong. And look, your sister thinks you're nervous too, and your therapist told me you were... "So it's what I call an objectivity battle. It can go on for 40 years. One session, pay attention. Her to him. There's absolute true story. Honey, let's start with that.

Change the energy. You don't have to be harsh to stand up for yourself. Honey, I know you love me. When you drive by yourself, God bless. I mean, I worry, but it's your life. You're a big boy. When I'm in the car, I don't know, maybe you're fine, but I get nervous. She takes a whole objectivity battle off the table. And maybe I am nervous. I don't know. See, the beauty of speaking subjectively is nobody can argue with you. Your feelings are your feelings. Maybe, I don't know. But when you zigzag and you speed up and you tailgate, none of which he denies, I get kind of crazy. I get terrified. "Honey, you love me. When you drive by yourself, have at it. But if I'm sitting in the chair next to you, do you really want me to be terrified? Look, as a favor to me, could you please drive more conservatively so I could be comfortable next to you?

True story. Him to her. Ready? Of course. And he did. And what could have been a fight that lasted 40 years was over in 15 minutes. Why? She speaks subjectively, not objectively. She speaks with humility, not authority. She doesn't tell him what he has to do. She tells him what she wants, and it's a request as a favor to me, would you not a demand? Those are relational skills, all four, and they work. These skills work better than what you learned in your family and what you learn in this culture, but you have to learn them.

ELISE:

Yeah. Well, and your Instagram is spot on. Your books are fantastic in terms of learning these things. And as you say, I've heard you say this before, we're told we need to work on our relationships, but no one teaches us how, right? So it's all osmosis and learning from poor models.

TERRY:

Yeah. And we're taught relationships should be spontaneous, and good luck with that. Listen, I'm inviting everybody. Come to my website, TerryReal.com. We have a beautiful course on what healthy self-esteem looks like, which you don't have in this culture. We have a great course on boundaries, how to be protected and still connected both at the same time, and we have a great course on basic relationship skills, how to get what you want in your relationship. There is a technology. There's a skill set that works better than what you've learned. Come and learn it.

ELISE:

Thank you, Terry. You're the best. I could talk to you. I wish you were my therapist and my best friend, but I'll settle for this.

TERRY:

Anytime. Anytime.

ELISE:

Terry was gracious enough to blurb On Our Best Behavior, which was doubly meaningful because he has been really formative in my understanding of the way that men and women are conditioned, programmed by patriarchy. Those of you who have read on our best behavior know that the central thesis is that women are programmed To perform goodness and men are programmed to perform power. And this has terrible effects on all of us. And managing through to a shift to something different isn't something that we've really seen, definitely not in our lifetimes, not for thousands of years. We were more affiliative and more partnership based and are. At a simpler time, our culture is quite complex and sophisticated, which doesn't make any of this any easier. And particularly now when you can go and be affirmed in what you believe somewhere, right? But it makes teachers like Terry all the more important as we try to do something differently because our collective, not only does our relational health depend on this, but our collective health depends on this too.

All right friends, thanks for listening. I'll see you next time. If you got something out of today's episode, I would so appreciate your help spreading the word. Please rate and review the episode, follow Pulling the Thread on your preferred podcast platform, and share this episode with a friend who would also enjoy it. That's how we've grown this thing. It's so helpful. Thank you.