Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Terry Real, a nationally recognized family therapist, author, and teacher. He is known for his groundbreaking work on men and male psychology as well as his work on gender and couples.
His book I Don’t Want To Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, the first book ever written on the topic of male depression, is a national bestseller. His new book, Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship is a New York Times bestseller. Terry’s Relational Life Institute offers training for therapists and workshops for couples and individuals.
Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
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Tim Ferriss: Terry, so nice to see you. Thanks for making the time for the show.
Terry Real: It’s wonderful to be here, Tim. I’m a big fan.
Tim Ferriss: And I am a big fan, and it all started with two people. I would say Peter Attia first, on the topic of male depression, and then Kevin Rose on couples therapy, specifically. So we’ve had, I suppose, indirectly and directly a few years, or I’ve had a few years of Terry Real, and I thought that I would share more of Terry live and in person with my audience for a number of reasons. And as we discussed before recording, I thought we would start with some stories, story time with Terry. And I will cue it with bread.
Terry Real: Pumpernickel.
Tim Ferriss: Pumpernickel. Exactly. As all good stories begin, pumpernickel. So could you fill in the blanks with that particular story, please?
Terry Real: So as you know, Tim, my specialty, a couple on the brink that no one else has been able to help, that’s what I’ve been doing for 20 years and that’s what I teach. So here’s a couple on the brink.
The issue was that he was a chronic liar. I teach my therapists, you pay attention to what people report, you pay attention to what they do in front of you, and you pay attention to how you feel. And he’s one of these guys, I walk in and I go, “The sky is blue.” And he goes, “Well, not really blue. It’s really —” The guy is a champion evader, so I get that. He’s an evader.
Then I ask a relational question. A standard therapist would think, “Oh, where’d you get that?” No, there’s somebody else on the other side of that habit, he learned it. So I say to him, “Who controlled you growing up?” He’s an evader. Who was he evading? Sure enough, Dad, military man, how he sat, how he ate, his friends. I said, “Well, what did that little boy do with that controlling father?”
And Timmy smiles, and that’s the smile of resistance. I like that smile, very mischievous smile. And he says to me, ready? “I lied. Dad said, ‘Don’t play with Henry.’ I played with Henry and told him I was playing with Tom.’” Smart boy. I always teach my students, be respectful of the exquisite intelligence of that adaptive little boy or girl that you were, you did just what you needed to do to get by.
But guess what? You’re not that little boy. Your wife is not your father. Maybe you’re on death’s door here, but maybe it’s time to change this up. That’s it, one session. Of course, I don’t tell you the one sessions that don’t work, I only tell you the ones that work. Anyway, one session. They come back two weeks later, this is absolutely true, hand in hand, “We’re done,” and they were. They were done.
“Okay, there’s a story here. Tell me this story.” Guy says to me, over the weekend, his wife sent him to the grocery store to get, say, 12 things. And true to form, he comes back with 11. The wife says, “Where’s the pumpernickel?” I want folks to feel this. He says every muscle and nerve in his body was screaming to say they were out of it. This is a moment my wife, wonderful family therapist, Belinda Berman, calls relational heroism. Every muscle was screaming to do the same old, same old. “And I took a breath, I thought of you.” He was borrowing my prefrontal cortex. “I thought of you, Terry. I looked at my wife and I said, ‘I forgot the goddamn pumpernickel.’ And she looked at me, true story, and she burst into tears and she said, ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for 25 years.’” That’s the story.
Tim Ferriss: It’s a hell of a story, and you are a very good storyteller.
Terry Real: So in Relational Life Therapy [RLT], the work I’ve created, we talk about three parts of the human psyche. The wise adult, the part I’m talking to right now, prefrontal cortex, the most evolved part of the brain. That’s the part that evolved last in the human species, that’s the part that evolved last. Hey, you parents out there with ADHD kids, 26 years old is when the — chill, you’ve got 26 years before they start to calm down. Anyway, prefrontal cortex, stop and think and choose.
But what makes life interesting and dicey is there are two, we call them subcortical parts of the brain, automatic, knee-jerk response. The mature, wise adult. All the way, amygdala in the back, is the completely flooded wounded child part, first moments of life to forethought. Just flooded, just wants to crawl in someone’s lap and cry.
Between these two is what we call the adaptive child part. And Tim, that’s the part most of the people I see have lived most of their lives in, thinking that that’s an adult and it’s not. It’s a kid’s version of an adult. And the hallmark of the adaptive child part of us is that it’s automatic, fight, flight, fawn. I’ve got to get out of here or the world’s going — I’ve got to stand up for myself.
Tim Ferriss: What is fawn? Could you explain that again?
Terry Real: Codependence. “Oh, my God, Tim’s feeling bad. I’ve got to make him feel good because if he doesn’t feel good, I don’t feel good.”
Big for a lot of women, but not only women. And it’s not an adult, “Let me see what I can do to make this relationship work.” It’s an anxious, compulsive, “Oh, my God, I’ve got to fix this guy.”
Okay. What we teach is shifting out of that, we call it relational mindfulness. This is the core skill from which all other skills depend. The adaptive child part of us, you played the losing strategies from Fierce Intimacy in a podcast. It doesn’t want to use skills. It doesn’t want to be intimate — intimacy’s scary — it wants self-protection. So I’m going to control you, I’m going to scream at you, I’m going to withdraw from you. I will never get what I want in the relationship when my adaptive child has taken over. And almost all of the people I see, that’s what happens. Skills are great, but when you’re flooded, they go right out the window.
So the first skill, I call it remembering love. Remember the person you’re speaking to is someone you care about and you live with them, dummy. It’s in your interest, so get centered in that. Somebody wrote, “Wait, why am I talking?” And be honest with, are you talking to nail your partner into the ground or prove you’re right? Then take a break. I’m a big fan of break. Wait until you remember you’re talking to someone you care about and the reason why you’re opening up your mouth is to make things better.
Now, what makes life even more dicey is that that adaptation, like the guy in the story lying, was born in a relationship. And what happens is when people shift out of, I call, I speak about miserable comfortable, happy uncomfortable. And when you move out of that into new territory, vulnerability, risk-taking, courage, standing up for yourself for some, coming down and yielding for others, when you move into intimacy, you lose that old relationship. And there’s a lot of, not always, but there’s a lot of unconscious guilt and loyalty.
So part of the reason why we don’t change is we’re loyal to the relationships that we learn how to be screwed up in. And it feels odd. I say we’re immigrants. We leave the old country and the old people behind.
So a story. Here’s a story, true story. A guy comes to me, he says, “You’re my ninth therapist.” There’s a challenge. Gauntlet’s down, right? Another notch in the belt. “You’re my ninth therapist, eight therapists have tried to help me,” and he was screwed up. The guy is an award-winning artist, a celebrated artist. He’s got a bad back, he doesn’t go to the doctor, he’s got rotten teeth, he smokes too much. He’s just a mess, going to die early at this rate.
What’s his story? Here’s his story. He was raised by a single mom. She died of alcoholism, didn’t know his dad. Her story was when she was a little girl, her father beat everybody up in the whole house, mother and all four sisters and her. As a little nine-year-old girl, this feisty chick walks over to her father and says, “You lay a hand on my mother or my sisters and I’m going to call the police and have you sent to jail.” True story. Father looks at this little nine-year-old says, “Okay. You win. I’m not going to lay a hand on your mother or sisters ever again. I’m just going to beat you.” And he beat her every day of her life until she finally escaped at 16.
Tim Ferriss: Jesus.
Terry Real: Then she became an alcoholic.
Tim Ferriss: Wow.
Terry Real: Catholic family. So here’s what I say. I say, “Well, I know why eight therapists have failed.” And he cued me. I said, “What happens with these therapists?” He said, “Well, sooner or later, they all care more about me than I do.” And then I ditch him. “Okay, got it.” I said, “Okay, I know why that happened.” I say, “Your mother,” who he adored, “Your mother was a sainted martyr. What she did to save her family as a nine-year-old girl was crawl up on that cross and get crucified. And guess what? You’re up on that cross with her. And if you take care of yourself and live a life and get happy and successful and intimate, you will leave her on the cross. She’s dead, by the way, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll leave her and you ain’t going to do that. So you know what? I’m not going to try and make you better. I’m going to celebrate your sacrifice.”
And this is a true story to me. He looked at me and goes, “My back is killing me. Do you know a good doctor in New York?” And there we were.
Tim Ferriss: So what do you do with that?
Terry Real: I got him a good doctor in New York. Once there’s progress, you move it.
Tim Ferriss: I’ve got it. So at that point, he was ready to actually make change.
Terry Real: Yeah. I say, “Look, this is what you’re doing. I admire it.” I always side with the adaptation. “I admire it. By the way, you’re going to die. Your mother’s already dead, she doesn’t care anymore. But what a loyal guy you are. Congratulations. You really want to live like this?” And he says, “No.” Everybody else argued with him. “You’ve got to live. You’ve got to live.” “No, I don’t. No, I don’t.” I went, “Why don’t you crawl up on that cross and die with your mother?” He goes, “Ugh, I don’t think so.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So one of the maybe differentiating characteristics that I appreciate about you, and I can only speak to my experience with you, but I’m sure it applies to therapists you’ve trained, is taking a position, right? You’re not playing the neutral mirror with all of your clients, which gets old very quickly, for me at least, when I’ve worked with other therapists, when I ask them what they think and they’re like, “Well, what do you think?” And it just becomes —
Terry Real: Oh, God.
Tim Ferriss: — this game of echo. Why do you think it is so uncommon to take positions? And how can it be effective?
Terry Real: Oh, my God, we’re taught not to as therapists. We’re actively taught not to. God forbid you should — thou shalt not take sides. If you take a side, particularly if you side with a woman against a man, then you have to go to your supervisor and talk about your mother for a while and you can go back into the therapy. No, no, no, no, no. The idea is that all problems are 50/50, and common sense knows that’s just bullshit.
Literally, I treated a couple. The guy was an untreated, bipolar, manic-depressive, alcoholic rager. What was the woman’s quote-unquote contribution? She was there, that was her contribution. And this was the feminist critique of family therapy. You don’t say to an abused spouse, “What’s your 50 percent of this?” That’s grotesque.
So in RLT, we call it like we see it. “Tim, you’re a nut. And Mrs. Tim, you’re an even bigger nut. And here’s why. And here’s what I think you need to do about it.” So some problems are 40/60, some problems are 99/1. We call it like we see it.
Tim Ferriss: I want to bring up some other, perhaps, concepts or ways of looking at common problems that I think could help people. Could you discuss objectivity battles? Maybe paint a picture of what that looks like. And this is something I found personally very helpful, by the way, not just in intimate relationships, but in all relationships. So could you speak to this, please?
Terry Real: Yeah. I’m glad you said that because relationships are relationships. We’re doing a corporate piece, we’re doing a big thing for the general public, and the same skills in work, with your kids, with your dog. Although most people treat their dogs better than they treat their spouses, but anyway. Okay, what were we talking about?
Tim Ferriss: We were talking about objectivity battles.
Terry Real: Ah, okay.
Tim Ferriss: So what does it look like to do that the wrong way?
Terry Real: Actually, let me go big picture for 30 seconds.
Tim Ferriss: Sure, sure.
Terry Real: The essence of my work, the new book, Us, is about correcting what Gregory Bateson, the father of family therapy, husband of Margaret Mead, called humankind’s epistemological error, philosophical error. And here it is. We stand apart from nature and we control it. We stand apart from nature, that’s individualism. We control it, that’s patriarchy.
And by the way, control can be one up, that’s male, do what I say. Or regulating up, one down, that’s traditionally the female, enabling. Don’t set daddy off. Both forms of control, all bullshit. Nobody controls anything.
Instead, we offer a map and then tools to live it. But here’s the new map. You’re not outside of nature, idiot. You’re inside nature and you depend upon it. Our relationships are our biospheres. We breathe them, you’re an ecosystem. You can pollute your biosphere with a temper tantrum over here, but your partner will retaliate with cold distance over here. There’s no escape, you’re linked. And the idea that you’re not linked is deluded. So once you wake up to the fact that I’m in it, I’m not above it, then all the rules change. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who cares?
So objectivity battle. Here’s the bitter pill. Objectivity has no place in personal relations, I’m sorry. The relational answer or ecological answer, they’re two ways of saying the same thing. The relational answer to who’s right and who’s wrong is who gives a shit. What matters is how are you and I going to work this thing in a way that’s going to work for us? And proving who’s right and who’s wrong is not the way to do that.
Look, I’ve been married 40 years. When my wife and I have a disagreement over accuracy, who remembered it correctly? Whose feelings are more valid? Man, she’s a very difficult person, Belinda, and she has this nasty way of thinking she’s right and I’m wrong. I don’t know why she does that. It doesn’t work.
So let me give you an example of the new world. Here’s a true story. Okay?
Tim Ferriss: Okay.
Terry Real: True story. It’s totally heteronormative. Her to him, “You’re a reckless driver.” Him to her, “You’re overly nervous.” How many of us have been through this one? And everybody starts marshaling their evidence and arguing their case. “No, you’re nervous. You’re nervous about this.” “No, no, you’re reckless. You tailgate.” Okay, that’s an objectivity: who’s right? Who’s wrong?
After one session with me, true story, her to him, “Honey,” start with that, change your energy. “Honey, I know you love me. Right or wrong, maybe I’m overly nervous or whatever.” See, she just takes the whole battle off the table by talking subjectively. “Maybe I’m overly nervous. Nevertheless, when you tailgate and you go switch lanes and you speed up, I get crazy, I get scared. Now, when you’re driving on your own, I worry, but it’s your life. When I’m next to you, you don’t really want me sitting here being terrified the whole time we’re driving. As a favor to me, could you please slow down and drive more conservatively?”
And him to her, beat, beat, beat, “Okay,” and he does. What might’ve been a fight that lasted 40 years is done in 15 minutes because it moves out of objective, who’s the authority? Who’s right? Who’s wrong? What’s fair? What’s unfair? And it becomes relational. “We’re a team. You love me. As a favor to me, could you?” “Sure.” New world. New world and new tools.
Tim Ferriss: And just to underscore that, I remember hearing you give an example, and suppose the overarching point that I was going to underscore is there isn’t a threshold past which your objective data wins typically, right? So if you think your wife is yelling at a server at a restaurant, it doesn’t matter if you have an audiologist sitting right next to you with various types of measurement equipment, it’s still not going to work.
Terry Real: It’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. Of course, applying the scientific method to your relationship — good luck.
Tim Ferriss: Yes. So I’m probably going to do a poor job of prompting this, but I found it so fascinating when I heard you present it once. And that was, in effect, the same way that people sometimes escalate problems where they say, “Da, da, da, da, then you always do this and it’s reflective of this character flaw, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and you could lay it out much more eloquently than I could, is the same way that you can de-escalate something if you apologize for it.
Terry Real: If you out yourself.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Could you speak to that? Because I just thought that was such a brilliant turnaround technique when I heard it, that it stuck with me ever since.
Terry Real: Yeah. This is a step in the critical process of repair. And either in this one or you invite me back, I would love to lay out some skills. We did the losing strategy, I want to do some of the winning.
And here’s a skill that’s part of repair. First of all, look, all of us, when someone we care about confronts us with something difficult, we move into two orientations. The first is objective reality. Well, that’s true. That’s not true. That’s accurate, that’s not. Well, you got to understand that. And then we argue. In our heads, it’s not out of our mouths. We don’t listen, we rebut.
And then the second orientation we all go to is ourselves. “I can’t believe I have to put up with this crap. Belinda, I was just on the road telling thousands of people how to love each other and I come home and you —” Okay.
Let go of objective reality, let go of you, and take a breath. And I want everybody to write this one down. Enter into compassionate curiosity about your partner’s subjective experience. Let me say it again, compassionate curiosity about your partner’s subjective experience. They’re nuts, okay, but find out what kind of nut they are. “That feels bad, honey, tell me why that — help me understand.” Who sounds like that? But that makes peace.
And then when they tell you, “You did this, you did this, you did this,” acknowledge it. Don’t deny it, don’t minimize it, don’t, “Yeah, but —” That’s not an apology, “Yeah, but —” “I did it.” Land on it. And if you really want to get slick, here’s the deal. This is the advanced course. You went right to the PhD. Here’s what I want you to notice. Generally speaking, functional moves in a relationship are moves that empower your partner to come through for you. Nobody gets this. Functional moves in a car make the car go. Dysfunctional moves stop it. Functional moves in a relationship empower the other guy to give you what you want. Dysfunctional moves render them helpless.
So what we do, because we’re trying to get heard, is we go, “You did this and last week you did that and 10 years ago you did that and you always and you never.” The normal escalation is from this moment to trend to character. And I teach people to stay particular and not do that because every move up that ladder renders the person you’re speaking to more helpless, and they’re either just going to get mad or leave or, “You did it, you always, you never, you are a — you’re a slob.” “Okay, what do you want me to —”
No. All right, so stay particular if you’re the disgruntled one. But if you’ve been confronted, a B is, “Yes, I did it.” Here’s an A. You walk up the same ladder I’m telling you not to do as the disgruntled one. You really, “I did it. It’s not the first time I’ve done it.” “Terry, the kids and I were waiting for you. You knew dinner was at 7:00, you come waltzing in at 7:45. You don’t call, you don’t text. It was really rude.” “You’re right, I did it. And I can be late. It’s an issue, we know that. And when I do that, I’m being thoughtless. I get caught up in the moment and I stop thinking about the impact I’m having. And that’s really kind of selfish of me. I do have some selfish tendencies. I’m working on it.” Holy shit, now that’s an apology.
So if your partner outs you, “You did it, you did it before, you often do it, you never, you always,” it’s terrible. But if you out you, oh, my God, your partner’s going, “Wow, there’s hope. This is great.” It’s a funny thing.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it makes me think of, I think it was Hurt Locker and the bomb defusing. It’s like, “Wow, nice job. Nice job with the defusing.” And then, of course, ultimately, you should be working on this issue that you say you’re going to work on or pay attention to.
Terry Real: Tell me if this is your technical bullshit.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. Right.
Terry Real: Actually — I’m sorry, but I have another story. One of my clients told me this, it’s a true story. He said on his wedding day, and I say this, no offense, but particularly for men, on his wedding day, his father-in-law said, “Let’s go for a walk.” Okay. He says, “Son, I’ve got two things for you to master. You master just these two things, your marriage is going to be great.” He said, “Okay, Pops, I’ll buy. What you got?” He goes, “You’re really sorry and you’re going to work on it.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah, I imagine that’ll give you a lot of payoff over a lot of miles. What is, another term that I’d never heard before, being exposed to your work, normal marital hatred?
Terry Real: I got this from Ed Tronick, infant observational researcher. Ed, along with Berry Brazelton, was the first generation — you know, since Freud, what we said about child development all came from listening to adults. We didn’t watch any kids. And he was one of the first people to actually plunk a video camera in front of mothers and infants and then fathers and infants and actually look at what happens. And when he came up with, I borrowed and it’s central to RLT, which is the essential rhythm of all relationships is harmony, disharmony, and repair. Closeness, disruption, and a return to closeness. That’s where the skills come in, how to move from disruption to repair.
Our culture doesn’t teach it. Our culture doesn’t even acknowledge that this rhythm, a good relationship is all harmony. Just like a good body is pure or a good body is like a 20-year-old body. A good sex life is like what you had when you were two weeks into the relationship. No, all harmony is bullshit. Bullshit.
One of the things I like about you, Tim, is you tell the truth. You know what? You go to a cocktail party and you go, “Oh, there’s Harry and Shirley. They’re in their 80s. They still have sex, they love each other.” Makes me — one of these days I’d let you go to a cocktail party in here, “There’s Harry and Shirley. They actually split up for a year. He fell in love with another woman. He couldn’t take it because she was such a drunk. But then she got into AA and got sober and the two of them are really doing reasonably well. Aren’t they cute?” Just once, I’d like to hear that.
So we don’t deal with reality. The father of couple’s therapy back in the ’50s said, “The day you turn to the person who’s next to you,” it was assumed it was your marriage, “and you say, ‘This is a mistake. I’ve been had. This is not the person I fell in love with.’ That,” said Framo, “is the first day of your real marriage.”
So here’s what I want to say about disharmony. You ready? It hurts. It’s dark. You can really, really feel like, “What the hell did I get myself into? This is such a disappointment. And guess what? Your partner’s probably feeling that about you, too. So I talk about normal marital hatred. When you’re in that dark phase, you hate your partner. That’s okay. Don’t kill yourself or her. That’s okay. I’ll teach you how to get through it, but it’s part of the deal for many of them. And here’s what I like to say, I’ve been going around the world talking about normal marital hatred for, oh, my God, what? 30 years. This is true. Not one person has ever come backstage and said, “Terry, what do you mean by that?” It’s okay, kids. Don’t sweat it. You can get through it. It’s normal. Relax.
Tim Ferriss: What are some of the first steps or tools that you would recommend to someone listening who agrees with what you’re saying, but has had no models for repair, has never learned how to use any type of approach for repair? And this is something that your help, well, your direct help, and then also your books have really helped me with because I did not grow up in a household with repair, right? It was basically, one person screams, then the other person goes to fix, which they don’t really want to do, but it’s their attempt to basically quell the disaster and fury, and that’s it. Then everybody’s kind of upset, and it never gets addressed. That was the model growing up. So what do you suggest to people who want to start with repair?
Terry Real: Of course, I’m tempted to say, “So are you a screamer or a fixer?” But I won’t. Leave that alone.
Tim Ferriss: I’m a fixer. I’m not a screamer.
Terry Real: Oh, wow. Okay. Lucky for your partner, but —
Tim Ferriss: Well, yeah.
Terry Real: The problem is the resentment that builds up.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. Yep.
Terry Real: Yeah. Okay. So, repair. First of all, I like to say I have a number of bitter pills to swallow, but if you swallow them, things will be a lot better in your life. And here’s one of them. Repair is a one-way street. Everybody gets that wrong. It’s not a dialogue. It’s not, well, these are your issues with me. Well, these are my issues with you. No. You have your turn, but not then. Take turns. So if you have a disgruntled partner, you are at their service — that’s the first thing to master. I like to say, Tim, you’re at the customer service window. Somebody comes to the customer service window and says, “My microwave doesn’t work.” They don’t want to hear you say, “Well, my toaster doesn’t work.” They don’t want your excuses. Fix the goddamn microwave. Tend to your partner and bring them back into repair with you, then hours later or maybe, or the next, then they might have some interest in what you’re — but tend to them. Put yourself aside and tend to them.
What does that look like? Two things. First, do I get it? Listen. Don’t argue. Don’t rebut. Listen. Empty the well. “I’m sorry you feel bad.” That’s beautiful. Compassion. “I’m sorry you feel bad. I love you. I don’t want you to feel bad. Help me understand. What feels bad? What’s it like for you?” Okay, and then you reflect, “This is what I hear you say. Did I get it?” Yeah, good enough. Good. Two, “Is there something I could say or do right now that would be helpful? What would you like?” Who says that? And then if anything short of jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, give it to them. Be generous. So those are the basics. I could be more specific, but —
Tim Ferriss: Let me ask you a follow-up which is related to this. When someone is attempting to do this, but they’re having trouble biting their tongue because you ask what’s upsetting someone, or you ask them to describe their feelings, and they say, “Well, when you did this, this, and this,” and you disagree with their assessment of reality. We already talked about where objective reality, it doesn’t exist, but nonetheless, it could trigger a visceral response. What is your advice to people who struggle with that? Where it’s like, “That isn’t a reflection of reality. Come on.” And they want to rebut, but they’re not supposed to. How would you suggest they table it? What should they say to themselves, or do you have any other pieces of advice?
Terry Real: Well, we both know you’re a nut. Let’s investigate exactly what kind of nut you are. Let’s get curious. And actually, let’s get compassionate. One of the things I say is, “No one’s a nut to themselves.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Terry Real: The paranoid who’s crouched under the desk because the Russians have put germs in the ventilating system knows that we’re all going to die. And if you knew that there were germs, you’d be under there with him. No one doesn’t make sense to themself. They don’t make sense to you. So let go of you, and see if you can enter into the world of the person. When you show up to our interview with a t-shirt, these are the rules of speaking. I make up, we teach people to say, “What I make up is —” No objective reality. “What I make up is you have a very casual feeling about this interview. Don’t you know that you’re talking to the great Terry Real? How about a little formality? And I feel really insulted.” Oh, yeah, you’re sitting there going, “Fuck you. Give me a break.” If we were partners, you would take a breath and you would go, “Okay, help me understand, what is it about the t-shirt that was so upsetting to you?” And then, “Okay, so you think it was disrespectful? Did I get that right?”
It’s like, “I know you’re a nut. I know that Russians didn’t put germs in the ventilating system, but I want to understand you. Look, I’m sorry that hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to be overly informal.” And then if you really want an A+, this is really parking your ego at the door, “I can understand how you might feel like that.” And really what it is, is, “I can understand, friend, thinking the nutty things you think. If you think that way, that you would feel like that.” So give it to them. Be generous. “I can understand how you might feel like that. Is there something I could say or do that would help you feel better?”
Tim Ferriss: Got it. All right, very helpful. I wanted to shift gears just a little bit, and we can go in a lot of different directions. We can also come back to repair because, as you said already, I mean, this is practically universally neglected in terms of any type of education that people tend to receive. But we’ll park that for a second. I wanted to know what types of deal breakers exist when you work with clients, and that could include addictions, psychiatric conditions, et cetera. But I wanted you to maybe run us through what that list looks like because I might want to double-click on a few of them.
Terry Real: Great. So if you go to my website, and I’m supposed to put in a plug for social media, you can follow me. May I say how?
Tim Ferriss: Of course.
Terry Real: Okay, let me get it right. You can follow me at all socials @RealTerryReal. So @RealTerryReal, or you can go to my website terryreal.com. Anyway, so I have an article about this. Should I stay or should I go? And the tool I use is what I call a relational reckoning. And it’s a question you ask yourself. Here’s the question. “Am I getting enough in this relationship to make grieving what I’m not getting worth my while?” Let me say that again. “Am I getting enough in this relationship to make the pain of what’s missing okay with me?” And if the answer is “Yes, it is okay,” then stop whining and embrace what’s good. Work the change to get more, but embrace what’s good and stop walking around like a big, angry victim. If the answer is “No, it’s not enough,” then do something about it. Lean in and fight. And if it doesn’t work, drag your partner to hopefully an RLT therapist, they’re the ones I believe in, and get an ally and get some help.
And if that doesn’t work, you’re done. You’re done. So okay. So in answering the question, what’s a deal-breaker, let me be clear. Deal-breakers come only after you’ve dragged your partner to a couples therapist, and one that actually helps. And you know you’ve heard me say, I don’t think most do, but get one that will side with you and be an ally and take that person on.
Okay, deal-breakers. Basically, do they want to work or not? If you want to work and they don’t, you could be done. And that could be an addiction, could be sexual acting out, could be anger, could be lying, could be withholding and passive aggression. But if you’re not getting what you want, and the truth of the matter is, your partner isn’t going to do the work of giving you more of what you want, you’re done. And there are a lot of variations on that. Obviously, if somebody’s got an active addiction and they don’t want to work on it, I would not. And people do. People go to Al-Anon and manage, but I’d prefer you break up. If somebody’s a rager or mistreating you, if they violate contracts, particularly monogamy, if they’re chronic liars, and if they have an untreated psychiatric condition, anxiety, depression.
And then, this is interesting, and I would really not trust yourself. I would only trust a professional. If there’s a massive difference in the maturity level of the two people, the evolution of the two people, the immaturity of the unevolved one will start to feel too painful to the more mature one. And they should leave and find a different partner.
Tim Ferriss: So when you, I guess a few questions related to everything you just said. The first is, I have to imagine that in many instances it’s one partner who, not necessarily drags the other person, but convinces them to do therapy. They’re not equally enthusiastic about perhaps being in front of the therapist. So I would imagine there’s a grace period of sorts to enlist the other person.
Terry Real: One session.
Tim Ferriss: One session.
Terry Real: Get one session.
Tim Ferriss: How do you do that, if one person is more resistant or stoic, and the other person is the one who’s more enthused, who sort of initiated that first session?
Terry Real: Instead of carrot and stick, I talk about leverage, negative and positive leverage. “Tim, your partner is saying you’re this, this, and this. She’s pretty fed up.” “Are you fed up, partner of Tim?” “Yeah, I’m fed up.” “How fed up are you exactly? Do you believe her? Why should he believe you?” And what I’m doing is, I’m amplifying the negative consequences. They’re there, but you’re not looking at them. So, my first move is to empower your partner to be firm and speak up to you. And I use that as leverage to get your interest.
So this is the negative thing that I can help you avoid. And here’s the positive thing I can deliver. Would you like a happier, warmer, sexier partner? Okay. And if you have kids, this is a big one. “Hey Tim, what kind of father did you have? What kind of father do you want to be? I’ve got bad and good news. If you don’t do this work, you’re going to do some version of what got done to you to them. You want to do that? Would you like to be a better father than the one you grew up with? Okay, well, you’ve got to let me help you.” And a lot of, particularly, men, who won’t do — it’s hard work, this work, and they won’t do it for themselves, they won’t do it for their witchy wives. They will do it to spare their children. So I get buy-in, and it’s a combination of, “This is what’s going to happen to you if you don’t change, and this is what could happen for you if you do. Here’s the consequence, here’s the reward.”
Tim Ferriss: And when you’re talking about deal-breakers, could you just clarify in what sense they’re deal-breakers? Does it mean that you will not work with them as clients until they address one of those deal-breakers? For instance, they have addiction to alcohol or gambling, or whatever it might be. I found it interesting that you mentioned the anxiety and depression because one of the topics I wanted to talk to you about is male depression. And I guess I’m curious if you work with some of those in tandem, or if people are kind of left to their own devices to figure it out.
Terry Real: No, never. Never do that. I never confront somebody and they let them swing in the wind. I’m always right next to you telling you, “Okay, this is what you’re doing that ain’t working. Let me take your hand and teach you what does work.” And that’s different than a lot of other therapies. We roll up our sleeves and get granular. Tim, this isn’t you, I’m just — “Tim, do you notice that your face is kind of frozen when you talk and you’re speaking in monotone?” And your wife is out of her mind right now because nobody’s ever said this to you, but she’s bored as hell next to you. “This is what I want you to do as we learn, really learn for you to start speaking about your feelings, I want you to go like this with your face.
Tim Ferriss: Animate it.
Terry Real: I want, yeah. “Let me see a little oomph here.” I mean, that’s what I call micro coaching. And we roll up our sleeves and get right next to you and teach you how to do it better.
We call them preconditions: addiction, acting out, psychiatric conditions. Acting out either violence or sexual acting out. We will not take couples if there’s domestic violence. You go off to a safety program, you go off to a perpetrator program. I don’t ask people to tell the truth to power if it’s dangerous, safety for — about the others, sexual acting out, addictions, psychiatric disorders, RLT therapists will meet with the couple, but only to talk about the issues. What are you going to do about your depression? What are you going to do about your womanizing? How are we going to settle this? The idea is, it would be bullshit for me to pretend that I can help you and your partner get closer while you’re still engaged in this though.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Terry Real: So sobriety first. I will meet with a couple, but to deal with what you’re not dealing with, then we can work on your relationship.
Tim Ferriss: So let’s double-click on your first book, I Don’t Want to Talk About It, because I know Peter Attia, who’s an old friend of mine, of course, very well known doc these days, is a huge fan of this book. I have not yet read it. I apologize for that. But I would love for you to perhaps describe what people get wrong about male depression, or we could dive directly into covert depression. Because I’m wondering how many of these preconditions might be explained by depression, as opposed to being separate problems.
Terry Real: Yeah, great. First of all, for those who haven’t, please read Peter’s book Outlive. It’s great. And the last chapter is about his work with me and Esther Perel. It’s about his own psychological work. And also, if I may, Peter had a podcast that we did together and he talked about his work with me. It was very moving. So look those two things up.
Male depression, when I wrote that book, it’s 30 years old. It’s selling as well as my new book, by the way. It’s really been a keeper. Depression was seen as a woman’s disease, and I argued against that. And what I said is that a lot of men have the same kind of depression that we normally think of. I call it overt depression. But a lot of men, unlike women, have what I call covert depression. You don’t see the depression. You see what the man is doing to defend against the depression.
And many of the problems we think of as typically male may be fueled by depression. So self-medication, rage, philandering, radical withdrawal, all of these may be symptoms of an underlying depression. A lucky guy gets what we call a dual diagnosis. Forgive me I can’t be, you know the joke. “You’re terminal.” “I want a second opinion.” “Okay, you’re ugly.” It’s like, okay, the bad news here is you’re addicted, and the worst news is underneath the addiction, you’ve got depression. Lucky guy gets a dual diagnosis. Unlucky guy gets one or the other. If you stumble into an addictions person, they’ll clean up your addiction, but they won’t deal with them. If you go to a psychiatrist, they’ll give you meds for your depression, but you’re drinking like a fish. First you have to deal with the defenses. When they settle down and move into some level of sobriety, then the underlying depression comes. You don’t even have to go after it. It comes up.
I say the cure for a covert depression is an overt depression, and once the pain comes up, you deal with it. But I think part of the reason why that book has lasted for 30 years is there’s a third piece, which is, not only do men express depression differently, but the etiology is different. Girls and women get depressed because they famously lose their voices and blame themselves and turn inward.
Boys and men get depressed because of what I call normal boyhood trauma under patriarchy. We are taught at three, four, five years old to deny our vulnerability, to disconnect from our feelings, to disconnect from others, all in the name of autonomy. We cut off half of our humanity, the feelings, the vulnerability, connection, really, in some ways, the most rich, nourishing parts of what it means to be a human. And that cutoff, which is imposed on boys, I have story after story, that cutoff is traumatic. And it also renders you isolated and lonely. So there’s a lot of trauma. That trauma becomes depression, that depression becomes acting out or self-medication. And if you really want to heal someone, you hit all three layers. First the defenses, then the depression, then the childhood trauma.
Tim Ferriss: How do you think about teasing out when, for instance, addiction is paired with underlying depression, maybe downstream of it versus independent? Because I suppose there’s a risk of asking a barber if you need a haircut in the sense you go to the surgeon, they tell you you need surgery. You go to the fill-in-the-blank, right, they tell you that you need whatever their specialty happens to be, just like you mentioned with getting the single diagnosis versus the dual diagnosis. So how do you determine if something is actually paired with underlying depression, since that’s the, sort of, example we’re talking about in men versus independent.
Terry Real: It’s really simple. When the person starts to get sober, do they get depressed?
Tim Ferriss: I see.
Terry Real: And the depression that they get looks just like psychiatric depression.
Tim Ferriss: I see what you’re saying. So if they’re a workaholic and they pare that down, does the depression then have room to breathe and express itself, basically? When the coping mechanism is removed in some capacity.
Terry Real: Yeah. As opposed to you remove the coping mechanism and, “Oh, my God, I’m so much better.” However, you can cut out the middle piece depression, but 99 out of 100, you go from sobriety to trauma. You have to deal with the underlying trauma. My great mentor, Pia Mellody, a great legend in the 12-step community, ran The Meadows for 70 years. First the addiction, then the personality issues, and then underlying childhood trauma. If you don’t deal with the underlying trauma, it’s going to be hard for that person to stay sober.
Tim Ferriss: What type of approaches or modalities do you favor for working with trauma when you get to that layer?
Terry Real: We like to do trauma work with your partner sitting next to you. And we’re unique in that. And I’ve got to tell you, I’ve argued against what I call toxic individualism in this culture, and psychotherapy is up to its eyeballs in supporting individualism and supporting patriarchy.
Tim Ferriss: I want to ask you about this word patriarchy, because you have so many messages that I think I want to convey to, not just a male audience, but I have a very large male audience, and I feel like patriarchy can be a very loaded term and that there are matriarchal or matrilineal, there are patrilineal societies, both of which function pretty well. And I’m just wondering how you think about using versus not using that term, because I feel like there’s a risk that you might turn off men who actually need to hear a lot of what you have to say. How do you think about that?
Terry Real: It is what it is. So let me talk about what I mean, and then we can talk about the marketing of it.
I make a distinction between what I call political patriarchy and psychological patriarchy, and political patriarchy is the oppression of women by men. It’s all over the globe, and it’s deadly in some cultures. It’s a very real thing. Psychological patriarchy is basically traditional masculinity writ large. I’ll double back, but psychological patriarchy, traditional masculinity, guys, listen up, is a system that does damage to everybody, everybody. And does deep, deep damage to our relationships.
What do I mean by that? Let me just take traditional masculinity. The essence of traditional masculinity under patriarchy, the overarching system, is invulnerability. The more invulnerable you are, the more manly you are, the more vulnerable you are, the more girly you are, and that is not a good thing. And of course, we both know there’s been a huge resurgence, a backlash. “Don’t tell us we’re bad people. I’m a guy, and I want to exert my —” I’m not talking about not being powerful. I’m talking about not being dominant. There’s a difference.
Riane Eisler talks about power over versus power with. I want men to be powerful, and I also want women to be powerful. I want all of us to be whole. And what patriarchy does is, it’s what Carol Gilligan calls the binary. These human qualities are feminine. A good man has none of them. These human qualities are masculine. A good woman has none of them. And it’s what Olga Silverstein called the halving process. You take a whole human being, you draw a line down the middle, half of your humanity say goodbye to. That is not healthy. That’s not good for anybody. So vulnerability, for example, what we do, the way we, quote-unquote turn boys into men under patriarchy is through disconnection. We teach them to disconnect from their feelings. There’s hard research. Three, four, five little boys have more feelings than little girls, actually. They’re more sensitive.
But by three, four, or five, they know better than they open their mouths and say anything. They’ve read the code. So no vulnerability, no emotion, not too connected to others. You’re independent. Great. Here’s what I say. I would say it to you if you showed up in my office. “Tim, the things you learned as a boy about what makes a good man are the very qualities that will ensure that by today’s standard, you’ll be seen as a lousy husband.”
Across the board, I’ll just deal with heterosexuals for a moment. Women want men’s hearts, they want connection. “Tell me what the fuck you’re feeling. Open your mouth and share with me. When I come to you with a feeling, be compassionate and not dismissive.” Well, guess what? All of that goes against what was imposed on you as a boy about how to handle yourself as a man. But one of the things I say is moving men, women, non-binary folk into true intimacy is synonymous with moving them beyond traditional gender roles, beyond patriarchy. Men have to move into vulnerability and open their hearts. Women have to move into assertion with love — not with harshness, but with love. And doing that on both sides moves beyond anything that this culture teaches us. It’s pioneer work.
Tim Ferriss: Thank you for unpacking that. We might come back to it. I’m happy to talk about that more. I have follow up questions, but I don’t want to take us off track with the trauma question because you were talking about one of the supposed defining and unusual characteristics by conventional therapy standards is that RLT does trauma work with the partner present. That’s where I, then, took us on a side quest with the question about patriarchy
Terry Real: Yeah. As a relational therapist who argues against exaggerated individualism, look, here’s the thing. We’ve never wanted more from our relationships than we do right now. It’s historically new. We don’t think historically, so we don’t get this, but our parents, grandparents, a companionable marriage was plenty good enough, but we want more. We want real intimacy and to sustain it. We want to hold hands, walk on the beach, have heart to hearts, have great sex in our 60s and 70s. I mean, we want to be lifelong lovers. This is new. Marriage was never built for that. Go into Western literature and find me a passionate marriage. All passion is adulterous.
Tim Ferriss: It’s new.
Terry Real: Yeah, it’s new. But we live in an anti-relational culture — that’s patriarchy. We live in a culture that’s about up down, win, lose, right, wrong. No, we have to wake up to ecological wisdom. We’re a team. We’re in this together. “What do you need, honey? It’s in my interest to keep you happy.” That’s the new world order. And not to diss on man, but I’ve got these big burly guys and they say, “Why should I have to work so hard to please my wife?” And I go, “Knock, knock. You live with her. It’s in your interest.” That’s what I teach people. It’s in your interest to learn how to do this though.
Tim Ferriss: And also I just say for clarification that you mean to keep someone happy, but in an interdependent, not codependent way. Because it’s easy to go into that fixing mode to think you’re making someone happy.
Terry Real: You’re right. And I didn’t say it’s in your interest to make them happy, what I really say it’s in your interest to take care of your biosphere. And if you’re riding the one up, at some point we should talk about that, if you’re more in the one up and you’re more entitled, demanding, dominant, you don’t listen, you’ve got to come down off your high horse. If you ride in the one down like a fixer, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, my partner’s upset.” Codependent. You need to take a breath. What your biosphere needs is for you to be assertive and be more conflictual.
Fight a little more, stand up for yourself. You have to correct what’s off. It’s not one size fits all, it’s what’s off for you. If you’re one up, come down. If you’re one down like a fixer, then assert yourself and take some risks. But both are vulnerability. When we think of vulnerability, we think of sensitivity, but for a fixer like you, standing up for yourself and “Oh, my God, they may get mad at me,” that’s vulnerability for you. So what does my biosphere need?
Carol Gilligan says there can be no voice without relationship. So come down off your high horse if you’re dominant. There can be no relationship without voice. So I would work with someone like you and I would have you, okay, I want you to identify what you’re feeling. I want you to identify what you want and need right now. Don’t worry about pleasing them. What does Tim want? And I want to teach you how to articulate that in a way that might get listened to. May I hypothesize about you?
Tim Ferriss: Sure, go for it.
Terry Real: This could be wrong, but here we go. “What I make up,” as we say. So you have this dominant, I’m assuming, father —
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it was father.
Terry Real: — and this codependent, unhappy mother. This is what I call the unholy triad of patriarchy. You’ll wonder why so many men are love avoidant or avoiders. Well, here’s why. You have an irresponsible or shut down father, you have an unhappy mother, and I guarantee this was you, a sweet, sensitive, big-hearted young boy. The mother doesn’t have to do a thing to enmesh him, to use him. That boy looks at his unhappy mother and says, “What can I do to make her happy?” And he lets go of what he wants and needs and becomes her caretaker emotionally.
Grows up and his template for relationship is “I’m a caretaker, I’m a fixer, I’ve got to take care of them. My needs, nobody gives a shit.” So what that breeds maybe, maybe not, is what we call a love avoidant. You live behind walls because relationships mean “I surrender my needs and to care-take them. I’m a human, so I need relationships, so I pull them in, but once they’re in, I’ve got to keep them at arm’s length or they’ll eat me alive.” So you live behind walls to protect yourself. That’s that adaptive trial. How am I doing?
Tim Ferriss: I mean, you’re 100 percent spot on. I think at the very end I had a question in my mind as to whether I have those types of walls because I don’t know what they might look like. So perhaps could you give me an example of what those might look like and then I could tell you yes?
Terry Real: How good are you at identifying what you want in a relationship and assertively going after it?
Tim Ferriss: I’d say pretty good at identifying. Could be a lot better at proactively going after it and requesting it. Tend to be very indirect. So yeah, that would be accurate to say for sure.
Terry Real: Yeah. And the cost of that indirectness is you don’t get your needs met and then resentment grows and whatever.
Tim Ferriss: Making progress. Making progress.
Terry Real: I can feel that, by the way. I can feel that. I would teach you the cure for love avoidance is negotiation. I would teach you to identify what you want and lean in and have the daring to break the rules and say, “Hey, you know what? I don’t want to eat Indian tonight. I want to eat Japanese. And the last two nights we ate what you wanted and tonight we’re doing Japanese.” “Well, I don’t like that, Tim.” “Well, okay.” And for you fixers, I say, “Let the bad thing happen.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, that’s good.
Terry Real: That adaptive child part of you is petrified of conflict. You don’t want to make Dad angry and you don’t want to make Mom unhappy. You’re a fixer. You’re a good boy. You want to bring peace. Well, I would say because this is where trauma enters into our relationship. That adaptive child part of you has no model for healthy conflict. It’s either yelling and screaming or giving in. And we children, we look at Mom and Dad, we go, “I’ll be that one.” You looked at mom, “I’ll be that one. I don’t want to be Dad. I don’t want to be that aggressive.” So you don’t have a healthy template for healthy aggression.
Tim Ferriss: Didn’t have that model.
Terry Real: Yeah, me too. I had a violent father. And I would teach you how to have healthy conflict and feel good about that, but it would be very scary initially.
Tim Ferriss: So you nailed a couple of things that I want to revisit. So the first, and this will come back into the patriarchy thing too, because what you do, Terry, is so powerful and so important. I want as many men to listen to it as possible, which is why I’m talking about the patriarchy piece. It’s not because I disagree with a lot of what you’re saying, although I do have some clarifying questions. So one thing you said is you hypothesized. The story you make up is that I was very, very sensitive or I was a very sensitive young kid, which is true.
I was very sensitive, much more so than my schoolmates. And then for a host of reasons, also including some pretty terrible childhood abuse, not from my family, ended up trying that. Yeah, I’ve written about it extensively, but yeah, maybe another time. But the upshot of it is that I turned that off, emotions, insensitivity, or liability. So I completely compartmentalized that, locked it, put it away. And that continued to be the case and I paid a lot for that. There was some upside. There’s some upside.
I had a very high pain tolerance. I could handle certain things. I could be aggressive and take a lot of shots in the course of doing various things, competitive sports, business, whatever. So I had some quote-unquote “success” from that, but there was a lot of collateral damage. And then around 2013, for a number of reasons, including a relationship I thought was going to end in marriage and kids coming to a halt decided to reopen the doors and reactivate that sensitivity. That’s been a project for the last 12 years or so.
Terry Real: Brilliant and courageous both. Congratulations.
Tim Ferriss: Thank you. And so that’s been an incredibly rewarding and challenging path thus far, and it continues. I don’t regret having done that. My question, I suppose, and this might seem a little out of left field, is that, when you’re talking about men being available to their partners and emotionally attuned, and I know I’m using different vocabulary. I agree —
Terry Real: That’s all good.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I agree with all of that, but I suppose some people listening might feel like men and women might be positioned as equivalents in a lot of ways, emotional doppelgangers. And I’m just wondering if you feel like there are any patterns in terms of male and female differences that you spot again and again that don’t need to be fixed, that they’re actually just whether intrinsic or otherwise differences to embrace. And I’m just curious what your thoughts are there. I tend to think there are, but I’m curious what your position is on that.
Terry Real: I don’t know. Who are we beyond our socialization? I don’t know. What I do know is that the bifurcation of men and women under patriarchal culture, which is virtually ubiquitous in the world, is so strong. You gave up your sensitivity because your sensitivity was punished. And the playground is the greatest enforcer of traditional roles. You learn. Three, four, five-year-old boys learn to keep their mouths shut or they’re going to get punished.
And for the guys out there, I’ve got to say, after 50 years, for a girl to cross into boy land, it’s yeah, she’ll get some shit. For a boy to cross into girl land evokes violence, emotional, and I’m sorry, at times, even physical violence. It’s dangerous to break the rules. It’s dangerous to stand up for being whole in this culture. And I talked to parents about having their boys be literate, gender literate. Can I tell you a story?
Tim Ferriss: Of course. I love your stories.
Terry Real: So when my kids were little, I’ve got two kids, one’s a massive jock, Justin, and one is a gay doctor, ballet dancer. Danced professionally and he’s got vibes. Anyway, they were both amazing and very, very different kids. And we went off to vacation and it was the Dominican Republic and they had cornrows put in their hair. The kids did that. My little one, Alexander, who turned out to grow up to be gay, did his whole head in cornrows and they were green — no, pink and gold, his favorite colors.
His older brother, Justin the jock, had a couple of Keith Richards, cool, rock and roll. All right. It’s time to go to school, we’re back from vacation, but then I sit them down and go, “Here’s the deal. If you go to school with that in your hair, you may get crap from the other kids. If you don’t go to school with that in your hair, you may feel like you’ve missed out on expressing yourself. And it could be the kids are going to love that stuff in your hair. I don’t know. What do you guys want to do? It’s not my decision, it’s yours.”
And we talked to the boys about, “Do you want to express yourself and deal with the crap you’re going to get, or do you want to comply and deal with the inauthenticity of that? It’s your choice, not ours.” I don’t make those choices for my boys, but it’s on-the-table conversation. So they both said, “Sure.” And as the older one who delved in the Keith Richards — he puts his foot in the car, he goes, “I can’t do it.” And we wind up cutting his hair. His brother, Mr. Pink and Gold, was, like, the toast of the town, but it could have gone another way.
So I would teach young Tim how to negotiate his sensitivities so that when they were welcome, they were overt and when they were unwelcome, you put up a shield of toughness to protect yourself, and having some sense of which moment is when.
Tim Ferriss: How did you navigate that with your boys? How did you raise your boys? I’d be so curious to hear more about it, because there is a time to — it’s not limited to men, of course, or boys, but I think there’s a lot of value placed, and I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, on competition and winning and so on and so forth. And I’m just so curious, since you mentioned the jock, in particular, how did you think about raising those two boys and did you raise them any differently?
Terry Real: I did. No, they were both raised similarly to one another, but they’re very different from the culture at large. It’s funny. We just had our first Relational Life Therapy annual conference and my sons got on stage with me and the older one, Justin the jock, was very funny. He looked at the crowd and he said, “You know, being the son of two therapists, the way I grew up, you want to talk to me about how your nanny had sex with you when you were five or your deepest anxiety? I’m there. No problem. It took me into my 20s to learn how to sit on a bar stool, have a beer, and talk to the guys about a game. Nobody’s perfect.”
The thing is I want whole people. And I’m going back to people who may be turned off by what I’m saying. It absolutely kills me when people describe my work as “Terry’s trying to feminize men.” No, I want whole human beings. I want smart, sexy, competent women. I want powerful, big-hearted, compassionate men. We don’t need to halve ourselves in compliance to the world order. We can be whole. And the issue is whole and adaptable. What is this moment calling for? And I’ve got to tell this story. This is one of my favorite stories.
Tim Ferriss: Please.
Terry Real`: So I had the privilege of going to Maasai land in Tanzania with another family who knew this particular compound, these guys very well. It took 10 hours of driving to get to them. They were remote and this is the real deal. I mean, we’re talking earlobes down here and everybody, they have spears and they kill lions and these are real warriors. So I had a men’s group with the elders for four nights running and we talked about everything.
So I go like this to them, “In the United States, there’s a debate about what makes a good man?” Morani, warrior, all one word. “What makes a good Morani?” “Some people say a good Morani is sensitive and thoughtful and kind. Some people say a good Morani is fierce and tough and no bullshit. What do you guys think? Which is it?” True story, Tim. So this little guy who’s got to be four foot three and a thousand years old, crooks his finger and he sounds like he’s totally pissed at me. And “Blah, la, la.”
And it goes from Maasai to Swahili to English to Swahili, and this is what he says, “I have no interest in talking to you about what makes a good Morani. I could[n’t] 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 mess with him. I mean, he’ll kill you. When the moment calls for tenderness, a good Morani will lay down his sword and shield and be sweet like a baby. A great Moroni is a man who knows which moment he’s with.”
Tim Ferriss: That’s good. Yeah, that’s very good.
Terry Real: I want whole people who can adapt to what’s in front of them. That’s health.
Tim Ferriss: How did you and your wife think about changing how you would raise your kids from how you were raised? How did you think about think that? And just be curious to hear you approach that from whatever angle makes sense.
Terry Real: Well, as you probably know, both my wife and I came from terrible trauma, terribly violent families. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. And four books, 40 years, here’s probably been my single most famous quote. They say it’s the height of attention to quote yourself, but I’ll do it. Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to their ancestors and spares the children that follow.
Belinda and I made a rock solid commitment that we were not going to leak the kind of reactivity and violence that we grew up with on our kids. And we didn’t. We did it on each other. We had a real rock ’em sock ’em marriage for years. We were both fighters, but we spared the children. And they know that. And they’re really robust, radiantly healthy boys. I am the son of an angry, depressed father. He was the son of an angry, depressed father. I have two boys, neither of them say that and neither will their children. And that is the greatest achievement of my life.
Tim Ferriss: I mean, it’s an amazing achievement. And I’d love to get a little more, not microscopic, but granular in the sense that a lot of people say they want to change. A lot of people have nearest resolutions and they say, “You know what, I’m not going to be the diabetic my parent was because I can fix it. I can change it.” And they don’t change. So I’m wondering how, especially since you had the rock ’em sock ’em experience in your marriage, what were the actions you took or the strategies you had to check yourselves and ensure that you weren’t letting those older, inherited behaviors bleed into your parenting?
Terry Real: Well, first of all, get help. Men don’t get help. In the book, I said a man is about as likely to get help for depression as he is to ask for directions. If you come from a tough background, I say this to the people I work with all the time, you can come from what you came from and have the happy, healthy family you want without doing a shitload of therapy, a shitload of work. Men’s groups, women’s groups, 12-step groups, therapy, but therapy that works. But the first thing I want to say is thank God you don’t have to do this on your own because you won’t know what to do. Get help. And get help that helps.
Tim Ferriss: So you guys had help.
Terry Real: Years and years of spiritual work. I’ve been meditating over 50 years, and all stripe of therapy work. There’s a saying: “Therapists are people who need to be in therapy 40 hours a week.” I became a professional therapist to heal myself and then I became a family therapist to learn how to have a relationship. I mean, I was so far behind the starting gate. In 12-step, one of the things folks say is “The last phase is gratitude.” I was so on the ropes.
Unlike a lot of people, if I did my default, I’d be dead now. That’s true. A lot of my friends I grew up with are dead. If I did what I learned, I’d be dead. I had no choice but to go under or reconfigure myself. And that’s a gift. Same with Belinda. And we are. We’re reconstructed human beings. Belinda calls us retreads, like a tire. And I love reconstructed human beings. We have a lot of depth. And if I can do it, you can do it. There’s a way to do it no matter where you come from, but you’ve got to be willing to do the work, and it’s hard goddamn work.
Tim Ferriss: What do your group therapy experiences look like? I remember, and I don’t think you would mind me saying this, I’ll double-check with them after we finish recording, but Kevin went through a group, I want to say for lack of a better way to describe it, therapy experience with seven or eight people. He didn’t tell me anything.
Terry Real: Men. Men’s group.
Tim Ferriss: Men. Men. And he didn’t tell me anything about the content, of course, but it had a really big impact on him. And I’m curious what the format was, what the rules looked like for a men’s group like that.
Terry Real: We start off with check-ins. How’s everybody doing? What’s on your mind? And then either we move into a theme that emerges. So my practice is 10 full-pay people and four pro bono at any given time. And the 10 who pay, they tend to be high rollers. So here’s a group of some of the bigger mover and shaker guys in the world right now and then we had a hilarious time talking for two hours about how we were all petrified of our wives.
So sometimes that theme will emerge. Fathers, anger, self-medication, being afraid of our wife. And/or as the check-in evolves, one person will pop and I’ll go deep and do trauma work with you. We’re not going to do it, just go around anyway, but if you were in the group at some point I would say, “I want to go back to that little boy who learned how to be a fixer. How old were you when you first adopted that? Four or five is whatever it was. Close your eyes, go into your body, find that four-year-old boy, ask him to come out and sit in a chair facing you. What’s he look like? How do you feel toward him? What do you want to say to him? What does he need to hear from you? What’s it like for him? How does he respond to what you just said?”
And I get into a dialogue between you and this little boy. Of course it’s very emotional. And it ends, always, with you saying to that little part of you, “I’m here now. I can take care of you. Your angry partner may not be available and that’s frightening to you, but I’m available. We don’t need her. You turn to me.” And that’s transformative. So I do deep trauma work in the men’s group or we do a theme or we just all hang out and talk about what’s going on in our lives, any or all of the above.
Tim Ferriss: Are there any guidelines for how people can respond to what someone else says or discloses? I’m just thinking there’s sometimes rules in organizations like the Entrepreneurs Organization and in forums and things like this and these smaller-sized groups. Do you think if somebody was thinking about creating something like this for themselves, and I know it’d be good to have a professional involved, of course, but are there any other rules or guidelines that you think are helpful in these types of groups?
Terry Real: As you know, I have eight million sayings, here’s one of them: “Generally speaking, unsolicited advice doesn’t go very well.” So we all learned to have good boundaries in these groups, which we can double back and talk about. A core principle of RLT is what we call full-respect living. I may disagree with how you think, but I hold you in respect. And it is a part of the culture of the group that we speak to one another with humility, this is what I’m making up, Tim, and with respect. No one in these groups said, “What a fucking asshole. How can you do this to me?” We just don’t talk to each other that way. And I never had to make that explicit. It just happened.
Tim Ferriss: When you were talking about identifying the age of the little boy and having him sit in the chair, for some people listening, they might hear echoes of, say, Internal Family Systems, IFS. Does your approach — is it similar to that? Does it differ from it? How do you think about that?
Terry Real: Let’s do this briefly because this could be a whole — there are some similarities. For example, there’s a three part of the psyche, what I call the wise adult has some correlation to what Dick calls self, what he calls protectors and managers has some correlation to what I call the adaptive child and his exiles, my wounded child. So there’s some similarities, but there are also some very distinct differences.
I don’t believe that the adaptations that you learned as a kid are all defensive or are all about protecting the wound. And I believe there are bad parts. Dick is almost a religious fervor that there’s no such thing as a bad part. No, there are grandiose, retaliatory parts of you that you really need to corral and they’re not all there. And there’s also entitlement and privilege and it’s not all grouped around protecting a vulnerability.
We think that in psychiatry too. We think all grandiose behavior is a defense against shame. No, some grandiose behavior is just entitlement and hatred. That’s part of where humanity. I don’t think Hitler killed millions of Jews because he was protecting a vulnerable part of himself, there’s more to it than that. So we take on some of the issues of grandiosity and entitlement and some of the less savory parts of our humanity in a way that I don’t think IFS quite does.
Tim Ferriss: Broadly speaking, do you think there are any new or particular challenges with modern relationships? Whether it be —
Terry Real: Oh, my God.
Tim Ferriss: Dating or marriage, anything that is relatively new on the scene, in your opinion?
Terry Real: Well, polyamory is interesting.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, let’s talk about it. Fire away.
Terry Real: Well, Belinda and I had spent three months in Costa Rica, and amongst the young expats who can’t find a monogamous couple anywhere, and polyamory is a real challenge. Monogamy is the challenge too. I used to say that monogamy is unnatural in open marriages. Wow, hold on. So people trying to — there are people experimenting with different models of intimacy and, okay, open the doors and there are challenges.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I remember I was chatting with someone who had experimented with every variant of polyamory and she referred to it as polyagony. That was her label for it. But I would love to know, are there challenges for monogamy now that didn’t seem to exist 20 or 30 years ago or that are just much more exaggerated now?
Terry Real: Yeah, a number of things. First of all, we men are trying to figure out what the hell we are. And here, someone once described my work as “Women have had a revolution and now men have to deal with it and no one knows what to do.” Women have had a revolution and they are speaking up and they are insisting on intimacy from us guys in ways that are exactly in conflict with our traditional role as men. Erik Erikson said, “It’s a sign of a healthy culture that socialization practices in childhood equip you to succeed in your adult roles, and it’s the sign of a culture and transition when there’s a disjuncture between the two.”
And for men there’s a disjuncture. What traditional masculinity teaches you as a boy, whether you want it or not, often through punishment, by today’s standards, will give you problems in your relationship. You’ve got to be vulnerable, you’ve got to open your heart. Literally, you have to reconfigure masculinity in order to be a good partner these days, and people need help with that. The cultural response to feminism and women’s empowerment has been a big backlash. You know the Manosphere and that sobering [series] Adolescence, there’s a big resurgence of “I’m a man and I’m tired of being told I’m bad and go screw yourself.” It ain’t going to work. The toothpaste ain’t going back in the tube.
So what I say is I don’t want women to stand down. I want men to stand up and meet these new demands. Look, I’ve been saying this for 40 years and research has finally caught up with me. Relationality, intimacy, open-hearted connection. The ace that we RLT therapists have in our back pockets, that’s what we human beings are designed for. We’re designed to be intimate. Not being intimate — I know you do a lot of great work with health on your podcast. Not being intimate is as bad for your body as smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. This is hard, black and white research. We are born to be intimate. Moving beyond traditional gender roles is the only way to get there. So stop whining, stand up, and learn a few relational skills. It’s good for you, it’s good for your body, you’ll live longer, it’s good for your marriage, and it’s good for your children, and let me help you learn how to do this better — and that’s revolutionary.
You’ve got a lot of people out there. I’m so happy to be on this podcast with you, truly. You’ve got a lot of people out there, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not putting up with it. We men need to reclaim our power and —” No, we need to open our hearts and listen. And listen, here’s a simple way. You don’t like patriarchy, here’s what I — I teach the men I work with to learn to become family men. Here’s how you’re a family man. You decentralize yourself. I wrote this in I Don’t Want to Talk About It. “A boy’s question of the world is “What do you got for me?” A man’s question of the world is “What’s needed here?” And I teach men to show up as men and not boys. What’s needed here?
Research on happiness is, I like black and white research. If you get a gift, you’re happy, you get happier for a bit. If you give a gift, you’re even happier and longer than if you get it. What men need to understand is it’s good for us to be empowered, be assertive, and also to be connected and show up and ask ourselves what’s needed here? How do I need to show up here? That’s a man.
Tim Ferriss: I liked that framing, the questions and how they differ for boys and men. It does, I think, perhaps to some listeners sound like men have a lot of heavy lifting to do and women have had this revolution and all is well in woman land. Is there such a thing as toxic femininity? Is there collateral damage to all of these societal shifts?
Terry Real: Yes. I’m glad you brought this up because in family therapy we talk about first and second order change. First order change is just a rearrangement. Tommy’s truant. Get Tommy to not be truant and then Sally starts pooping her pants. It’s like, okay, well, rearranging the furniture. Second order change is a revolution. No kid has to be symptomatic. In our culture, there’s a lot of what I call individual empowerment. “I was weak, now I’m strong. Go screw yourself. I am woman. I have found my voice. Hear me roar.” No. And you get a lot of, I’m going to get into trouble, but too bad. You get a lot of people in that traditional feminine side of the equation. It doesn’t matter what body you’re in, you as a fixer on that feminine side.
You get a lot of the people on the feminine side move from disempowerment to individual empowerment. I call it “I was weak. Now I’m strong. Go screw yourself.” And everybody will cheer. Mom, dad, therapist, 12-step sponsors, your men’s group. No. Relational empowerment is the next step. “I was weak. Now I’m strong. I’m going to go toe to toe with you. I’m going to tell you just what I want and need. Now listen to this. What could I give you to help you do that for me? Who sounds like that? We’re a team. I love you. What do you need? Let’s work together.”
That’s the next step. And a lot of women, early stage feminism moved from disempowerment to individual empowerment. As a couples therapist, often the bane of my existence as an individual therapist who’s individually empowered their client right out of a workable relationship. No, “I was weak. Now I’m strong. I love you. We’re a team. Let’s roll up our sleeves and work on this together.” That’s the new world order.
Tim Ferriss: We’ve covered a lot of ground. I’m looking at all my notes. There’s a lot that we, I’m sure, could cover, but are there any other tools that you would like to cover?
Terry Real: Yes, I want to go back and talk about the relational empowerment versus individual empowerment because here’s how I say it. Under patriarchy, you can either be connected, that’s you, the fixer, accommodating, self-sacrificing, peacemaking, or you can be assertive. That’s more traditionally masculine, independent, competent, aggressive, but you can’t be both at the same time because power is power over. When you move into power, you break connection. That’s individual empowerment. “I was weak, now I’m strong. I don’t care how I sound. Just listen.” No, you do care how you sound or you’re not going to get listened to. I teach people, and particularly women in this one or whoever’s coming up from the one down, what I call loving power.
Tim Ferriss: And could you, just for the sake of just revisiting, just describe one up one down one more time ’cause people may not have gotten that.
Terry Real: Yeah, it’s what Pia called, my great mentor, “coming out from under the great lie that a human being could be inherently superior or inferior to another human being.” Healthy self-esteem, which I have to teach people in this culture comes from the inside out. You’re here, you’re worthy, you’re lovable, you’re a good human being because you’re breathing, period, and your essential worth can’t be added to, it can’t be subtracted from. This is democracy. This is one person, one vote. We’re all equal under the law — until recently, anyway. This is democracy, but we don’t live like this. We live in the world of patriarchy, which is one up, one down, superior, inferior, better than, less than, all day long.
And the one down, shame, inferiority, helplessness, defectiveness, unlovability. For 50 years my field has focused on helping people come up from that one down. Good. But we’ve almost totally ignored helping people come down from the one up entitlement, anger, judgment, contempt, self-righteous indignation, all forms of grandiosity. There’s a lot of ink now being spilled on the so-called narcissistic partner, which is almost always a man. And the idea is “They can’t be treated, leave him.” Bullshit. That’s more individual empowerment. We treat grandiose men breakfast, lunch, and dinner at RLT. Come down from that entitlement, come down from that contempt. It’s poison for you. Let me teach you how to do it. You’ll be happier. And we do. We effectively help people come down from the one up.
Tim Ferriss: How do you do that? Just because people probably view this as very unfamiliar territory, as you mentioned, 50 years of bringing people up from one down, but how do you bring someone down a step back to baseline from grandiosity?
Terry Real: You have to wake them up. There are three phases to RLT. The first we call waking up the client, which is loving confrontation, which most therapy doesn’t do. Once we get what you’re doing that will never work. And if you ride in the one up your grandiosity, then we move into trauma work. What set you up to do that? And then we teach you skills. It’s all three. IFS doesn’t teach skills. By the way, a lot of trauma people think you remove the trauma. You don’t need to teach skill and wishful thinking. Anyway, so first we confront what you’re doing, then we go back to your childhood roots and where it came from and help you with that. And then we teach you new skills to replace it with. Why should you come down from your rage and dominance and control? Why? Well, how’s it working for you?
I talked about poisoned privilege, and let me say this, and this is particularly true for men. God in her wisdom has given me access to the dream. The real American dream is that if you have money and fame, it will transmute you. You’ll become a demigod and you’ll be happy. I treat those people, they’re not happy and they’ve done well in the world, but they’re not happy between their ears and they’re miserable to live with. Some so-called expert got on his television and talked about aspirational masculinity and Elon Musk. Yeah, go to the moon. Great. Be the richest man in the world. Great. You want to be married to that guy? You want to be that guy’s kid? Good luck. All of the people I treat are incredible successes in the world and a mess inside. Why? The first thing I teach is the difference between gratification and what I call relational joy.
Gratification is pleasure, short-term pleasure. You make a million bucks, great. Pretty girl flirts with you, great. I like pleasure in its place. Relational joy, which many of the people, the grandiose people in particular, I have no idea what I’m talking about. Relational joy is the deeper down pleasure of just being there and being connected. And many of the grandiose people I work with simply don’t know what relational joy is. They’ve lived their whole life for gratification and it’s empty and they feel the emptiness and the people they live with are fed up with them and they certainly feel that. So while what I have to offer is relational joy. That’s the ace in my pocket because that’s what we’re born for. That’s the only thing that will make you happy. Let me teach you to come down off your perch and enter into being a human being like the rest of us. And let me teach you to really look at what you’ve been doing. Can I tell you a story?
Tim Ferriss: Yes. Always.
Terry Real: A guy came in and he was “depressed.” Another one of these guys with five therapists under his belt. Nobody’s been able to help him. And he’s on the brink of divorce and I listened to him and I go, “I can’t help you with your depression, but I can save your marriage.” Okay. This is a guy, he’d literally go to work, come home, flop on the couch, his wife would be running around, they’d all have dinner, she’d do the homework with the kids, she put them to bed, then he slump off to bed and go to sleep. Get up the next day, go to work, and she’s ready to divorce him.
I say, “You have a very mysterious depression. It goes into remission at 8:45 and it comes roaring back at 5: 15. When you’re at work, you manage to function. When you’re at home, you’re on the couch. A million people have tried to help you with your depression. I’m not going to try. You’re depressed. Sorry, been there. Here’s what I want to tell you, read it through. Here’s what I want to tell you.” Says, “What?”
“Get off the couch. Go do homework with your kids. Go help your wife with your dishes. You manage to pull yourself out of yourself from nine to five. You give yourself a pass when you get home, you’re going to wind up divorced and you’re going to do great damage to your children.” And he looks at his wife and he says, “I realize I’ve really abandoned you in this family and I made excuses for myself all these years.” And he starts to cry. That’s remorse, that’s open heartedness. I say, “He’s come out of the coldness of outer space into the what? Connection, true remorse.” “Oh, my God, I see what I’ve been doing to you, I’m so sorry.” And I looked at him and I say to them I say to so many people in that moment, I say to them, “Welcome to the planet Earth. Welcome to the human race. It’s been really lonely up there, hasn’t it?”
Tim Ferriss: Well Terry, you have a lot of resources and a lot of books. Who should start where? In other words, do you suggest people start with any particular book or resource? If they have a particular challenge or issue, where would you point them? How can we provide a road map for people who want to explore more of Terry Real?
Terry Real: Do the social media thing @RealTerryReal, that covers all the social media @RealTerryReal. Go to my website, terryreal.com. I’m pleased to say we have a lot of offerings now online for the general public, a course on self-esteem, course on healthy boundaries, courses on relationship skills. We have little mini courses, how to come back from infidelity. We have particular topic courses now that are followed up by online groups that you can join. So if you’re coming back from infidelity, here’s a three-hour workshop and here’s an ongoing group you can be part of. We’re doing more and more of that. In terms of books, I like Us, the new book, I like I Don’t Want To Talk About It, the old book, and I like Fierce Intimacy. I like all three of them.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, Fierce Intimacy is quite funny because I loved Fierce Intimacy and I wanted to find a Kindle edition to highlight. And could you explain why there isn’t one, at least as it stands right now.
Terry Real: There’s an audio Sounds True asked me to, you know, it’s one of those things. God was with me. I sat in a booth, no notes, and I just talked for three days. And that’s Fierce Intimacy.
Tim Ferriss: Yes. It’s insane for people who want to listen to it. There’s certain people maybe at that point the spirit was at your back. And similarly, I remember at one point I was using a meditation app design by Sam Harris and he had this interlude, which was this commentary, and it was five or 10 minutes long. And I said, “Could you please send me the text? Could you send me the Google Doc?” And he said, “What text?” I said, “What do you mean what text?” He goes, “I just got in the booth and riffed 10 minutes.” And I was like, okay, there are levels and then there are levels. So nicely done on Fierce Intimacy.
Terry Real: Thank you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Just a few more questions and everybody should go to terryreal.com. I’m sure that the socials are also available from terryreal.com. And we’ll link to everything we’ve discussed in the show notes. Outside of your own books, are there any books that you have gifted frequently to other people or re-read more than once yourself that come to mind?
Terry Real: I’m a big fan of Jim Gilligan’s book Violence. It’s not an easy read.
Tim Ferriss: What was the name of the book again?
Terry Real: Violence.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, Violence.
Terry Real: Yeah. Jim was the medical director of the Bridgewater Hospital for the criminally insane, and he worked with serial killers. He worked with, like, Hannibal the Cannibal, and he starts off as a young man taking this over and he says to himself, “If I can figure out the dynamics of these guys, I can figure out what violence is,” and he does in the book. So that’s been a great inspiration to me. I love Carol —
Tim Ferriss: Why has that been an inspiration to you, Violence?
Terry Real: Because I deal with male violence. I deal with violence. Both Jim and I agree that violence is the shunting from the one down to the one up, from shame to grandiosity, from helplessness to attack. It took them 25 years to write that book and it shows. Not to drift, but when 9/11 happened, I wrote an op-ed piece that nobody published. In the piece I said, “This is the first time we’ve been hit on American soil. This is a national trauma unlike anything we faced before, and as a trauma expert, I know that you have two choices. You can tolerate the discomfort of sitting with the vulnerability and pain of that trauma and maybe asking some tough questions about why and what needs to happen or you can escape that discomfort by a flight into one up grandiosity, judgment, contempt and attack. And my hope for this country is we join together in the vulnerability rather than escape into attack.” Nobody published that. Two weeks later we were in Iraq.
So I like the book. I want people to resist the temptation of flying from discomfort into one up, superiority, contempt, judgment and attack on all sides. The left and the right. The left is not shy about moving into self-righteous indignation and contempt either. We talk about full respect living. I’ll put my body on the line and be on the streets, protesting your agenda and still hold you in regard as a human being. I don’t have to dehumanize you in order to fight you. Gandhi knew that, Martin Luther King knows that. That wisdom is being lost all over the globe right now. It needs to be rekindled.
Tim Ferriss: Any other books that come to mind besides Violence?
Terry Real: I like Raymond Chandler.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, Raymond Chandler’s amazing. Where would you have people start, or do you have a favorite?
Terry Real: I love lines. Belinda made my day by giving me a book called Great One-Liners from Noir. I like Noir. Well, The Big Sleep, I guess. There’s a great line when Humphrey Bogart meets Lauren Bacall playing Sam Spade. She says, “Oh, I see you met my little sister.” He said, “Yeah, she tried to sit on my lap. I was [standing] up at the time.” Now that’s writing.
Tim Ferriss: All right, so speaking of one-liners, just a few more questions and then we will wind to a close. If you had a billboard, metaphorically speaking, just to get a message, a line, a quote, a question, anything like that, to many, many millions of people, what might you put on that billboard?
Terry Real: Have the courage to move beyond the defaults you were handed, and do it with help.
Tim Ferriss: Hear, hear. Terry, thank you for taking the time today. It’s so nice to see you again. I really appreciate you carving out the time, being flexible on start time and covering so much ground as well.
Terry Real: You’re a wonderful interviewer, Tim, and I am sure you’re going to edit this out, but if I dare say, even the little I know you, I’ve grown fond of you. I’m rooting for you, so what a service you’re offering and thank you for having me on.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Terry. And to everybody listening, we will have links to everything in the show notes as per usual at tim.blog/podcast. Just search Terry or Terry Real and it’ll pop right up. And until next time, as always, be a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. Don’t forget the last piece, and thanks for tuning in.
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Terry is explicitly anti male. From his perspective women are never wrong.