‘Modern Love’: Why Boys and Men Are Floundering, According to Therapist Terry Real

A session with Terry Real, a marriage and family therapist, can
get uncomfortable. He’s known to mirror and amplify the emotions
of his clients, sometimes cursing and nearly yelling, often in an
attempt to get men in touch with the emotions they’re not used to
honoring.


Real says men are often pushed to shut off their expression of
vulnerability when they’re young as part of the process of
becoming a man. That process, he says, can lead to myriad
problems in their relationships. He sees it as his job to pull
them back into vulnerability and intimacy, reconfiguring their
understanding of masculinity in order to build more wholesome and
connected families.


In this episode, Real explains why vulnerability is so essential
to healthy masculinity and why his work with men feels more
urgent than ever. He explains why he thinks our current models of
masculinity are broken and what it will take to build new ones.


This episode was inspired by a New York Times Magazine piece,
“How I Learned That the Problem in My Marriage Was Me” by Daniel
Oppenheimer.


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