Men Say They Want to Be Married. Terry Real Can Help.

Virtually all of these super successful men I treat who are messing up their personal life, they have no idea what relational joy is. They’ve been living their whole life on gratification.

When you look out at the world, do you see any examples of soft, loving power?

Yeah. God bless him. I like Bruce Springsteen.

Aren’t you his therapist?

At one point I was, yes. It was very courageous of him to say so in the introduction to my book. It was a thrill to work with him because he is such a hero of mine. Bruce Springsteen represents healthy masculinity. He’s a strong, hit-the-road rebel, and he’s a lover. He is a very responsible married man for decades in his life. He has humanistic values, but he ain’t no wimp.

My son Justin uses the example of this baseball player, Shohei Ohtani. He says, “You’re watching, listening to some star athletes and they’re killers, and they love being killers. You listen to him and he loves the game. And his power doesn’t come from beating you into the ground. His power comes from the thrill of excellence, and it’s different. You could feel the difference.”

Your work is centered around the nuclear family. Do you have any thoughts about how men can cultivate intimacy outside of their families?

One of the great costs of complying with traditional masculinity is you don’t have friends. So, I work with my male patients about developing friendships, explicitly. “Okay, who do you hang out with? Do you have any heart-to-heart talks with any of them? Who might you, I wonder?” I have men scan their relationships and see if they can drive them a little deeper, open up a little more. And they do, with some, not all. Once you can maneuver somebody into the jet stream of connection and relationality, the jet stream takes them. It feels so much better to be connected than disconnected.

Do you think people are worse at being intimate with each other because our lives are more online now?

I don’t mind the technology per se. A lot of my friends are scattered all over the world, and my friendship is largely through text and phone. That’s different from spending hours on Instagram. I even don’t like this bullshit you hear all the time that it has to be in person. No, but it has to be dialogue. It has to be emotion. It has to be a relationship.

I’ll tell you what worries me. AI girlfriends worry me. A lot of these young men, the most extreme incels, are already opting out of the demands of intimacy. How many more are going to opt out when they have an AI girlfriend that meets their every need?

One in three of the young men we surveyed is worried about how porn affects their relationships.

They should be. It’s the theme of grandiosity versus intimacy. What will you never see in a pornographic movie? You ready? You’ll never see the woman turn to the guy and go, ‘Oh, excuse me, I don’t like that.’ The first classic porn movie was Deep Throat where the woman’s clitoris was in her throat, so giving a blow job gave her an orgasm. I have a name for this idea of a woman who gets gratified by giving a man gratification. You know what I call it?

What?

Mom.

Oh my God.

The dream is endless gratification. No demands, no conflict, no sacrifice. Just endless gratification. And endless gratification is very seductive, but it’s empty calories. I’m not kidding, I’m worried about these young men turning to AI robots, particularly when they become three-dimensional and you can have sex with them and resigning from the whole intimacy arena.

When you think about young men who are completely checked out of interdependence, what worries you?

These young men who supposedly are pulling out of intimacy, let’s be clear, they’re pulling out of intimacy with women. They’re moving into a bro cohort of other men who are rejecting women. They’re not alone. They’re moving into a cult. It’s true. They’re moving into one form of connection and the ticket of admission is resigning from a different form of connection. But they wouldn’t do this if they were alone.