Why Boys and Men Are Floundering, According to Relationship 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.

The “Modern Love” podcast team is planning a second episode with Real, focused on fatherhood. He has agreed to give our listeners advice on fatherhood, whether you’re an experienced dad, an expecting dad or otherwise dad-adjacent. For example, maybe you want advice on how to parent in a world filled with so many mixed messages about how men should be or on how to repair a mistake you made as a dad. Maybe there are elements of fatherhood you’re still figuring out or are unsure of. Record your questions as a voice memo and email them to modernlovepodcast@nytimes.com.

Tips for recording: Please avoid recording where there is a lot of background noise. If you are using your smartphone to record your voice memo, please speak into your phone’s built-in microphone from a few inches away. Your recording may not be usable if you use Bluetooth earbuds or if you are too close or too far from the phone. It works best when you tell us your story as if you are speaking to a friend rather than reading it from a written statement. Be as concise as you can, and please listen back to it to make sure the recording is complete. You can find further tips for recording here, and find our submission terms here.

Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times.

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