Married, Dating, or Single: The Best Relationship Advice You Will Ever Receive

I'm not an empathic therapist. Uh, you want empathy? Uh, oh, I'm sorry. You cracked. Patriarchy cracked. It doesn't mean there was something wrong with you. It means there was something wrong with what you were both trying to live up to.

[upbeat music] Terry Real is one of the most sought-after couples therapist in the world. His private clients pay $7,000 for a single session. He's gonna explain exactly why none of your relationships in the past have worked.

Listen, we've never wanted more from relationships than we do right now. We wanna be lifelong lovers, but we're trying to do that in the context of a culture that is not a relationship-cherishing culture. There is a relationship technology. There's a set of skills that work better. It works better to ask your partner for what you want than to criticize them for what they're doing wrong. All relationships are an endless dance of harmony, disharmony, and repair.

Most couples are in harmony and disharmony. Harmony and disharmony, but no repair.

No repair, because that's where the skills come in. Getting the love you want literally means being a pioneer. We are interconnected. We are interdependent. Healthy self-esteem comes from the inside out. You have worth, you have dignity, because you're here on this planet, you're a human being, no better or worse than anybody else. Remember that, and have that give you courage.

Please help me welcome Terry Real to The Mel Robbins Podcast.

Oh, my gosh, it's a thrill to be here, and bless you, and thank you for the good work you're doing for the world.

Terry, right back at you. Bless you, and thank you for the good work you're doing in the world, and for the good work you're about to help us do in our conversation today. And here's where I wanna start: How could my life be different? If I take everything that you are about to teach me today, after 40 years of wisdom, and work, and the things that you have learned, and the truths that you know, how could my life be different if I take it all to heart, and I apply it to relationships and to my day-to-day life?

I'm gonna tell you, and listeners, viewers, uh, the same thing I say to every single couple: I am inviting you on a rarefied path. It's demanding, it's sophisticated, it's skilled, and it leaves the norms of this culture in the dust. Listen, we've never wanted more from relationships than we do right now.

Hmm.

Gone are our grandparents, even our parents, companion- side by side, pay the bills, raise the kids, no passion, no communication, fine, stable, good enough. That's gone. We wanna walk hand-in-hand on the beach. We want heart to... We want great sex in 70s and 80s. We wanna be lifelong lovers, but we're trying to do that in the context of a culture that is not a relationship-cherishing culture. We live in a patriarchal, and I'll go into that, individualistic culture that does not cherish relationships. I would like basic relationship skills taught in elementary school, junior high, high. We need to know how to pull off this new ambition of being lifelong lovers. Getting the love you want literally means being a pioneer. If you're a hetero man, it means moving into vulnerability, which means deconstructing masculinity itself. Masculinity means being invulnerable. You open your heart, you are redoing what it means to be a man. As we were speaking, standing up for yourself, not with shrillness, but with love and power, is brand-new work for women in this culture. As a people, we all need in our lives to be pioneers. We don't live relationally in this culture. We are individualistic, and we are patriarchal, meaning the basic model is dominance.