Terrence Real

Terrence Real, best-selling author of I Don’t Want to Talk about it: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression (Scribner), founded the Relational Recovery Institute in March of 2002. The Institute sprang from the success of I Don’t Want To Talk About It and Terry’s experience and expertise of working with depressed men. The Institute’s mission focuses on helping boys and men reclaim wholeness and connection, helping parents raise healthy boys, and empowering women to be assertive in their relationships which aids the healing of the wounded men they love.

Mr. Real is a Senior Faculty Member of the Family Institute of Cambridge in Massachusetts and Director of the Gender Relations Program at the Meadows Institute in Arizona. His book for couples, How Can I Get Through to You? Reconnecting Men and Women (Scribner) was published January 2002. His latest book: The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work, will be released in January 2007 (Ballantine Books).

Mr. Real is a practicing family therapist and a teacher of couples and family therapy with more than two decades of experience. He frequently presents on how to make existing relationships their most rewarding and fulfilling and how to repair troubled relationships. He has been called, “the most innovative voice in thinking about and treating men and their relationships in the world today.”

His work on men’s issues and on couple’s therapy has been featured on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Oprah, The New York Times, Psychology Today, Esquire and in numerous academic publications. His recent work with men is being shown on public television throughout the United States in a documentary called All Men Are Sons by John Badalament.

Terry also has been a featured speaker on the Life Makeover Project with Cheryl Richardson airing on the Oxygen Cable Network.

A New York Times Book Review described Terrence’s work as: “A critical contribution to feminist psychology (that) brings the men’s movement a significant step forward.” Robert Bly hailed it as “moving onto new ground in both story and song. Exhilarating in its honesty and grief.” And pioneer family therapist Peggy Papp, of the Ackerman Family Institute called it, “a path out of the darkness.”

Terrence lives with his wife and family therapist, Belinda Berman, and their two sons in Newton, Massachusetts.

MOST REQUESTED TOPICS:

Terry can speak on a wide variety of topics related to couples and relationship challenges— and he can tailor his presentations to either an audience of counseling and therapy professionals, or an audience comprised of members of the general public.

The presentation below is tailored to a general public audience; it can also be tailored to a professional audience upon request.

The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know To Make Love Work

A Breakthrough Program for 21st Century Relationships

Today we want more from our marriages and long-term relationships. Even those of us in good relationships are prone to feeling at a loss at times, frustrated with behaviors that don’t change, issues that won’t go away. Or perhaps we just want more in our relationships, more sharing, more depth, more vitality.

Bestselling author and relationship expert Terrence Real has an important message: Don’t compromise! You can ‘have it all.’ But you have to build it, together, brick by brick. The problem is that we are undergoing a revolution in the nature of marriage itself. Like it or not, we are not in our parents’ marriage. The twentieth century marriage was essentially traditional– you were good companions and allies. Today, we want more. Women especially want a twenty-first century Intimate Marriage. Walks on the beach, heart to heart talks, great sex into their sixties and beyond. They want a lifelong lovers’ relationship. The “crunch” most couples find themselves in comes from the collision of twenty-first century dreams and twentieth century skills. We haven’t possessed a toolkit sophisticated enough to turn our new vision into reality. Until now. In this presentation Terrence Real will introduce you to a new way of life: Full Respect Living. Full Respect Living is the art of being assertive and loving at the same time – so that you empower both yourself and your partner to create the twenty-first century intimate marriage. You will learn the Five Losing Strategies that are guaranteed to gum up your relationship and the Five Winning Strategies to replace them with. Through dynamic interaction and teaching, Terrence Real will challenge you to learn and use a new set of twenty-first century skills. Specifically, you’ll learn how to: