Defining Healthy Masculinity & How to Build It | Terry Real

Terry Real:
When the moment calls for fierceness, a good Morani is a killer. And they are. They're warriors. They'll kill you. Don't cross them. When the moment calls for tenderness, a good Morani will lay down his sword and shield and be sweet like a baby. What makes a great Morani is knowing which moment is which.

Andrew Huberman:
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Terry Real. Terry Real is a therapist and considered one of the world's foremost experts on male psychology and on male-female dynamics in romantic relationships. Today, we discuss what it means to be a man and the mental health crisis that men are facing nowadays. As you may have heard, rates of depression and suicide are at an all-time high in men right now. Fewer and fewer men are in romantic relationships, and many don't even have a single close friend. And for those that are in romantic relationships, the public messaging about how to show up in those relationships is very conflicted. Today, we address all of these issues head-on. Terry explains that to thrive in life, men have to look at relating as a skill that requires action and, yes, feelings, but also processing and communicating those feelings in a specific way, and sometimes not communicating them at all. We also discuss the critical importance of fraternity, not necessarily college fraternities, but finding and belonging to a group of men that you can trust, that you can enjoy time with, that give you honest feedback, and that hold you accountable. What I appreciate so much about Terry Real is that he's willing to answer the hard questions about men and women very directly. And frankly, most therapists are not willing to do that publicly. For example, he explains that in his extensive work with couples, women and men are equally bad at relationships, but in different ways, and he offers solutions for them both if they actually want their relationship to thrive. Thanks to his honesty and providing practical tools, Terry Real provides us today with essential information for men and women of all ages. It cuts through all the generational differences that certainly exist to highlight the practical ways that men can build and support their mental health and thrive at work, school, and in romantic relationships, and also, just as importantly, in their relationship to themselves. That is, how men can build a strong self-concept, sense of agency, and confidence. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Terry Real. Terry Real, welcome.

Terry Real:
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Andrew Huberman:
What's going on with men? What's this- ... mental health, men's crisis? Suicide rates are way, way up. What's going on?

Terry Real:
What's going on is that the old role is shifted, the sand is shifted under our feet, and we're trying to figure out what the hell we are. And if we're not going to be what our dads and granddads were, what are we going to be? And we're searching and we're grappling. I got to tell you, the other thing that's going on is somewhat in reaction to feminism and somebody said about my work, "Women have had a revolution, and now men have to deal with it." It's like, what are we supposed to do here? And there's been a backlash. There's been a resurgence in our country and around the globe of almost a celebration of some of the most difficult, unattractive aspects of traditional masculinity. And we're not sure what it means to be a man anymore, and particularly young guys are grappling. And there aren't a lot of healthy examples saying, "Okay, here's the new territory. Let me show you what it looks like." The biggest response that I see to the confusion about what are we supposed to do here has been regressive. Let's go back to being powerful, dominant, entitled, aggressive. And you see this at the top. You see this in politics, not just in our country, but all over the globe. Autocracy dominance is celebrated. And it's like we're tired of the woke, we're tired of being told that we're bad. I grew up in the '60s, in the height of feminism, and I consider myself a feminist family therapist.

Andrew Huberman:
Did you have long hair in the '60s?

Terry Real:
Oh, yeah, and a mustache and the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, I did, and a lot of drugs. But when I grew up, the joke was the philosophical, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one's there, does it still make a sound?" When I grew up, it was, "If a man speaks in the woods and there's no one there, is he still wrong?"

Andrew Huberman:
That was the first surge of-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... major feminism.

Terry Real:
Yeah. Well, early-stage feminism was angry. I am proud to say my dear friends and colleagues who are in the forefront of feminism, Esther Perel, Carol Gilligan, are man-loving feminists. But that wasn't the first wave. It was really an understandable a reaction to the entitlement and the oppression of women. But I call that political patriarchy, and it exists. Look, you step out of America, and it's pretty clear, women are oppressed by men all over the globe. That's true. But what I, as a psychologist, what I'm interested in is what I call psychological patriarchy, the dynamics of patriarchy. And that can take place between two men, between two women, between a mother and a child, between two races. And the psychology of patriarchy is a straitjacket that is, I believe, toxic for everybody. Now look, there are some positive traits to traditional masculinity. It's not completely black and white, but a lot of it is really unhealthy. So a lot of guys reacted to being told, "You're wrong." by, "Hey, I'm throwing off the shackles. I'll do what the hell I want," and a kind of celebration of the old freedoms and the old entitlements. But that ain't the way out. And even though we see this resurgence right now, that does not breed a happy human being. So we need models of progressive masculinity, not regressive masculinity, and they're rare.

Andrew Huberman:
Is it possible that now there are more templates of what it is to be a man than there were before? In my mind, in my very simple-minded, not formally educated about this topic except having grown up-

Terry Real:
Yeah, you are a man

Andrew Huberman:
... a man.

Terry Real:
You are a guy.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. That's the only experience I have, right?

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So everything's filtered through my own experience as best as I can try and get outside of, and this is where I started and where I'll end up. The model that I was exposed to was okay, in the '40s and '50s, men looked and acted a certain way.

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And it was a fairly narrow template.

Terry Real:
Very narrow.

Andrew Huberman:
Pretty narrow template.

Terry Real:
And pretty inhuman in some ways. The essence of traditional masculinity, which didn't end in the '50s, it's still with us very much today, is stoicism. The essence of being a man is being invulnerable. The more invulnerable you are, the more manly you are. The more vulnerable you are, the more girly you are to this day, and being girly is not a good thing. Well, there's some problems with that. One is we are vulnerable. As human beings, that's a lie. Denying our vulnerability is a lie. And so I see chronic anxiety, depression. Everybody's in a state of, "Do I measure up?" And you don't, because what you're trying to measure up to isn't real. I say to guys, "Trying to run away from your own vulnerability is like trying to outrun your rectum." "It has a way of following you everywhere you go." We are vulnerable. And the other issue with that traditional model of stoicism is we connect to each other through vulnerability. That's how human beings connect. And men are walled off. And one of the issues facing us, is in hetero relationships, women across the West are insisting on levels of emotional connection and open-heartedness and intimacy from us guys that literally were stamped out of us as boys. The way we turn boys into men traditionally in this culture is through disconnection. You disconnect from your feelings, you disconnect from vulnerability, you disconnect from others, you disconnect from your mother. We call all this becoming autonomous. Well, this whole story of achieving autonomy has nothing to do with real psychology. There's no basis for it at all. It's just patriarchy. So for example, the monosyllabic adolescent boy who won't answer his mother, that's not normal. We think of it as normal, but that's not psychologically necessary. It is a mandate of traditional masculinity. And I'm here to tell you that traditional masculinity is harmful.

Andrew Huberman:
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now, I've been doing therapy for a long time, and I can tell you that in many ways, it's like a physical workout. There are days when I want to do it, and there are days when I don't want to do it. But whenever I finish a therapy session, every single time, I come away feeling better and knowing that the time was well spent. And more often than not, when I finish a therapy session, I come away with some valuable insight, or in some cases many insights, or new perspectives on something that I'm working through, whether it's with work, with relationships, or with my relationship to myself. There is just so much benefit that comes through doing effective therapy. And with BetterHelp, they make it extremely easy to find an expert therapist that can help provide those benefits that come through effective therapy. Also, because BetterHelp is done entirely online, it's very time efficient. There's no driving to a therapist's office, looking for parking, or anything like that. You just log on and hold your session. If you would like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com/huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein, and 75% of its calories come from protein. That's 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. These bars from David also taste amazing. Right now, my favorite flavor is the new cinnamon roll flavor, but I also like the chocolate chip cookie dough flavor, and I also like the salted peanut butter flavor. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're all delicious. Also, big news, David bars are now back in stock. They were sold out for several months because they are that popular, but they are now back in stock. By eating a David bar, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy for me to meet my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and to do so without eating excess calories. I generally eat a David bar most afternoons, and I always keep them with me when I'm away from home or traveling because they're incredibly convenient to get enough protein. As I mentioned, they're incredibly delicious, and given that 28 grams of protein, they're pretty filling for just 150 calories, so they're great between meals as well. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com/huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com/huberman. Let me ask you about this template. So there's the 1940s went into the '60s somewhat template, right? As Steve Jobs so aptly said, "The '60s really happened in the '70s." The long hair, the mustaches, most of that was in the '70s.

Terry Real:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Some of it was in the '60s, but most of it was in the '70s.

Terry Real:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay. So there's that very stoic template.

Terry Real:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Right? Provider, protector, stoic.

Terry Real:
No feelings.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. Yeah.

Terry Real:
Logic.

Andrew Huberman:
And it's actually interesting to-- I have looked a little bit of the history of this. There were even diagrams that men should never stand with their hands on their hips because that was a feminine stance. Never tilt a hip to one side. This stuff was out there, right? And it was also coupled with etiquette. It was very clear how to act, right?

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
There wasn't much range, but the sort of range of things to do and say was fairly scripted. Which I'll just make-- I'm not trying to play devil's advocate here, but it made the script simpler and therefore more accessible, but it masked a lot of other things, is I think what we both agree on. But then came the template. I was born in '75, so I'm 50 now. In the late '80s and '90s, it was kind of a mishmash of things. We saw our first gay male characters in television shows.

Terry Real:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
We saw also gay female characters, but since we're talking about men and masculinity here, that was the first time. I think it was the character on "The Real World: San Francisco"

Terry Real:
Right

Andrew Huberman:
... that, the first character.

Terry Real:
Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman:
Forgive me for not remembering his name.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
He died of AIDS, and it was during the AIDS-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the AIDS epidemic, and-

Terry Real:
With Will & Grace and-

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah

Terry Real:
... yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, so there was more of that, right?

Terry Real:
But there's a difference between having gay men in the public eye and saying that the role of straight men had changed.

Andrew Huberman:
Totally agree. There's two-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... separate things. But there was sort of an expansion of notions of maleness. I would say in the '80s and '90s, it's almost like things became somewhat more of a buffet, right? You had your football jock types, your finance guys. There was the stoic thing, the provider-protector thing. But then there was more of an artsy artist phenotype-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that emerged as well. You had, I wouldn't say sensitive artist, but the artistic expression-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... became kind of, it was always, but it became part of masculinity.

Terry Real:
Well, you had hippies.

Andrew Huberman:
You had hippies, and then it was like rock and roll, right? You had also, not my taste, but you had the Bon Jovi types. You had long hair and it was... Oh, you're from Jersey. Okay, I forgot. So Bon Jovi's an appropriate example. So there was somewhat of an expansion.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Right? There was somewhat of an expansion. And then now it seems that the templates of maleness, some of the most famous musical artists who are men and report as heterosexual, from what I know, dress in what used to be considered a very feminine way, right? You had that before, too. David Bowie.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Right? So there's always been a bit of gender bending within this template, but it really, I think, emerged the most in the '90s, and it's continued forward. And now when I talk to guys in their 20s, because I have friends with kids who are now in their late teens and 20s, it seems that they are very comfortable with the idea of self-expression. I guess this is where I'm trying to reconcile this notion of, you said that we're kind of still steeped in the patriarchy, but it seems like the kids in their 20s and 30s, and maybe even 40s, they feel like they have options.

Terry Real:
Well, they have access to emotion in ways that we didn't. They were all raised by feminist mothers, and it had its impact. But the problem is I see these guys and they're all whining that women aren't attracted to them, and there's a reason for that. A lot of guys who get in touch with the emotion and the sort of more heartfelt issues, bring along with it traditional male privilege. So it's like, "I'm emotional now. Come and take care of me."

Andrew Huberman:
Mm.

Terry Real:
And a lot of the women are complaining that these guys are kind of children. They don't stand up. The issue is this. Can you be big-hearted and open and emotional and show up and be responsible and be giving? The thing that hasn't changed for a lot of us guys is giving. Back in the '50s, and it was stoic, it's about me. I show up and I am responsible in ways that our younger guys are less responsible than our dads were. That's all true. But I go out and I fight dragons, and I come home, and where's my martini and slippers? Then the '60s came on, and feminism, and okay, it's okay to have feelings. It might even be okay to be a little bit vulnerable. But it's still about me. And when I talk about progressive masculinity, I want men who are big-hearted, strong, connected, and giving. And that's missing both in the traditional patriarchal model and in many of the counter-cultural models. What's missing in our culture, I'm going to fade back from men for a moment and talk about generally. What's missing in our culture generally is relationality. What's missing in our culture is the beauty of connection. And look, you follow the science. I've been saying this for 40 years, and now the science is really very clear. Being connected, being intimate with yourself and with others, that's what we humans are born for. That's how we're designed. We're pack animals. And the lack of intimate connection is not only bad for us psychologically, but I think it was Vivek Murthy you quoted. It's as bad as smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes a day on your body. We are born to be connected and related. And I wrote about male depression back in the '90s. What I said is the way we, quote, "Turn boys into men is through disconnection." We tell them to disconnect from their hearts, less so younger men, disconnect from others. That's being independent and autonomous. And the cost of disconnection is disconnection. And some men have recovered more feeling inside their skin, but they haven't developed the art of connection. I deal with, just like you and many of your-- I deal with high rollers in my practice, and one of the things that I teach these guys is the difference between gratification and what I call relational joy. Gratification is just what you think, a short-term hit of pleasure, and our culture loves gratification. And these captains of industry who come in and fly their private planes in to see me, they're all about gratification, and they've done beautifully at it. They're rich, they're powerful. That's great in its place. I like pleasure. There's a deeper pleasure that I call relational joy, and you get that as a parent. Sometimes your kids are gratifying. Sometimes you want to throw them through the goddamn window. But if anybody said, "Hey, we could do a time machine, and you don't have to have this," I'd deck you because there's a deeper down joy in just being there and being connected, just being in the relationship, and that's been lost in our culture. We live in an anti-relational, narcissistic culture, and even though some of the terms of patriarchy have moved, the narcissism and the lack of relationality has not moved. It's just a different variation.

Andrew Huberman:
There's a lot there, and I want to make sure I ask about this notion of emotional experience and expression from men. Seems like a very important topic to parse because indeed, it seems that men now are, thanks to your work and others, are hearing that it's important to feel.

Terry Real:
Feel.

Andrew Huberman:
To feel.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That feelings are not just okay, they're encouraged, that if you bottle them in, we used to hear about this in the context of the impact on heart health. Type A, Type B. If you go back and look at the-- It was almost like a mask for this other thing.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's still true. You can destroy your heart by smoking cigarettes and all this other stuff, but it was about that original typing of people who tend to die early from heart attack.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It was the people who hold it inside.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It was about people who manage a lot, do a lot, but hold it inside. And it's kind of interesting because the ones that turned out, I'm not suggesting people do that, screamed and yelled a lot, that catharsis actually helped them in terms of longevity. I'm not saying you should go scream at people. But Steve Jobs used to be a big proponent of scream therapy, and just getting out there and vocalizing. But I think that the question that's in my mind is, okay, so if it's important to feel, then let's just do this as a decision tree. Okay, so I think if we agree men need to feel their feelings-

Terry Real:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... then the question becomes, should they feel those alone or in the presence of someone else? And I'm guessing there's a case for both. But then at what point does one not have this, what you refer to as emotional privilege, where it's like putting it on someone else to take care of them? Could you give an example of what healthy expression of an emotion is? Let's keep this in the context of heterosexual couple for simplicity.

Terry Real:
Sure.

Andrew Huberman:
But obviously, it carries over.

Terry Real:
Sure.

Andrew Huberman:
What is an example of healthy emotional expression, let's say sadness-

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... deep sadness-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... or frustration and sadness-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in the presence of a partner-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that doesn't bring about this thing of that they're regressing and are now becoming a child?

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
What does that look like?

Terry Real:
It looks like a negotiation and not a demand.

Andrew Huberman:
Could you tell me more?

Terry Real:
Yeah. Because even in our, I'm going to push us, even in our talk, I don't care about the feelings. I care about the connection. What will make us men healthy is connection. So, yeah, great, have your feelings, and then what are you going to do with them? I used to have no feelings, and now I have feelings all over the place, and I don't give a shit about you and your feelings. I want you to pay attention to me and my feelings. Well, is that a step up? I mean, a little bit, but it's not where I want to leave you. So what I want men to move beyond is our selfishness. And because it's in our interests to move beyond our selfishness. And so recovering feeling, being stoic or having feelings, sure, that's good. That's important. The way we connect is through feelings, the way we connect is through vulnerability. So I was nervous coming here talking to you.

Andrew Huberman:
Really?

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Me?

Terry Real:
Yeah. Well, hard to imagine, right? But it's true.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, it's true. I spend a lot of time here, so it's a very familiar place. But I would hope-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that's not because I'm intimidating.

Terry Real:
No, it's not that. It's more like there are a lot of people listening to us right now.

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, yeah, who are intensely interested in these issues. Men and women, young and old, are really interested in these issues.

Terry Real:
Yeah, as we should be.

Andrew Huberman:
And not just because men are killing themselves more. That too, but also because, as you pointed out, we are a old-world primate species, and we are not going to go back to living in troops. Sorry, folks.

Terry Real:
No.

Andrew Huberman:
My colleague, I like to consider him a friend as well, Bob Sapolsky, we talk about this from time to time. It's like, yeah, that's how we evolved. Guess what, folks? There's no little village where everyone moves to.

Terry Real:
I know.

Andrew Huberman:
It's not happening.

Terry Real:
I know. Well-

Andrew Huberman:
But we are also very adaptable old-world primates.

Terry Real:
That's true.

Andrew Huberman:
But the circuitry is not going anywhere. It's a need. So if I could, hopefully you're not feeling nervous anymore.

Terry Real:
Well, but let me answer your question.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Terry Real:
Because what I did is I called our mutual friend, Bea.

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, yeah.

Terry Real:
And I said I was nervous.

Andrew Huberman:
Is that right?

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
She's wonderful.

Terry Real:
Yeah, and she says, "He's wonderful. Let me tell you about Andrew and what's going to happen." And she read me through the whole thing. And little, I'm not going to get into it, but my fears about, "Well, we're going to disagree about this, and we're..." "No, you're not. Let me tell you how it is." And after I was done talking to her, I was chilled. That's a blessing. What men lose when we're not in touch with our vulnerabilities is we lose the capacity to ask somebody to help them. But it's ask someone, not demand. And it's also reciprocal. Then Bea started talking about her relationship, and I started supporting her, and that's a relationship. And yes, I want men to come out of the straitjacket and have feelings. I want us to be whole and own our human vulnerabilities, but in a context. In a context in which we're connected to other people, and we're neither cut off from them nor are we imposing on them, but we've learned the art, and it's virtually lost, of how to be with. Simply how to be with. How to ask them to be with us, and how to reciprocate and be with them. So many women are angry at us. I deal, I'm the medic in the gender war. My beat are couples on the brink of divorce that no one else has been able to help. That's my specialty. And it's like we just don't know. I have a saying, and I may get into trouble, but it's a broad generalization, clinically. I like to say an angry woman is a woman who doesn't feel heard. And so many men are like, "What is going on here? My marriage isn't that bad. But if you could just get her off my back. I don't understand what the problem is." And we're hit with an angry-- Well, I'll double back on this, but we're hit with an angry woman, and we either push back or get defensive or withdraw. I have to lead men by the hand. Let me teach you something. Tell me why you're angry. Tell me what you would like. Let me give you, unless it's jumping off the bridge. I have a saying, "I know how you can disarm an angry woman in five seconds 50% of the time, which is better than you're doing." "Okay, how do you do it?" Give her what she wants. Let me ask you what's going on with you and do what I can to help out. This is a skill that's brand new for our culture. And if I may, it doubles back on the central issue, which I hope we get to, of men and self-esteem. Because most men in our culture have no idea what healthy self-esteem looks like. But self-esteem comes from the inside out. I have worth because I'm here and I'm breathing. I don't have to earn it. I can't add to it. I can't subtract from it. It's democracy. My worth is no better or worse than yours. I'm born with it. Men are taught outside in self-esteem, and it's mostly performance. I have worth because of what I can do. I have big muscles. I can give my wife an orgasm. I can land this job. I can hit this homer. That's great when you perform well. But when you don't perform well, you go into shame. What happened to your worth? And so healthy self-esteem, if I may, and I may double back and talk more about it, which I have to teach men, is the capacity to feel proportionally bad about bad behavior. I screwed up. I hurt you. I'm sorry. And at the same time, hold yourself in warm regard as to Imperfect person. And what we do is we either don't feel bad about bad behavior. That's shameless, that's grandiose, sociopathic even. Or if we do feel bad, we go right into shame. "I'm a useless piece of shit. I feel terrible." I have to teach men to come up out of shame and not be obsessed with the... One of the things I say is when you go from shameless bad behavior, irresponsible, selfish, insensitive, to, "Oh my God, that's terrible, I'm a big shit, I should just beat the hell out of myself," you're trading one form of self-preoccupation for, guess what? Another form of self-preoccupation.

Andrew Huberman:
I definitely want to get into self-esteem, but I just want to, for my sake and for some of the listeners, make sure that I summarize two, what I think are conclusions, and then you can modify these.

Terry Real:
Great.

Andrew Huberman:
As it relates to expression of emotion-

Terry Real:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... which you, and I totally agree, you have to be able to feel your feelings. If for no other reason, one good reason, great reason to get started on that trajectory is it's great for your physical health. It's also great for your mental health and your relational health. But oftentimes, as you know, men need to be kind of led to the trough for a particular carrot, and then there are additional carrots in there.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But it's holding everything inside will kill you.

Terry Real:
Yes, it will kill you.

Andrew Huberman:
And then it makes everyone else around you miserable, too, even if you think you're protecting them from it. But as you very importantly pointed out, it can't be a dumping of emotion on other people. So what I heard from you was of at least two very healthy ways to engage emotionally for men is, one, to ask for help.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And the help from your example that you were referring to, also a very talented therapist, Bea Voce, when you called Bea, was to ask for help by expressing what is on your mind as the point of concern. Like one is nervous or one is sad. And I think in my experience, women naturally reach out to help when you couch things that way.

Terry Real:
Everybody does.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. And then the-

Terry Real:
Wait, can I slow that down-

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, please

Terry Real:
... for a second, Andrew? What we have is what I call the Icarus syndrome. In the absence of worthiness, so many of us feel we have to earn love. We have to earn worthiness. And I like to say, guys leave their wives, I'll be hetero for a moment, guys leave their wives and kids, go fly off into the sun to be worthy of love. And meanwhile, their wives and kids are sitting there, "Where the hell is Dad? What's going on here?" "Well, I'm off trying to win your love." "Well, sit down and play Monopoly with us, for Christ's sake. You don't have to do that." It's a bill of goods. It's a scam that we've all bought. Just sit down and be still and be connected. That's all you need to do. But we're not taught that.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. And we'll get back to this later, but the demands of also, and the joy, frankly, of being a provider and protector, many times, not always, involve having to leave the home and go do work. And frankly, all my friends with kids, and I've certainly experienced this, it's when you're not able to be home because you're working, it's this weird pain.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I certainly love my work. Being a provider is wonderful, and at the same time, there's this pain of not being able to be there for things. And we can get back to that. But asking for help, and then in terms of responding in a non-regressive, non-entitled way, privileged way, as you said, is when a woman is upset, the words, "What do you need?"

Terry Real:
Ah. That is water in the desert.

Andrew Huberman:
And perhaps also, "What do you need from me right now?" Is I think-

Terry Real:
What do you need from me right now?

Andrew Huberman:
Okay, great. I'm just trying to put some structure on this because there is also something about the Y chromosome, like we respond well to simple instructions.

Terry Real:
Okay, I'll take that.

Andrew Huberman:
I believe that. I have a whole theory about Y chromosomes and how men evolved to be the way that we are. We can talk about maybe at the end for fun, because it's somewhat facetious, but not really. And then the next thing that you were saying, and I think this is so critical about self-esteem, is the ability to accept responsibility when we screw up, and at the same time, not take ourselves into a place of shame. To be able to still hold onto one's sense of goodness.

Terry Real:
I'm a good guy who screwed up. I'm a good guy who behaved badly.

Andrew Huberman:
What if the words coming at you are not of that? It's not, "Hey, listen, I'm upset because you really dropped the ball on this thing." It's, "I'm upset because you really dropped the ball on this thing, and it becomes characterological assassination."

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That takes an extra level of work.

Terry Real:
It does.

Andrew Huberman:
And in that case, is your recommendation to try and counter that or to just sit with it and do the work internally to say, "That's not true"?

Terry Real:
Well, good luck countering it. How's that working? Listen, this is a trap, and look, first of all, the thing is this. The lack of self-esteem leads us guys to be unaccountable in our relationships.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
When we're confronted with an imperfection, we're going to go into shame. We don't have the capacity to feel proportionately bad about the imperfection. "Okay, you're right, I screwed up. What can I do to help?" It's like, "Oh, you mean I didn't hit a homer? That means I'm a loser." And we defend against the overwhelm of our own lack of self-worth. "What do you mean? I'm not perfect?" We defend against that awful feeling, and it's an awful feeling by warding off the criticism. "Well, wait a minute, you have to understand." "Well, you..." We do all these defensive things that women always complain we do, and we do because we're protecting ourselves from the overwhelm of getting swamped. "I'm a bad guy." So interestingly, I teach men self-esteem as a way of helping them be accountable in their relationship.

Andrew Huberman:
Interesting.

Terry Real:
If you don't have healthy self-esteem, you can't afford to be accountable-

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm

Terry Real:
... because it's too overwhelming to admit how imperfect you are.

Andrew Huberman:
This is so important, what you're saying. Also, for people who aren't in romantic relationship, for men, it's so critical because in my mind, we could easily transpose boss or feedback.

Terry Real:
Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman:
And again, forgive me for kind of going slow here, but I feel like parsing some of this into a structure is going to help me and hopefully help other people. There are kind of two forms of criticism that perhaps I've experienced in life. I'm joking. Of course, I've experienced it. One is someone is upset about what I did.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay. And I hear you loud and clear, even if it's coming at me with characterological assassination, to have the internal reservoir of self-esteem that I can hear that.

Terry Real:
What happens to us, and look, I've been married 40 years. It's me, too. We get caught in the horrible delivery, and we react to the horrible delivery. You know, "Come on, it's not that bad" or, "Hey, you're talking horrible." A black belt in a relational guy, you duck under the horrible delivery. I'm not saying it's not horrible. It is. But you try and get to the point that the person's trying to make. Why? It's jujitsu. You duck under the horrible delivery, you deal with their ouch, and guess what happens? They calm down.

Andrew Huberman:
Sure.

Terry Real:
You react to the horrible delivery, "That's exaggerated, blah, blah, blah, you're..." And well, you're off to the races. But oh my God, what an enlightened man. Your partner or your boss or your kid is saying, "You're a shitty human being. This isn't about your bad behavior. You're just a rotten person." That's shame. You have enough boundaries, you have enough self-esteem, you go, "Well, they're being abusive. This is not the best part of them." But rather than react to that, "What are you so upset about, honey? What can I give you right now?" And oof, the beauty of these skills is that they work. You react to the bad behavior on your partner's part, and you're off. It just goes on for hours, days. You duck under that and go, "Okay, you're upset. What can I do to help you?" And all of that toxicity just passes through you. That's a real man. And it's like something that could have been misery for a day to a week, it calms down in 10, 15 minutes because of the good job. And when I talk to guys, I want to redefine strength. Strength in the way we normally think of it, it's the rumble, and you give me your best shot, I give you my best shot. I like jujitsu. Duck under it. Duck under the wave. And at the end, instead of saying, "I was really strong. I didn't put up with that bullshit. I stood up." No. I want you to say, "I was really elegant. I just sidestepped that whole thing. And what might've been a struggle that would go on for days, I just diffused in 10 minutes. Aren't I cool?" That's a real man in my book.

Andrew Huberman:
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Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You screwed up. You did the wrong thing, you did the bad thing, you did something poorly. The other is upset about what you didn't do.

Terry Real:
Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
And in my limit-- I'm not a clinician, obviously, but in my limited number of interactions with men where they share about a frustration, could be from a boss, could be from a partner. Oftentimes, it's what they didn't do.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And they'll confide that the reason they didn't do it, the reason it seemed like they didn't think about it, is because they are awfully busy doing all the other things that come with being a provider and a partner entails. And there's the real-world constraints of time, right? And so it's not like, oh, you forgot the anniversary or you forgot the present. It's not this kind. It's the things that never get asked for that someone doesn't just naturally see. Look, I'm a vision scientist first and a neuroscientist second, really, and we have giant blind spots about certain things. Women see and hear things that we just don't.

Terry Real:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
And men see and hear things that women just cannot see. You're not allowed to say that. It's very politically incorrect.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But men see things in women that they can't see. Women see things in men that they can't see. This idea that women are all-knowing and men are dopes-

Terry Real:
No, no, no, no

Andrew Huberman:
... is part of what got us here.

Terry Real:
That's true. That's a little-

Andrew Huberman:
This notion of the Homer Simpson-type thing. "I'm fool." There are certainly men like that, but I would say there's a real-world version of Homer Simpson that was actually working very steadily at his job, trying to make things work. So when it comes to dealing with criticism about what one did not do-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... I can imagine same rules apply, but I think it's only fair to say what aspect of this falls on the partner and the way they raise an issue.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Obviously, characterological assassinations are not going to help.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
They make the jujitsu harder.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It makes it harder to accept responsibility. But it's going to happen, and it's going to scale with how bad the infraction was, right?

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay. But what is a healthy delivery of a criticism? Is it all "I" statements? Is it purely based on how one feels? I'm not trying to distribute responsibility here, but let's be honest, it's a two-way street.

Terry Real:
It's more than a two-way street. And again, let's own these are broad generalities. We both understand that, but we're speaking simply because we've got to start somewhere.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
So I teach women, too, how to be relational. I'm not saying men aren't relational and women are. We're both pretty screwed up in this culture. And the tough news for a lot of women, I have eight million sayings, and one of them is, "You don't have the right to get mad about not getting what you never asked for."

Andrew Huberman:
Could you repeat that?

Terry Real:
"You don't have the right to get mad about not getting what you never asked for." And that's women stepping out of their traditional role. "What do you mean? I have to tell him? Prince Charming should just know. If I have to tell him, it doesn't count." I literally hear that. And what I say is, "Well, gals, Cinderella's dead. Prince Charming probably just came out of rehab." "And I hate to tell you, and I know it's not romantic, but if you want something from your guy, you're going to have to roll up your sleeves and fight for it. You're going to have to assert what you want and then teach him what you want." There are three steps of getting more of what you want in a relationship, and it's particularly true for women because they're the ones carrying the dissatisfaction. One, dare to rock the boat. "Honey, this is really important to me. I don't think you've been listening. You better pay attention." Two, once the guy is on board, "Okay, what do I need?" Teach him. Don't expect him to know. I've been listening to women for 40 years tell me men don't know how to be relational. Guess what? I believe you. So how are they going to know how to be relational if you don't tell them? Not that you're the objective teacher, that's a trap, but subjectively, with humility. "This is Sally instructions. This is what I want from you to make me happy." But roll up your sleeves and show them what you want, and then reward them when they try and give it to you. People don't do any of that in this culture. The concrete example is John Gray, God bless him, made millions of dollars on this. Men problem solve listening, and women want empathic listening. There's nothing wrong with either. What's wrong is it doesn't get negotiated up front. So I teach women to say, "Listen, I'm going to talk to you about a fight I had with a girlfriend." 10, 15 minutes. First of all, it helps to limit it. Guys hear we have to talk, they think they're in till 4:00 in the morning. 15 minutes. In that 15 minutes, I want you to be like a girlfriend. "There, that sucks. Tell me more about it." I want you to empathically listen. This is what it looks like. We're passive in our relationships. We let each other do what we do, and then we complain about it. We shape it. More assertion up front, less resentment on the back end. So roll up your sleeves and teach your guy what you want. "I don't want you to solve my problems. I want you to do this instead. As a favor to me, would you do it?" Not, "I'm God's gift to relationship. This is what you need." No. "As a favor to me, would you do it?" And then three, once the guy starts to do it, encourage him, don't discourage him. We all, "Oh, well, too little, too late. You did half of it." I tell women, celebrate the glass 14% full. It was only 5% full a week ago. "Hey, you did a half-ass job. Good for you. What are we going to do to get the other half on?" But we're discouraging people because we don't want to be vulnerable and receive. There's an art to receiving. So there's an art on both sides of how to work a relationship. And I have to teach women how to be more Empowering of their partner and less complaining of them. And I believe in that, and that's often their work. But you can't sit around and wait for your partner to do it right. You have to be able to respond. Whether on Tuesday, they do it beautifully, on Thursday, they're a goddamn asshole, but you still have to respond well. This is your own integrity, and it's a great freedom to take it upon yourself to behave with integrity and skill independent of what your partner's doing on their side of the seesaw. It doesn't always work, but it's your best shot. And you don't have to be a slave to their immaturity. If every time they're immature, you jump in the mud pit with them, you're a flag in their wind. It's liberating. You're immature right now. I could be immature five minutes from now, but I'm going to meet your immaturity with my maturity right now. That is a very beautiful thing.

Andrew Huberman:
Amazing. A question about childhood patterns, but rather than get right into the parents' piece of it-

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... which I want to, I have this very crude model in my head that goes something like we all have an inner child or a childlike part of ourselves, and there's a healthy part and an unhealthy part.

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
Because it's kind of wonderful, at least in my experience, to be in the company of someone, especially a romantic partner, where you can be in your kind of childlike-

Terry Real:
I call that the natural child

Andrew Huberman:
... the natural child. Right. It's healthy, it's explorative, it's fun, it's-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... sweet. And sometimes it's mischievous. I've certainly observed that.

Terry Real:
But it's lovable.

Andrew Huberman:
It's very lovable. And then there's the unhealthy child, and that could take the form of brattiness, entitlement, whatever, closing up. It could be any variety of things. I imagine that a great number of people listening to this conversation are in a relationship, and a great number of them are not. How much work and what kind of work can be done to understand those two parts of oneself on one's own? Maybe even if you're in a relationship, because that unhealthy child is a very dangerous thing to show up-

Terry Real:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... in a relationship. It can be very destructive, very fast.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So if I were a patient- ... a client, I don't know what you call them. Do you call them clients?

Terry Real:
Customer. No, a client.

Andrew Huberman:
Client.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
If I were a client, and I just said, "Okay. Yeah. I don't want to talk about my parents right now. We can do that later. But I know the healthy childlike part of myself, and I think I know the unhealthy one, and then what's some good work that I could do to have those understood and have them in their proper place?"

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
"So that I make sure that I keep the bad childlike Andrew locked away and-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... the good childlike Andrew at appropriate times, let him out to play."

Terry Real:
Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Right?

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm very fortunate that my girlfriend now, she's very good at expressing that healthy child, the natural child part of her, and she's also a woman. And again, that part just shuts down, and then she can be in that mode. I've seen this before. It's really wonderful to experience. And when those mesh very seamlessly-

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... it's also just awesome. You're like, wow.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
She's like total ninja virtuoso of this.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Let's say I'm not, then what does the work look like?

Terry Real:
Okay. So first of all, you're in a relationship. Anybody listening to this podcast is in a relationship. It may not be an intimate sexual relationship. But you've got a boss, you've got colleagues, you've got aunts and uncles, you have cousins, you have a dog. We're all embedded in relationships, and the work is the same, no matter what. Relational skills are relational skills. So I don't care whether you're single or whether you've been married for 40 years. It's the same thing. That's A. So here's my model. That natural child, leave him be, enjoy, let him play. Love him. Enjoy him. That's our creativity. And interestingly enough, that's erotic, in the broadest sense of the word. That's the life force. That's spontaneity, and that's unhampered, unwounded. That's a beautiful part of us. That's fine. Leave it alone. Celebrate it. What you call the unhealthy child, here's my model. And interestingly, this jives with Dan Siegel, the neuroscientist. So I talk about the wise adult part of us, prefrontal cortex, that can stop and think and reason and choose. That's the part I'm trying to grow and cultivate and give skills to. The issue is when the heat comes on, and it really has to do with trauma. When something happens in the present that is similar to what was dangerous or injured us in the past. Could be a violation, could be abandonment. It could be either an act of mistreatment or neglect. Either. When something in the present-- You know this, of course. We don't remember trauma, we relive it. So the combat vet hears a car backfire and turns around like she's got a gun in her hand. She's not thinking, "I'm walking down Main Street remembering combat." She's in combat. The present goes away. And it's subcortical, limbic system, amygdala, and you get flooded. That's what we call the wounded child. Very young. When I do experiential work with somebody, first minutes of life through four or five years old. And that's all feeling. That's the part of you that just experienced it. Between this very mature, present-based part of us and this totally flooded, very primitive part of us is the part you call the bad child, I call it the adaptive child. This is the you that you learned to be to cope with whatever was going on with you. And it's neither fight, flight, or fawn. It's automatic, it's subcortical, and it's utterly compelling. I've got to stand up for myself. I've got to shut this down. I've got to fix you if you're upset, or I won't... These are basic animal survival instincts. And when you're in the adaptive child, you won't use relational skills because you're not interested in relationship. You're interested in survival. It's literally a different part of our neurology. And the work I do, I call it relational mindfulness. When you're flooded, you got to bring the prefrontal cortex back online. Take a walk, take 10 breaths, go around the block, take a break. I'm a big fan of breaks. Get re-centered in the more thoughtful, non-flooded part of you. Dan calls it the responsive brain instead of the reactive brain. When you're re-centered, I call it remembering love. You remember the person you're talking to is someone you care about. Then you go back, and you try. But we all struggle with these adaptive child parts. I deal with couples on the brink of divorce. Almost all of them have been living in their adaptive child, thinking that that's an adult. And the world will reward you. The world will reward an adaptive child, but you'll make a hash in your family life. So fight, flight, or fix. Anybody listening today, when you're flooded, when you're on automatic, because that's the hallmark of the adaptive child is automatic. Fight, flight, or fix. What are you? And what's your partner? And then what's the dance between you? The more I fight, the more they fix. The more they fix... Okay. The way out of this is to bring your thinking brain back online, and the beauty here is that capacity, I call it relational mindfulness. That capacity to remember to think, to bring yourself back into the present, can be cultivated and grown. So can I give you a story?

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
Enough talk. Let me tell a story.

Andrew Huberman:
No, yes, please. Before, I just want-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... to make sure I ask one question about when one enters this adaptive child, I think that's how you-

Terry Real:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... which is reactive in the moment-

Terry Real:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... at worst, and one can learn to dance with that and turn on their prefrontal cortex and remind themselves, "This is a relationship that I care about," etc. Taking space, a break, is something-

Terry Real:
Essential

Andrew Huberman:
... is essential. What's the best way to ask for that? Because here's perhaps something I've observed. Things are getting ratcheted up internally, maybe both people, and you need space.

Terry Real:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
You ask for space. Like, "Hey, I need to take a break to be able to hear this." And then the other person gets very upset because it activates their sense of abandonment.

Terry Real:
Exactly.

Andrew Huberman:
And it runs countercurrent to this idea that we need to stand in the face of it, jujitsu it, etc. It's a pause. We're not talking about, "Hey, I'm leaving for a week."

Terry Real:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
And we're not talking about I'm leaving for an hour, even. It's just need to decompress this. If that's met with additional criticism about the request, that can be problematic.

Terry Real:
Yeah, and common as mud. So here's what you do. Contract for it when the heat is not on. "Listen, honey, I get flooded and you don't want me flooded. I'm not nice. I won't be skilled when I'm flooded. I need to collect myself. It's in your interest to let me go collect myself." I have a skill for everything, and this is a skill I call responsible distance-taking. Most of us take unilateral, "I'm gone." No. I'm gone. Here's why, and here's when I'm coming back. It's not a rupture, it's a break. So if I have a partner who's vulnerable to abandonment, if I go, "I'm gone." Boom, they're chasing me. This is a good example of relational skill. If I want distance, let me take care of my partner so she'll give me distance. If I don't take care of you, I'm going to get chased. It's in my interest to behave with skill. So I say to you, "When we're not flooded, let's have a contract. I get flooded. We don't like it when I get flooded. I want to take a break. Here's what it looks like, 15, 20 minutes, and then I'm back. If I'm not in control, I'll text you or call you and say I need another... I'll negotiate with you. But I'm not going to leave you. I'm not going to be irresponsible. It's not unilateral, and it's not forever. I will be back. What do you need in order to be calm enough to let me go?" And nine out of 10 times, it's like, "This contract is fine. Remind me of the contract." I'm taking a time out so I can be with you. 20 minutes, I'll be back. Here's why. Here's when I'm coming back. Okay. No more abandonment. Leave those steps out, you get abandonment. So it's a really good example of how using relational skill is in your interest.

Andrew Huberman:
That's very helpful. Thank you. I also realize that how resourced one shows up to interactions like this is a big part of it. If you're sleep-deprived, overworked, you've got stuff coming at you from other angles, kid has been up all night, financial issues. If the well is low, access to these skills becomes infinitely harder.

Terry Real:
Harder. And I don't believe in pleading special circumstances. This shit is relentless. You don't get a pass. I don't care if you were up all night with the kids. Be immature, be unskilled. I can understand why you would be, and brother, you'll pay the price. So yeah, I get it. You're sleep-deprived. It's harder to be mature, and when you behave immaturely, this is the crap you're going to wind up with. It's instant karma. So the beauty in this is remembering it's in my interest to behave artfully. It's not for them. And one of my sons is in residency right now, and he's out of his mind, and he's sleep-deprived. And so we don't hear from him for a week. And his mom calls. "I'm worried about you. I've been calling. You don't text. I'm worried you're dead on the street. I know I'm crazy, but I'm worried about you." He says, "I called, and you weren't there." And I said, "Well, did you leave a message?" "No." I said, "Well, why didn't you leave a message?" "You don't understand what it's like in res..." I didn't have it in me. "Okay, listen, pal, leave a 10-second message. 'I'm alive. I'm fine. Don't worry about me.' You'll wind up having less to deal with if you put 10 seconds into it than if you don't put the 10 seconds into it, and then you've got Mom on the phone talking to you for 20 minutes about 'Why can't you be more responsible?' It's up to you, but it's an investment in your future, your well-being." What the prefrontal cortex knows that the limbic system doesn't is it's in my interest to behave well because I'll get less shit for it.

Andrew Huberman:
I don't mean to jump into family matters, but having come from the not medical, but science profession, your son had some overlap with places I've been and-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... people we know. I don't know him, but I'm about to advocate for him here. I suspect, maybe ask him, I suspect that the, could be wrong, but part of the reason he didn't leave a message is when you get... Your son got three degrees from-

Terry Real:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... an elite university. He is doing his residency in medicine. He's clearly a high achiever.

Terry Real:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
And he's involved in other things as well.

Terry Real:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
The 10-second message is very hard for a high achiever. It's like you either do things really well or you don't do them. And this is, I'm probably just projecting myself into this here.

Terry Real:
No, you're right.

Andrew Huberman:
Sometimes the reason I don't respond to things is I'm like, "I can't do it well, so I'm not going to do it at all." They told us that. If you're not going to do something well, don't do it. How you do one thing. And it turns out it's so silly, right? Because not doing it for 10 seconds is clearly way worse than doing it. Ten seconds becomes perfect under the circumstances. But high achievers don't hear that.

Terry Real:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
So here I am advocating-

Terry Real:
Right

Andrew Huberman:
... for your son. I don't even- ... really know him.

Terry Real:
Alexander, are you listening?

Andrew Huberman:
But I'm going to... And I don't do it because I want to bail him out. I think everything you're saying is spot on. What I felt in that example, I'm like, "Oh, gosh, I can't help but understand." I know that feeling. You want to do it so badly, but you don't want to do it poorly, so you don't do it.

Terry Real:
Yeah, but that's not relational.

Andrew Huberman:
Sure.

Terry Real:
And medicine is saturated with patriarchy. This is all the hazing that goes on. This is all masculinity. It's just like boot camp for the Marines. And this notion that you either do it excellently or you don't do it at all, it deprives us of being human beings with each other. It really gets in the way. So yeah, you're right. I'm sure that's what he's thinking, and also take a step back. What is in my interest? A 10-second message or a 20-minute conversation? I'm busy. What do I want to do here? And this is how we have to start thinking. We're not individuals. That's the great fallacy. We're living in a context.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
Our relationships are our biospheres. We're not separated from them. We're in them, and it's in my interest to do what the biosphere needs because I'm inside it. That's the new news. That's my message to the world. The great mistake this culture has made, the father of family therapy, Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist married to Margaret Mead, genius man, called it humankind's epistemological, philosophical mistake, that we stand outside of nature. I get these big burly guys. I deal with tough guys. I get these brilliant, "Why should I have to work so hard to please my wife?" I go, "Knock, knock. You live with her." It's like we have lost the wisdom of ecology. You're in this together. Indigenous people around the world understand this. We don't. We're not above nature dominating it. And for traditional women, we're not below nature upregulating it, enabling, coding. No, we're in it. It's in my interest to do what the biosphere needs because I'm breathing it. This is a whole new world for most of the people that I work with. And by the way, this to me is the essence of the new masculinity

Andrew Huberman:
To understand life as a human as relational first.

Terry Real:
Relational and ecological.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
I'm not above it, I'm in it and I'm a steward of it. It's in my interest to give to my biosphere. That is wisdom.

Andrew Huberman:
There must be a place for men to develop some of these skills in the company of other men, because that traditionally was the way it was done, right? Even if we look back to the, not so much the '40s, because the world was in a different sort of duress, but in the '50s and '60s, there was a certain kind of socializing that-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... men did. It was-

Terry Real:
Still today.

Andrew Huberman:
It was often around alcohol.

Terry Real:
And sports.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, brief anecdote around that. When I started graduate school, it was amazing that every Friday they would do a seminar and then they'd have some food and people would go home. And I was told by a chair of department, he said, "Do you know that for something like 30 years in this room," it was called the Beach Room, named after Frank Beach at UC Berkeley, one of the great biopsychologists and endocrinologists. Frank Beach and colleagues would get together, it was all men then, every single evening, not Fridays, every single evening and get trashed.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And then basically stagger home to their families. This was how it was done.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Very, very different time. And it was standard.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It was standard. Men smoked and drank and then got drunk and went home.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay. That was real. And obviously that's not the way it is now. And I said, "Well, what would you guys talk about?" And you imagine that it would all be about, kind of like fraternity talk and locker room talk. He said, "No. We would talk about science. We'd talk about grants. Occasionally people would talk about what was going on with their families." But I said, "Why did people do it?" And he said, "It just felt really good to be able to relax and say whatever you wanted." Obviously, there were no phones then or even the internet. And it was kind of an end of day catharsis. And I said, "On average, do you think those men showed up, drunk obviously, better or worse when they got home?" And he said, "Oh, that was our therapy. That was absolutely our therapy." Now, I don't doubt that there were elements of abuse and all sorts of things that go with alcoholism. I've been very vocal about the fact that I'm discouraging of people to drink, certainly if they want to be healthier. In very, very low moderation, perhaps, but zero is better than any. But where do men go now to relate to one another in a way that builds healthy relating with romantic partners, builds healthy relating at work? Because I'll tell you, just even the notion, I know because I've been told, just the notion of men gathering scares the hell out of a lot of people. The immediate assumption is when guys get together, bad things happen.

Terry Real:
Ah.

Andrew Huberman:
This is the idea. But I also think that we've erased some very powerful vessels for self-understanding and for relating and also for throwing off some of the stresses of the day that frankly don't need to walk in the door at home.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And so guys are trying to do it all alone or on their phones, and then people wonder, and there are a lot of reasons for this, but then people wonder why there's so much dissociation and distraction and worse by way of social media. It's like if guys can't hang out and talk, not to say drink, but if they can't hang out and talk, then how are they supposed to be their best selves when they go back to their families?

Terry Real:
You're dead right. And we talk about the epidemic of loneliness. We're talking about men. A hetero couple, the man dies, women do okay. The woman dies, men are in deep trouble. Single men are the greatest public health crisis around. And we've talked about relational skills with your family, your woman, your partner if you're gay. How about relational skills with pals? And I work with men around getting friends. Many of the men that I work with have few to no friends, and it's part of my therapy. I want you to start having friends. And I want them deeper. And I teach men. Okay, so the six guys you go golfing with, and you talk about sports and politics and maybe bitch about your wives a little bit, and that's it. I want you to try, pick one that you think might be most receptive and share something a little more vulnerable with them. I've had chronic back pain and I'm getting old. It's a little scary. Or if you're a young man, I've been out of work for 14 months and I'm getting... Show some vulnerability and see what they do with it. And you try that with Steve and you get, "Oh, yeah, what about those socks?" He ain't having it. Okay. Nice experiment. You're done with Steve. Go back to your superficial relationship. Enjoy it. You talk to Dave, and Dave, "You know, I can really hear you, man. That's tough. I've been worried too about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My dick ain't working the way it used to." And all of a sudden, you're having a heart-to-heart in a way that you may never have had in your life before. So I teach men to experiment And to try and drive their relationships deeper by sharing more and seeing what they get. It's not a shoo-in. This guy may be great. You have to be discriminating. This isn't brain death. Protect yourself, be discriminating, but also be courageous. Open up and try a little more. The crisis of men being alone and not having other men to support them and share is one of the great problems in modern society. On the other hand, I had the privilege of being, and many of your listeners are too young for this, but there was a great guy, Robert Bly, he wrote "Iron John" and he was-

Andrew Huberman:
Great book

Terry Real:
... Yeah. And he-

Andrew Huberman:
Amazing book

Terry Real:
... he was like the Mr. Men's Movement, guys drumming in the woods. And I went to Moose Lodge, and I was invited.

Andrew Huberman:
So you met him?

Terry Real:
I did one of the men's weekends, drumming in the woods with Robert and the guys.

Andrew Huberman:
I love the book. I think it has some brilliant insight about all boys' relationship to their fathers, even if they didn't know their fathers. And there's this wonderful and terrifying passage in there. Wonderful because it's so astute, terrifying because it's terrifying, which is, it is the places of absence of the father that the demons enter-

Terry Real:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... a young boy.

Terry Real:
Yeah. That's absolutely true.

Andrew Huberman:
Or something like that. And Bly is a great writer-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and I didn't capture it well, but that whether or not someone had a close relationship with their father and he was very present, or they didn't, there are these, I think of them as actual physical shards of shadow.

Terry Real:
Of wound.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. That that's where addiction shows up later. That's where all sorts of things show. It depends on the circumstances, but-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... Bly was really ahead of his time. It's awesome that you trained with him.

Terry Real:
Yeah. No, we danced. We did Sufi dances together and-

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, so he was into the hippie thing, too?

Terry Real:
Drumming in the woods and he was tribal.

Andrew Huberman:
Tribal.

Terry Real:
And-

Andrew Huberman:
Sorry. Forgive me. I wasn't trying to be pejorative. I'm from Palo Alto. The Grateful Dead are from Palo Alto. I get a hippie pass.

Terry Real:
Anyway, listen, so there was a wonderful shaman. I got to tell you this story. We're going so straight, but I just love this story. So he brought in, Bly, adolescents. He had all these guys, boomer guys in their 50s and 60s, me included, and he trucked in Bloods and Crips. Not only teenagers, but teenagers from urban gangs to do this thing. And he really strongly believed that older men needed to teach younger men how to be on the planet, that there was an initiation that was missing in our culture. And Martin Prechtel, the shaman, as these kids were getting off the bus, I love this detail. I wasn't there. He told this story, though. I wasn't in it. He said, "Give me a sheet." He had a big sheet on the ground. He goes, "Old Cree shaman custom. This is a sacred weekend. We must divest of all metal. All metal goes on the sheet." And these gang members are like, knives, brass knuckles, chains, guns, all of their weapons were on the... Good. There isn't an old Cree... That's bullshit. It was just-

Andrew Huberman:
He just made it up

Terry Real:
... they were just divesting them-

Andrew Huberman:
Nice

Terry Real:
... of their weapons for the weekend.

Andrew Huberman:
Nice.

Terry Real:
But anyway, but even there, you can go on YouTube and see this. When it was my turn to speak to the men, I said, "This is beautiful what we're doing with each other. It's beautiful. It's necessary, and now we have to take it home to our families. It's great for us to be intimate with each other, but we can't be intimate with each other for the weekend and go home and be assholes to our wives and kids."

Andrew Huberman:
It's an amazing story at so many levels, and it brings to mind something I've been thinking about for a number of years, which is, okay, I wasn't in a university fraternity, but I entered a fraternity of way back when and got involved in skateboarding when there were no parents involved, there were no girls or women involved. There was one or two, but it was just a bunch-

Terry Real:
It was a guy territory

Andrew Huberman:
... it was all guys. And the interesting thing about skateboarding is, to this day, you can be 13, and you're hanging out with people that are in their 30s and 40s, right? So that was my first, I used to say non-biological family, but it was a fraternity of sorts. You sort of like, "I want to be in," and then there's a bunch of tests or not tests, and you're part of it. And then eventually, I joined the fraternity of science and research, which is its own very interesting, different podcast topic, fraternity with its own great aspects and its own complete bullshit and et cetera. It's like any fraternity.

Terry Real:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
When you talk about the crisis of loneliness, especially among men, but even for people who are perhaps happily or at least amicably in relationship, I feel like what's missing are these quote unquote "fraternities"-

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... that they're harder to access now. And people have gone online. I actually think part of the success of podcasts, certain podcasts in particular, has been because if you didn't go to the military or something, you watch a Jocko Willink podcast, and Jocko Willink looks like the modern General Patton.

Terry Real:
Hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And he's a very nice guy, but he's a no-nonsense guy.

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
He's a very kind, he's an amazing father, amazing husband to his wife, and great friend, but he's a warrior. He's a legitimate warrior. And so young men and old men now go online to feel like part of a fraternity, to access these different fraternities, so to speak.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But I think there's real value in the in-person work and collaboration, and to some extent, what I described before about the excessive drinking at the end of the day in the beach room in Tolman Hall at Berkeley that took place in the 40s, 50s, and 60s- That was a fraternity.

Terry Real:
I had it in family therapy.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. But it was an important part of learning not just the conventions of the job you're in, but where you sit in this... It's a very touchy word, it's like a third rail word nowadays, the hierarchy, right? But the way I see hierarchy among men is very different. I feel like within a fraternity, you figure out not where you sit on a kind of staircase. You figure out what you're good at, what you're less good at, what you might get better at, and what you'll never get good at. And then you kind of arrange yourselves in a group that you go, "This is great. I'm really good at certain things, terrible at others, and so-so at others." Fortunately, there's complementarity here. They're really good at other things, and so you can learn. And you feel empowered in the best sense of the word because you're like, "Yeah, we're kind of a force because there's no major gaps here." But not because everyone's validating each other and you're interested in going out and doing bad things. I actually think this is why people go into gangs.

Terry Real:
Gangs are a-

Andrew Huberman:
It's a fraternity

Terry Real:
... gangs are a family.

Andrew Huberman:
It's a fraternity.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And the home was never the place where you were supposed to feel fraternity.

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And I think this is a difficult one for men and women to understand and hear, but especially men nowadays, where young guys will come to me and they'll be like, "I don't know what to do. What should I study? What should I do?" This is not the Stanford students. These are the some failure to launch or potential failure to launch kids. Parents now call me, text me, they get a hold of me, "My kid is a da, da, da." And I'm like, "They have no fraternity."

Terry Real:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
Their fraternity is video games. That's not a fraternity. They don't have a group that they can go to to figure out what they're good at, what they suck at, and what they could get better at. And so they walk around, and forgive me for going long, but I think that because online you can see all the fraternities, what I also hear is they're overwhelmed. They're like, "Wait, I'm supposed to work out, I'm supposed to also eat right, I'm supposed to be empathically attuned, I'm supposed to be a provider and protector." And they're like, "Holy shit, this is really tough." I was fortunate that, and you were fortunate, we grew up in a time where the models were whatever we were interacting with. Like when I decided to go into the fraternity of science, sure, I kept exercising and stuff, but what I was like, "Okay, how do I get good at this thing? Who are the good mentors? Who are the pieces of shit mentors?" We all talk, and you're in this fraternity, and you learn. Now, that fraternity included women, because academia, at least in biology at that time, was about 50/50.

Terry Real:
Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
At the faculty level, it's a steep shift.

Terry Real:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
That's changed somewhat now. But the point being, it was never about getting everything from your romantic relationship. The learning, the indoctrination, the learning of self, and the kind of self-esteem and acceptance, a lot of that happened in this context. And I understand there's not a carry-over of skills to the home necessarily, but it filled a good fraction of the vessel of feeling like, yeah, far from perfect. Believe me, I'm replete with flaws to this day. I say it over and over again, and it's true. But where are the fraternities that young men and older men can go to if they don't have one?

Terry Real:
That's tough. I'm a big fan of doing men's group. I love men's groups. You don't need a therapist to lead it. You get together with four other guys and just start talking about your lives. Do a bowling league. I want to say two things. One is, I want the fraternity to support your relationality-

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm

Terry Real:
... not your individual empowerment and entitlement.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. I see fraternity as only being relational. Anything that you could do on your own is not really relational.

Terry Real:
Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. In my mind, it's sort of like-

Terry Real:
Well-

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah

Terry Real:
... to get together with four other guys and bitch about what a rotten life this is and how women are, being incel.

Andrew Huberman:
No.

Terry Real:
That-

Andrew Huberman:
Well, that's happening online.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It might be happening in person. But no, I totally agree. Obviously, it would be to cultivate oneself.

Terry Real:
Yeah. No, no.

Andrew Huberman:
Not to... Because there's something, look, we all do it, we all complain from time to time. Although I have friends who don't have the circuits, and it's really impressive. But I think that complaining is a form of self-abuse. I do. I think there's a threshold beyond which complaining becomes a form of self-abuse.

Terry Real:
Well, going back to having friends and training friends and cultivating friends, one of the things I teach guys is you want to train your friends to support your relationship, not your individual empowerment. So, "Oh my God, I had such a hard time with Belinda, blah, blah, blah." I don't want to hear you talk to me about what a bitch she is. Or maybe you can start that way. But pretty quickly, what I want to hear is, "Okay, Terry, what did you do to contribute to that? And what might you do differently?" I want you to support the mature part of me and the relational part of me, not my individual empowerment. And we have to train people to do that because our culture will gravitate toward individual empowerment. I wouldn't put up with that if I was you. That's not the support I want.

Andrew Huberman:
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins, such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFAS, or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood. Function not only helped me detect that but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC, N-acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second Function test, that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There are so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is, blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by Function's simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com/huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Podcast listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman to get early access to Function. Recently, I've been approached again, parents will reach out, and I have a real soft spot for doing this, and they'll say their son. It's always their son, right? No one's reaching out about their daughter to me. They're saying, "My son is, it's a real problem." Right? "He either graduated college and he's going nowhere," these are smart kids, or they didn't graduate and it's getting scary now.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And we had them checked out for the ADHD, the depression thing, and nowadays there's all this information. People try a bunch of things, and it's just very clear they're on not a good path. When I talk to these guys, 100% of the time, what they are asking for is not to figure out how to be in relationship. In fact, in more than a few cases, they're already in relationship, and they have the really caring, wonderful partner. And sadly, a lot of these women have gotten used to the fact that a lot of guys are kind of failure to launch, and she's taken off, and he's at home, and we don't know how that's going to play out. But can't be good, not in the long term. But the questions are always, to me, are about what do I do? How can I find a group? How can I find work? How can I be part of something? They want to be part of something. And they're smart, and their parents are smart. They're realizing that just, podcasts are great, but ultimately, this isn't going to happen, but maybe you watch one podcast a week, and you get together with friends, and you watch it, and then you talk about it. Okay, that's not going to happen. That's not really how it works. But they're alone. They don't have male friends.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
They don't have the golf buddies. And this is a new thing to me, like guys in, these are guys in their 20s, sometimes in their 30s, and very often they've, no knock against antidepressants, where sometimes they have their use, but very often there's a story about they've been on four different medications for high school and also for college. They've got sexual health issues. Maybe it's neurotic. Maybe it's biological related to the medications. Who knows? And they're stressed about their hair falling out. They're stressed about all this stuff, and they're completely overwhelmed.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And my advice is always like to listen, and it's not, but I always think like the first thing is like, again, I have to be careful not to project what I'd do, is like, "Do you have a driver's license?" "Yeah." "All right. Do you know one person who's able-bodied who you trust?" "Yeah." "All right, go to Yosemite and hike." Like, that's my advice. It's not super sophisticated. Go. Like, your phone won't work. Go to Tuolumne Meadows. Don't freeze to death. Like, bring water. Don't be an idiot. Don't get giardia. Read a book or two online, or read a few things, and just go to Yosemite and hike. Make a friend by going and doing something.

Terry Real:
That's cool.

Andrew Huberman:
And like, because that's, to be honest, I know what they want. They want a job. They want to come work at the podcast, but they don't actually want that. Because you come here, and we're working. Right? And we hang out, but the, I'm hearing this so often. My phone, I've got a list this long of guys, some of them have tried to harm themselves. I had a colleague kill himself recently.

Terry Real:
Oh, sorry.

Andrew Huberman:
Married, two kids, kill himself. And I realized I didn't help him the right way. He reached out about some things. I should have said, "Get your stuff. We're going to Yosemite." Like, "We're taking a weekend, and we're going hiking."

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And it's really wild because I feel like there are certain things that you just can't do on your own.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And all the stuff you're talking about, which is incredible, about relating to romantic partner, these guys have romantic partners. But they're collapsing independent of that.

Terry Real:
That's not the only relationship you need to have.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
You need to have a place in the world, and you need to have good work, and you need to have a purpose, and you need to have community, and you need to have other buddies. And you can also have buddies who are women, too. I mean-

Andrew Huberman:
Sure

Terry Real:
... I don't want to get so narrow in the idea of fraternity. I'm going to say I want community.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
Because why everybody's turning to you is like, "Well, you be a good dad. You be a mentor. Here, take my kid, and they need you." Of course. They do. And You're right. Go be with somebody. And you don't have to have a heart-to-heart. I don't want you to have nobody that you can have a heart-to-heart with, but let's start somewhere and just go be with someone. That's community. And yes, men with men, but also just community in general. It doesn't have to be a man. And I do want to say this. Men don't exclusively need men to teach them how to be men. Lesbian parents can teach boys how to be men. Single moms can teach boys how to be men. We get obsessed with this idea that only a man can raise a boy, and the research is clear. That's just not true. I talk about we need grown-ups to teach children how to be grown-ups.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
And, yeah, if you're a boy, you want to have a few men who you can look up to, who you can go, "Oh, yeah, I want to be like him." Of course, we need that. And let's not get so obsessed about it that we disempower other people to be. Some of my greatest mentors were women.

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, likewise. My graduate mentor was a woman. I learned more about life from her-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and science than I could've ever imagined. Right? And actually, moms of friends of mine when I was growing up were awesome examples and those weren't extensive, rich conversations, but I've got eyes and I got ears and I could observe, "Oh, that's a different way of relating-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... or being." I totally agree.

Terry Real:
But there is something wonderful about guys going off and being guys. Peggy Papp was a great family therapist married to Arthur-- I mean Peggy Penn, married to Arthur Penn, the guy who did, "Bonnie and Clyde," and she told a wonderful story about her husband. Every Sunday, he would go out with the same guys and play golf. And he would come home, and Peggy would say, "What'd you talk about?" And he'd go, "Oh, the lay of the green, what we're going to drink at the bar." And one day, Peggy says she said to her husband, "Look, Arthur, I'm a gender expert. I go around the world talking about it. Next time you go off with your guys, I want you to come home and I want you to talk to me about feelings, about depth, about something more than the goddamn lay of the green, for Christ's sake." Okay. She comes home a week later. "You went?" "Yeah, I played golf." "What'd you guys talk about?" "Oh, honey, Bill was incested by his nanny when he was four, and Harry lost his dog when he was three and he never got over it. And Steve thinks he's got a really small penis." And Peggy looked at him and go, "You're full of shit, right?" He said, "We played golf."

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, that was a great story. I'm a big fan of the movie, "Stand by Me."

Terry Real:
Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Sadly, Reiner was murdered the other day.

Terry Real:
Oh.

Andrew Huberman:
But that was a brilliant movie. It's actually an important movie, despite it being a real timepiece-

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... because it's that age right before boys, they're either hitting puberty or they haven't hit puberty, and there's this interesting thing that happens where their self-concept is still in childhood. They're talking about superheroes and cartoons. They have this argument about whether or not Mighty Mouse or Superman would win a fight.

Terry Real:
Oh, yeah. Love it.

Andrew Huberman:
And one of them goes, "Well, that's ridiculous. Superman's a real person, right?" It's awesome. And then one of them, the late River Phoenix, he's so clearly ahead of all of the other kids because of the rough environment, but also he's just developmentally more ahead of the game. So it's an interesting thing about getting out and moving through space with people, I think is good. Whether or not it's golf, which I consider a very slow movement-

Terry Real:
Huh

Andrew Huberman:
... or it's hiking or-- Also, the nice thing about walking and hiking is that it doesn't require any significant athleticism. So as long as you bring water and some food, and if you're camping, you can camp or you can sleep in your car. It's just like our day hike. It's just so simple. I will say, because I do want to talk about substance use-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and abuse. Anytime I hear, I always ask, "Are you smoking weed?"

Terry Real:
Okay.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm not somebody who judges anyone if they're into it, but young guys who are doing a lot of high-THC cannabis seems, from my experience, my data set, very highly correlated with significant problems, apathy being one of them-

Terry Real:
Yeah. It makes you passive

Andrew Huberman:
... and a bunch of other mood regulation issues. Right.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Same thing with drinking. If they're drinking too much, I'm like, "Listen, go to a 12-step meeting." You can't be drinking, smoking weed, and not have a job. Because it's just very clear how, as someone once put it, how that plays out. There are other things there. I feel like I have a responsibility to say that there are other points of suggestion. Usually, it starts, however, with, "What supplement should I take? Should I be taking creatine?"

Terry Real:
Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm like, "How's your life?" "Oh, it's a mess." "Well, you in a relationship?" "Yeah, I got a girlfriend." "Is it great?" "Yeah, she's super sweet." "Are you working?" "No. She's working. She's at school." Okay, and then you start getting the picture, and you're like, "Okay, creatine ain't going to fix this."

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
In fact, getting in shape can be empowering, but you're just spending all your time at the gym scrolling on social media, taking pictures of your abs-

Terry Real:
Huh

Andrew Huberman:
... and then you don't have any friends. That's a disaster waiting to happen.

Terry Real:
And a place in the world. Our economy is not great, and AI is going to come in, and these kids are having a hard time finding a career and a job and meaning in the world. And you do get a dichotomy a lot of times where you have a man, a young man, who is relationally skilled But not powerful. No place in the world. That goes back to what I was talking about, you can have feelings and be a big baby about it. It's both. You have to be relationally skilled, and you have to be assertive and have meaning and have a spot in the world and a career. And I love to tell stories. Can I tell you a story?

Andrew Huberman:
Please.

Terry Real:
This is my quintessential what it means to be a man story. True story. So I had the privilege of going to Maasailand in Tanzania, where we had to drive 10 hours to this very remote village, which friends of mine were building a school with them, so they knew them and loved them. And so I had a men's group with the elders of this tribe for four nights, and we talked about everything, God, women, death, whatever. And at one point, I said to them, "So there's a big debate in my country about what makes a good Morani." Morani warrior man, one word. Warrior man, that's what it is. Some people in America believe that a good Morani is strong, tough, and don't mess with him. Other people believe that a good Morani is sensitive and sweet and kind. I said, "What do you guys think? What makes a good Morani?" And this is absolutely true, Andrew. This little guy, must have been 300 years old, and had about four foot two, sticks his finger out, and went from English to Swahili, to Maasai, to Swahili, to English. And he sounded pissed. And he said, "I have no interest in talking to you about what makes a good Morani. Couldn't care less. But I will talk to you about what makes a great Morani." He said, "Now listen, when the moment calls for fierceness, a good Morani is a killer." And they are. They have swords and shields, and they're warriors. They'll kill you. Don't cross them. "When the moment calls for tenderness, a good Morani will lay down his sword and shield and be sweet like a baby. What makes a great Morani is knowing which moment is which." That's what I want. I want adaptability, flexibility, and wholeness. Strong, vulnerable, related, firm, all of our human qualities kicked out in the moment that calls for them with flexibility. That's a man.

Andrew Huberman:
It's clear that within romantic relationship and other family-type relationships, that the softness, the kindness, but also what you referred to before as being skilled, not hard, not soft, skilled. That's what you're looking for in a point of friction.

Terry Real:
That's right.

Andrew Huberman:
Think be skilled. Don't think be hard. Don't think be soft. Be skilled.

Terry Real:
Yeah. And it's in your interest to be skilled.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
You're not giving in.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
You're being smart.

Andrew Huberman:
The warrior piece, here in the United States and other Western cultures, what's happening right now, it is kind of scary, right? People are very concerned, men are very concerned about how to make a living.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Probably to an extent that, at least in my lifetime, I've never observed. Because computers came along, and there was the whole obnoxious learn to code thing, but very quickly, people realized, okay, you don't have to be a computer programmer to still make a living. Factories have closed, but there are other things. But that was a rough transition. We forget, right? But now with AI, there's this feeling that it's like a tidal wave of work opportunity is going to be taken away from men. So in the context of your story, is work the warrior piece-

Terry Real:
Yes

Andrew Huberman:
... in the United States? Okay.

Terry Real:
I would call it a place in the world. I would call it purpose.

Andrew Huberman:
So what happens when there isn't work to do?

Terry Real:
I think that this is a big crisis for young men, younger men, millennial gentlemen, I don't even have all the alphabet. They're nervous that there is no opening for them to step into the world and have a meaningful place.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, for a long time, the discussion was about finding work that you really love as opposed to just doing something because you make a good living.

Terry Real:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
Now I think the conversation actually is switching to, what can I do to just make a living?

Terry Real:
I need to put bread on the table. I'm floundering. And also, women are in the workforce.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
Men are feeling their position eroding, in part because of changing economic circumstances, but in part, back in the '40s and '50s, I slayed dragons, came home, and my wife met me with a martini and slippers. Nowadays, I slay dragons, I come home, and my wife comes home from slaying dragons, too. One of the nice things about young men is that they understand that it's going to be a two-career family, and they're more egalitarian than we were. I have to help. It's not fair for me to not help with the dishes. She's as tired as I am, and her paycheck is as big as... There was research, there's a direct correlation between how much housework a man does and how big his wife's paycheck is. The bigger her paycheck, the more housework he does.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
But that's not being whipped. That's like Yeah. She's tired, too. We're a team. So there is some of that with men. On the other hand, this whipped up kind of hysteria about the crisis with men, boys are doing poorly in school, and boys aren't doing this, and boys... A lot of that is comparative. Boys are doing worse than women. Boys are not achieving the same grades as girls. And I haven't looked at this, but I'm wondering if some of this hyped-up, "Oh, what's going on with boys?" Boys aren't that much worse, it's that girls and women are doing so much better. And in comparison, it looks like we're standing still and being passed. That is the feeling. There is a feeling in all aspects of privilege, white privilege, male privilege, "Look, these other people are getting let in, and they're going to eat my lunch, and I'm nervous about that."

Andrew Huberman:
I observed in the '80s and '90s and 2000s, a lot of guys, mostly guys, become addicts. And not all of them came from traumatic homes, not of the, whatever, the big T type trauma, at least not that I'm aware of. Some did. Mostly it was absent fathers tended to kind of predict addiction or-

Terry Real:
That is trauma

Andrew Huberman:
... or addict dads.

Terry Real:
That is trauma, Andrew.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. It is trauma, right. I was just sort of big T, little T. I'm not aware of any, then they could exist, I don't know. Specific-

Terry Real:
But I want to be clear about this because it's endemic to our culture. Absent dads is the norm for many people in this culture. And absence can do more damage than violent presence can.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
And we tend to not think about it that way. But neglect can be as wounding. Back to Bly, he said this once. He's a beautiful poet. He said, "Every time a young man walks down the corridor and says hello to an older, more successful man, and that man does not say hello back, that's a wound in the soul of the young man." I love that. And absences speak as woundingly as violent presences do. And many men, not being relational, are absent, and people suffer. The children suffer, and the partners suffer. And then I talk about the unholy triad of patriarchy. You've got absent or irresponsible dad, you've got unhappy but accommodating mom, and then you have a sweet, smart, sensitive little boy, and that boy feels his mother's pain. She doesn't have to do anything to, quote, "enmesh him." He feels it, and he moves into caretaking her. And then his template for relationship is, "I'm a caretaker. It's not mutual." And then he has a very ambivalent relationship to being close to somebody because close means, "Nobody cares about me. I'm taking care of them." That is endemic in our culture.

Andrew Huberman:
Very common. And I appreciate the, call it what it is, the redirect to this. I'll come back to the addiction piece, but what you're describing is everywhere.

Terry Real:
Everywhere.

Andrew Huberman:
Everywhere. This is often why I get the text from the mom of a kid saying, "My kid, he's got these issues," right? And we talked about them. It's the phenotype you're describing. It's the scenario you're describing. There was a message in the early '90s that I think was very toxic, frankly. I'll take some heat for this because it's politically leaning, but I'm going to be very clear on my politics. I don't like political groups. I don't like groups that relate to politics. Frankly, I just don't like them. I'm sometimes a double hater. There are certain things through the middle and both sides. Yes, yes, no, no, definitely no, definitely no. Okay. That's me. I'll just put it out on the table. In the '90s, there were two messages that came about during the Clinton administration. One was very useful, one was highly toxic, in my opinion. The first one that was very useful was Hillary Clinton took data from-- Was talking about data from my colleague Karla Shatz at Stanford, who talked about, "Fire together, wire together." She said that, not Donald-

Terry Real:
Oh, yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... Hebb. For the record, she said that, not Donald Hebb.

Terry Real:
Hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And it had to do with brain plasticity, and they talked about this first six years. Okay? Like Hillary Clinton or hater, the first six years is a real thing, and it attuned parents to the idea that the first six years of life are not the only important part of life, but there's a lot of brain plasticity happening there. And she talked to the right scientist, Karla, my colleague and friend, phenomenal neuroscientist, about the fact that playing your kid classical music isn't going to help. What they need is a certain amount of nurturing and stuff to really wire those circuits up. And then certain windows close, and you can go back and do the work, but those first six years are absolutely critical. It should've been the first 50 years, but six was good. That was a great message.

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
One that still, I think, carries forward today, and we should acknowledge that. The other message, and it was the Bill Clinton story, was because he had a single mom and at least by Democrats, he was highly revered, was this idea, and you can find this online, that as long as there's one person that-

Terry Real:
Ah

Andrew Huberman:
... cares about you, that you're going to be just fine.

Terry Real:
Hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And I understand that it had benevolent motives. It was like, look, if you have no one, clearly you're screwed, or life's going to be much, much harder. If you have multiple people that care about you and are nurturing you as a young person becoming a young adult, et cetera, even better. But the notion was that if you just had one person, you're good. And I think that seeded this idea that, sure, sometimes divorce saves families, sometimes it destroys families. There's all sorts of ideas. But that idea, I think, was highly toxic because it runs countercurrent to everything we understand about what it takes to be nurtured properly. Doesn't mean you need two parents, as you pointed out. You can get nurturing from men or from women, et cetera. But this idea that you just need one person who cares about you, that's what you just described. It's the mom who cares about the kid, the kid who sees the mom's pain, the absent dad. Sometimes it's the reverse. Usually, it's the scenario you described.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I've just seen thousands of examples where that leads to very bad things. There should have been an ellipse on that that said, in the case where it's just one person or parent, there need to be other people to fill the roles that person can't fill.

Terry Real:
Yes, of course. And there's also a difference between, "I'm a single mom raising my son." We'll keep it to boys. So I have a community of people around that boy to love him, and it's not all me. That doesn't necessarily mean I need a surrogate father to bring him in to teach him how to be a man. Anybody in the community, this is good, but not just one person. Agreed. The other thing I want to say is there's a difference between, "I'm being raised by a single parent," and, "I'm being raised by two parents, one of whom doesn't pay any attention to me." There's a difference between somebody who's really gone and someone who's physically there and emotionally gone.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
And that is a wound. And unfortunately, because so many men are so unrelational, we're going to change that. That's what you get. And if Dad is distant from me, Dad's also distant from Mom, and Mom is brokenhearted. And traditionally, Mom's brokenhearted and not doing much about it, just resenting it and suffering it, downloading a lot of that feeling to me, whether she means to or not. I just pick it up. And then I move into some skewed relationship where I'm parenting her instead of being parented by her. She doesn't have to do a thing. She can be the world's greatest mom explicitly, but I'm feeling her distress and stepping in to that. And then I have a hard time with relationships as an adult man. We call this being a love avoidant. It's like my template for relationships is I'm caretaking you. You don't really care about me. So I'll be in the relationship, but I don't want to get swallowed up by you. So I'll be in the relationship, but I'll also be very distant. In that way, the distance gets replicated generation by generation by generation.

Andrew Huberman:
I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life. And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice. Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits. But many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations. So it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice, both from the perspective of novelty, you never get tired of those meditations. There's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation. And you can always fit meditation into your schedule, even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com/huberman, where you can access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman to access a free 30-day trial. I think I know the answer to the question I'm about to ask, but I'll ask it anyway. In your experience, are women just better at being relational than men?

Terry Real:
They're better. They ain't no angels. Women have to learn a few things, too. They have to learn to be subjective. It's really tempting because I do know more about relationships than my guy to start feeling like I'm his coach. I'm going to teach him what he needs to do. That's an arrogant position. That's a grandiose position. Stay humble. I can teach you what I need. I'm not your relational coach. That's a trap. Women have to learn how to speak relationally also. So story, I love to tell a story. This is a true story. And this is the example I give about stepping out of our usual cultural framework and learning how to think relationally. How many of people listening can relate to this one? She to him, "You're a reckless driver." Him to her, "You're overly nervous." How many of us have sat through that one? And they get into what I call an objectivity battle. You marshal your evidence. You argue your case. "Well, you do this, you do that. You're reckless." "Well, you're overly nervous about this. Harry thinks you're nervous, too." It's what I call an objectivity battle. It can go on literally for decades. This is absolutely true, Andrew. One session with me. Her to him "Honey, I know you love me." Let's start with that. Hold the phone there. Change the energy. Remember the biosphere. Remember that we're a team. I know you love me. When you drive on your own, I worry about you, but it's your life. Do what you do. When I'm in the car with you and you're tailgating and speeding and changing lanes, I don't know, maybe I'm nervous. She takes the whole objectivity battle off the table. Maybe I am overthinking. I don't know. But nevertheless, when I'm sitting next to you and you're driving, I get crazy. I'm scared. You love me. You don't really want me to be this scared out of my mind every time I'm sitting next to you when we're driving. As a favor to me, when I'm in the car, could you please slow down and drive more conservatively so I don't have to be so nervous? True story, Andrew. Him to her. "Sure, honey." And he did. And what might've been a fight that lasted 40 years was done in 15 minutes. Why? Not objective, "You're a reckless driver." Subjective, "I get nervous." The beauty about speaking subjectively is nobody can argue with you. "Well, you shouldn't get nervous." I know, but I do.

Andrew Huberman:
It's nice it also started with, "I know you love me."

Terry Real:
I know you love me.

Andrew Huberman:
And what a nice thing to hear right before a request.

Terry Real:
I know you love me.

Andrew Huberman:
Assuming it's true.

Terry Real:
Well, of course. And also a request, not a complaint.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
I know you love me. This is what's happening to me. We're a team. As a favor to me, would you please? Humble, subjective, negotiating. Not, "I'm God's gift. I know how to drive. You're an idiot." Take all that energy away. And then, "Right, I do love you. Right, you do get nervous. You're a fool for getting nervous, but you get nervous. You're my wife. Sure, I'll do this for you." And I use this as an example of learning to speak relationally. It's not about who's right and who-- I say the relational answer to who's right and who's wrong is who cares? How are we as a team going to make this work? And that's a whole new world. Are women better at this than men? Not a lot. They're better at a lot of other things than men, but I have to teach women how to be more relational, too. Women are more relational than men, but they need to learn a few skills as well.

Andrew Huberman:
Let's talk about addiction or compulsion. We could have a two-hour discussion about where the line is, but-

Terry Real:
I have a one-sentence-

Andrew Huberman:
Mm

Terry Real:
... thing to say about addiction. What we self-medicate when we self-medicate is the pain of disconnection, and the cure for addiction is intimacy. I'm a big 12-step fan. I know you are, too.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm.

Terry Real:
One of my great mentors was P.M. Melody.

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, yeah.

Terry Real:
A great light in 12-step.

Andrew Huberman:
Wrote the book about codependency.

Terry Real:
Yeah. And I'm saturated with 12-step and 12-step wisdom. There are things you can do to get sober. Intimacy will keep you sober. And I believe that what the pain-- Yes, trauma, but trauma is disconnection, too. All trauma is, is the lack of relationality in whenever it happened. What we find intolerable is how lonely we are, and we turn to what I call a misery stabilizer to make our loneliness tolerable to ourselves, but it just makes it-- I said in my first book, "I Don't Want to Talk About It," taking a substance for loneliness is like drinking saltwater for thirst. It makes you worse than you started. But that's what we do. So when I treat addictions, there are levels. Level A, the addiction itself. I'm a big fan of 12-step. Get sober. Level B, let's look at the immaturities of your personality that you have to sort out. Level C, let's look at the early trauma that may be at the root of this. Let's deal with all three of those. And it's all wrapped in the circle of learning how to be connected and relational. That's the ouch that you're trying to get out of, and let's restore that. And that's all of that work. Trauma work, you have to make a connection with that little boy or girl that was so hurt. Personality work, you have to learn how to be mature. Work on your grandiosity or self-medication. Do that, per se. And then as you do all of those layers, the king of recovery is learning how to be connected to yourself, first and foremost, and to the people around you. That's the cure for addiction.

Andrew Huberman:
The 12-step piece is interesting as it relates to the relational piece, too, because for people who've never been to a meeting, maybe just put a little bit of contour on it.

Terry Real:
12-step meetings are fellowship.

Andrew Huberman:
Yes, it's fellowship, and it's also a place where you, at a very basic level, learn to listen and to be quiet. And I'll just mention this because I think a lot of people hear 12-step, they have different ideas about it. But if anyone's ever curious about it, it's a very welcoming community. Even non-addicts can go to what are called open AA meetings.

Terry Real:
Right.

Andrew Huberman:
And even though there are lots of different divisions of 12-step, AA has been around the longest, and those meetings tend to have the most structure and-

Terry Real:
Agreed

Andrew Huberman:
... and so if you ever want to see what 12-step is about, it's ... perfectly welcome. It's encouraged, in fact, to go to, you can look it up online, they're in person or online, and you can go to a, it has to be an open 12-step meeting. Check to see if it's men only or women only or mixed. And you can go, and the format, very briefly, is someone will read something out, and then people will go around the room and typically, so people will say their name, and they'll say they're an alcoholic or an addict, because sometimes it's mixed addiction. And if people are there just to observe, they'll just say, it's always first names only, will say, "I'm so-and-so, and I'm just here to learn." And it goes right past you. So if you think that the microscope's going to be on you-

Terry Real:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... and then typically somebody who's had a lot of time sober will speak for anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, sometimes a little longer. And then there'll be a kind of round robin where people can or cannot, they can elect to share for one to three minutes. And then there's some discussion about the traditions. And the reason I think it's so powerful for a number of reasons, helped so many people get sober, it costs nothing, it's all over the world every day and all night and online and in person. But I think that at a minimum, it teaches you to just listen. If you want to share, you can share. And what it also teaches you, and this is kind of a more subtle layer, but it's a really important layer, someone said to me just yesterday, even if you don't think that you need to go to a meeting, if you've had some time sober and you go and you share, or even if you're struggling and you go, almost certainly there's someone there that's benefiting from what you're saying.

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
You may never know it, but that's part of the fellowship service piece-

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... is it's sometimes people will come up and say, "Hey, what you said really resonated." Always what other people share, there's a grain or more of relational stuff there. So it's a very interesting form of relating. It's not unlike the way Quakers get together.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And we'll just sit, and then sometimes someone will speak. It's different, but anyway, I think that we want to pull back the veil a little bit on what happens at these meetings. And you'll also be very surprised. Sometimes people are really dejected and in a real-life crisis. More often than not, you walk in and you're like, "Wow, these people are very empowered."

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Because they're there, and they've been going. It's not like this dungeon of a place.

Terry Real:
No.

Andrew Huberman:
There's a cheerfulness to it, often. Not always, but there's a cheerfulness to it. And so anyway, I encourage anyone that's curious about it, if they think they're an addict, but also if they also just want to become more relational. These open AA meetings are a real gift. Again, zero cost. They pass the hat, but nobody cares if you donate or not.

Terry Real:
And you don't have to talk. You can just go and be.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
My dear Pia, we've been talking about relationship. Pia said intimacy, which is healing and spiritual, is the conjunction of truth and love, the meeting of truth and love. And she said 12-step meetings were her model for that. And I'll tell you two stories. My friend Alan used to go to Al-Anon. I said, "Why do you go to Al-Anon?" He said, "Well, I had a great grandfather, but you got Noah." Said, "You know what? Every other week, Friday night, I go to an Al-Anon meeting, and people will say things that are absolutely horrible, and not one person will lift a finger to make it better. We'll just be with each other."

Andrew Huberman:
Hmm.

Terry Real:
"And I find that spiritually refreshing." And I remember being in a men's group that after a conference, I created a little a 12-step men's group, and I was sitting next to an older guy, and he looked at us, I'll remember this forever, and he said, "I've never been intimate with anybody in my life, and I expect I'll die alone." And not one of us either pulled away from him or tried to make it better for him. We were just with him. That is intimate. And 12-step has a lot of wisdom that goes beyond our general culture. It's not perfect, but it's a step up from the mores of our culture.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. It's definitely not perfect. There are meetings that people don't resonate with, and occasionally you'll go to a meeting, and you can tell the storytelling can get a little bit, people getting a little high on other people's stories about getting high. But a good meeting, which is 98% of meetings, the person leading the meeting will keep things in check. And gosh, there's so much wisdom there. And I think especially in this time where people are struggling more than ever to make connection, and online is clearly a very different form of connection or even leads to disconnection. The in-person meetings have a real value to them. And of course, I also believe that many people are dealing with addiction now, and they don't realize it. The numbing out or the rage-baiting that you can experience watching what is essentially 300 little short movies in the course of 20, 30 minutes, when you could just think about what's actually going on internally around you. I mean, it's-

Terry Real:
Well, or look at porn. Our young men, my wife Belinda is a certified sex addiction therapist, and a boy, by the time he's 12 or 13, has seen thousands of vaginas, has seen thousands of sex scenes. That's average for America right now.

Andrew Huberman:
That's so crazy. Yeah, when I was growing up, it was so different.

Terry Real:
So one of the things I say is that, we talked about this earlier, it's the difference between gratification and relational joy. And a lot of us substitute intensity for intimacy.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
And boy, the internet That's what they sell. That's the algorithm. And intensity itself becomes like a drug, and it makes us feel alive, and it's gratifying, and it pulls us out of whatever depression we're feeling, but it's very short-lived.

Andrew Huberman:
There's an example of intensity that comes to mind whenever we're talking about boys and men and addiction, but also just languishing and just the idea that people can course-correct, but it's hard when people have been in a current of numbing out or going for intensity. And here I am drinking yerba mate. I love caffeine. But I see it at every level because of, I'm about to slam on energy drinks for a second.

Terry Real:
Ha.

Andrew Huberman:
But just the idea that you're trying to pack more and more intensity into less and less space.

Terry Real:
That was one of the things I was nervous about coming on this podcast with you.

Andrew Huberman:
That we're all slamming energy drinks and-

Terry Real:
No, no, not that, but this idea of optimizing every experience and having-

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, that's a misconception, unfortunately, about this podcast. I think maybe we used the word "optimize" early on without explaining that optimization is really about making the best of each day.

Terry Real:
So, but that includes sit still.

Andrew Huberman:
Totally. I started today with 10 minutes of meditation. Oh, absolutely. Unfortunately, this podcast for some people, they think about supplements, optimization, working out, and morning sunlight. Morning sunlight thing's pretty important, especially on overcast days, but for everyone. We are circadian creatures.

Terry Real:
I'll go for that.

Andrew Huberman:
You want to get mentally ill, you can help yourself be mildly or severely mentally depressed or ill. You can damage your relationships by being in dim or dark environments in the early hours of the day. There's so much data, right? Bright days, dark nights. That's the idea. But that's the healthy approach. But no, this podcast was always about psychology and biology and understanding some mechanism and practical tools. And the optimization thing is, I do think taking a healthy stock of oneself and saying some people need to move more. Some people need to move less and read more, frankly. I know some really fit people that are getting dumb. They'll tell you everything about sets and reps, but I'm like, "Listen, you got four PhDs." These aren't the exercise physiologists I'm referring to. But you got four PhDs in kettlebells and nutrition that you've given yourself through YouTube. Read a hard book, read a fiction book, read a kid's book, for God's sake.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
You got to balance yourself out. So I do believe in that. But I think when it comes to the relational piece, the reason I keep coming back to 12-step is I think it's just a beautiful template for how to listen.

Terry Real:
How to listen and be. A friend of mine brought a book. I didn't read the book, but the title's just hilarious. The title of the book is "Death: The End of Self-Improvement." And it's like-

Andrew Huberman:
Fair

Terry Real:
... you know what?

Andrew Huberman:
Who knows what happens next?

Terry Real:
Sit down, have a cup of tea, and look at the trees. As a family therapist, I love hanging out. Families operate in the interstices. I hate quality time. I hate it. It's a yuppie invention. I can work 80 hours, but then I'll sit at a table with my kid and really stare at them and really give them attention. No. Families operate, you want your kid to talk to you, they're in the backseat while you're driving them to hockey practice. Then they'll open up and talk to you. You're cooking together, and all of a sudden, they start burbling. You don't focus the laser beam of your attention on them. They'll clam up. One of the things that families can teach us about relationality, relational joy, is hanging out, being. It doesn't have to be so focused.

Andrew Huberman:
I love that.

Terry Real:
Be a little less perfect and be a little more human, and just let yourself be nurtured in different modes than the ones we're used to.

Andrew Huberman:
I love that. My parents split when I was 14, and we went from a family that was pretty cohesive. My dad worked a lot, and sure, it had issues, but we were very cohesive to just a very different picture. My sister was off at school. My dad was elsewhere. It was just me and my mom, and those were really, really difficult years, very, very difficult for reasons that aren't important to get into in detail now. But I was thinking the other day, I have very, very fond memories of evenings where I may or may not have been doing my homework, probably should've been. But I would watch TV or do homework in the living room while my mom would cook. Sometimes she was on the phone with a friend. And there was music on occasionally. We'd watch "The Wonder Years," and then there was this dating show that she liked to watch, but then she'd get really upset if the couples didn't like each other and so.

Terry Real:
Huh.

Andrew Huberman:
And those are some of the best memories-

Terry Real:
That's right

Andrew Huberman:
... I have-

Terry Real:
Hanging out

Andrew Huberman:
... of me and my mom. And it wasn't the trips that we took or any of that stuff. And this graduate advisor that I had, her name was Barbara Chapman. She's a phenomenal scientist, like a real pure scientist. Taught me so much about how to really think about doing really solid science. Brilliant woman, trained at all the top places. Didn't give a shit about the accoutrements that go with... She just loved doing experiments. In any case, she had two daughters while I was in the lab, and her husband's a scientist, too. So I got to know their family very well. And sadly, she passed away in 2014-

Terry Real:
Mm

Andrew Huberman:
... of cancer, and it was super devastating to all of us. So, a lot of memorials for her. But I went to the memorial at the House of Flowers in San Francisco, which is also where she and her husband had been married, and her two daughters were there. And It was heavy. All the colleagues, all the friends. She was an amazing person. I'm crying buckets. I'm a mess. I always have to speak at her memorials. It's like the eighth memorial. I'm like, "I'm not going to cry." Of course, I get up there, I'm just in front of all my colleagues, all of that. It actually taught me a few things about how to deal with people in profession, because you can't walk away from that and be like... You just snot out your nose. Anyway, her daughters get up, and everyone's bracing themselves like, "This is going to be hard."

Terry Real:
Devastating, yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
They get up there and basically what I recall, and I think is accurate, is they were like, "We love our mom. We miss our mom," all that stuff. Everyone's melting, and they just go, "But the thing we remember best and that we loved about her the most was all the unstructured time."

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
"She would just hang out with us."

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I was like, "I don't want to break down now." Because it'd be out tears of joy, but it was just so incredible.

Terry Real:
Touching.

Andrew Huberman:
I was like, "That's so cool." Of all the things they did, the World Series, the trips they took to France, they did that, the scientific meetings that the girls got into, it's like the unstructured time. And I was just like, "That is so cool." And I'm actually in touch with them now. One actually is in graduate school doing neuroscience, which is warming, but could've done anything, and it's so wild. Because of all that, their mom's been gone probably almost as long as they had her. And it's like the unstructured time, that was it. That's the thing they held onto more than anything.

Terry Real:
That's connection. I'll tell you a story. So I was dealing with a rock star, not Bruce Springsteen, who wrote the intro to my Springsteen album. I'm always talking about him, but it wasn't him. It was a different... But anyway, I was dealing with a rock star, and this is how he described himself. "So when I'm on stage in front of 60,000 people, I'm alive. When I come home and I'm with my wife and four kids, I'm like a computer on sleep mode."

Andrew Huberman:
Oof.

Terry Real:
"I'm just half shut down and depressed." He was asleep 10 hours a day. Okay, so I talked to him about gratification and relational joy, about hanging out. And I said, "Look, your kids keep, 'Daddy, daddy, daddy,' you go, 'No.' I want you to start saying, 'Yes.' And, "Dad, let's go for a walk." "Oh, okay." Get yourself up out of the chair and go be. And he did. And about six months in, this is an absolutely true story, he comes to me, big smile on his face. He says, "I got it." I said, "Okay, tell me. There's a story." He goes, "This Sunday, I had the best day of my life." I said, "Go on." He said, "My wife, me, and my four kids, we didn't get out of our PJs all day. We sat around and played Monopoly from 7:00 in the morning till 7:00 at night. I had no idea where the time went. I had no idea what we were doing. And it was the best day of my goddamn life." And I said, "Welcome to Relational Joy." That's what I want. And that's what we're born for. I deal with really tough couples, really tough guys. The ace in my pocket is relational connection is what we're born for. And people move very quickly in the therapy I do, not just me, but all the therapists we've trained. And the reason is that our whole art as RLT therapists is moving somebody out of disconnection into the jet stream of connection and relational joy. And once somebody is in that jet stream, oh, man, it's just so much better than the disconnection. That the jet stream takes them, and they move very quickly and transformationally because this is what makes us happy. This is what fulfills us.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. It's almost like the best stuff is the stuff that you would never post on social media because it's so boring for the internet and so awesome in real life.

Terry Real:
Yeah. Well said. That's what I want.

Andrew Huberman:
I think I'm starting to catch your vibe.

Terry Real:
You're a pretty relational dude, I got to tell you.

Andrew Huberman:
For better or worse.

Terry Real:
Ah.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, I have work to do. I'm fortunate now to be in the landscape of what I think is a real education in peace and simplicity, despite my professional life being less about peace and simplicity, more about, "It's all good. I love it. I love my job." Love my job. But in the rest of my life, it's really peace and simplicity. I had a hike with a friend recently. It was awesome. Just awesome. We got together for a hike, talked about some things, hung out. That was great. I've taken a lot of hikes with a lot of friends, and that one was definitely a winner for whatever reason, just the relational piece. And then also now I think she may be getting bored. I don't know. I should probably ask her. But my girlfriend and I, these days, we just hang out and listen to music.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That's a lot of our time is hanging out and listening to music.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
She's got great musical taste. I like music, and I'm trying to learn more about other music, and I know pretty quickly if I like something or not. And she's got a treasure trove of music. But even when we don't like something, so we just hang out and listen to music. Now I'm realizing we've spent a lot of time just hanging out and listening to music. But it's a totally different landscape because the intensity is there in certain aspects, certainly. But the peace piece ... is this whole other landscape that I'm less familiar with. And I should say, I take the blame for that. I've been a bit of an intensity junkie in my life, for sure. Adrenaline and I are close buddies. We hang out. We like each other. We get high off each other. But nowadays, that doesn't really appeal.

Terry Real:
No, intimacy's better. Gratification is fine, but intimacy is better. It's a deeper satisfaction.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
One of the things I say is, I talk about relational recovery. Addictions can be part of it, but recovering the state of relationality we're born for, that's what I'm looking for.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
And one of the things I say is, operating with maturity, skill, health, integrity, learning how to do this well, your life is simple. Being fucked up, that's complicated.

Andrew Huberman:
Totally.

Terry Real:
Fighting for a day and a half, that's complicated.

Andrew Huberman:
Totally.

Terry Real:
When your wife comes at you and says, "I'm really mad," and you go, "I'm sorry, honey. What can I do to help you?" And she's chilled out in 10 minutes, that's simple. So relationality is actually simple. Not being relational is full of complications. This is easy.

Andrew Huberman:
The scientist in me has to run the experiment here. So a lot of the examples you've given, I acknowledge they certainly apply. You're the clinician, you would know, and you have your own life experience. We've got this model out on the table of the guy who doesn't really know how to listen as well as he could, still needs to learn to ask for help and ask, "What do you need right now in this moment?" To take breaks when things get ratcheted up. She's got things that she needs and wants from him. He's kind of this emotionally semi-embryonic, semi-adult thing. Let's turn the table. Not because we have to, but because once again, it's rarely just one person. Is there ever a time when a guy has a complaint that's valid?

Terry Real:
Oh my God.

Andrew Huberman:
Because I just think it's important for us to do this. We have a male and female audience, but I just think part of the male crisis is that it seems like the seesaw is always tilted the same way. And that message, while probably valid in a lot of circumstances, probably more than half, if I'm honest, it's, I think sometimes men have requests and things that they want and have valid complaints, maybe invalid complaints. Let's talk about how to voice concern, request, dare I say criticism, in a way that's healthy and that serves both people, serves relationally.

Terry Real:
Yeah. I'm not a big fan of criticism. If you go online and you do my course, we give you a format for criticism. It's called the feedback wheel.

Andrew Huberman:
Constructive criticism.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Terry Real:
But even so, one of the skills I teach people is we're evolutionary wired, the negative bias of the brain.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
We notice what's wrong.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
That's survival. "Hey, that leaf shouldn't be turning." Well, there's a saber-toothed tiger on the other side. We notice what's wrong, and that's part of our evolution. That's what comes to us first. So complaint comes to us first. But one of the disciplines I teach people, literally sit down, write down the complaint. Okay, now flip it over. Flip the page over. Inside of every complaint is a request.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
Think about that. Every complaint has an implicit request in it. Unless you absolutely have to, 9 out of 10 times, skip the complaint and just go for the request. And particularly women to men, men are criticism-phobic because we base our self-esteem on our performance. So don't tell your guy what he's doing wrong. Tell him what he could be doing a little better. "Hey, you're doing a great job. This would work better." In our culture, we try and get more of what we want from each other by criticizing each other. If you have to, I'll teach you how to do it. But better, skip the criticism and go right for what you want. Empower your partner to give you what you want. Don't beat them down by sharing your feelings about how... That's therapy. Therapy's been the worst on this. Sharing your misery at what your partner's done wrong is not going to motivate them to do it better for you.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
Help them do it better. "We're a team. This is what I want from you." "Honey, what could I give you to help you give it to me?" Who sounds like that? We have to learn how to sound like that. So criticism. I learned criticism from Janet Hurley, PM Melody's 12-step sponsor. It's called the feedback wheel. I'll do it real brief, but you can go online. Four parts. This is what happened as I recollect it. It's still subjective. This is the story I told myself about it. This is what I felt, and the all-important part, this is what would make me feel better. So Belinda to Terry. You said you were going to be home at 7:00. You didn't call or text. You showed up at 7:45. The kids and I were waiting for you. Done. The story I told myself was, you can be selfish. And see, as long as you own it, this is the story. You can say the nasty things you're thinking. You got caught up, you forgot about us, your work was more important, and you blew it. What I feel about it. This is a big tip for your listeners. Take the feeling that comes easiest to you and put that last. Reach for the feelings that are less common. So if you're used to big Yeah, I'm pissed off. Go for the vulnerability. I was hurt. If you're used to being hurt, go for your strength. That was really not a good way. So whatever you're used to, flip it.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
And then what we never add, "This would help me feel better. This would be repair." So you're leading your partner into repair. Now, here's a funny story. So Janet said you get four sentences, one sentence for each part. We have no attention span for being criticized, so four sentences are enough. I said to Janet, "Hey, look. You're a West Coast Christian. I'm an East Coast Jew. I've never said anything in four sentences. I need more." She said, "Okay, I'll give you a cultural dispensation. You can have eight sentences." And that was 40 years ago, and now I tell all my clients to get eight sentences. Two sentences each. This is what happened, this is what I told myself, this is what I felt, and this would help if you'd be willing. That's how you complain. But for every complaint, I want 99 requests instead.

Andrew Huberman:
Love it. For the record, I don't have any specific critiques that I want to wage right now. Is that a problem? Is that a problem? I don't have any critiques. I'm only in gratitude these days. It's really weird. It's really wild. Something happened right around my 50th birthday. There were a bunch of things that led into it, but I just feel constantly grateful. I don't know what happened, so I'm not going to worry about it. But yeah, something hit. And I like to think it has to do something with age.

Terry Real:
I do, too.

Andrew Huberman:
A buddy of mine who's also a professor at Stanford, he once told me, he goes, "50's really different." I went, "How different can it be?" He's like, "You'll see." I was like, "Is it pain in the body?" He's like, "No." He takes really good care of himself. He's not into lifting and running. He's into some other stuff, kind of rock climbing, yoga dude. Amazing scientist, too. But he goes, "50's different." He goes, "Your brain is different at 50." And I was like, maybe it was because I was anticipating it.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But 50 hit and I'm like, well, I'm still here. I lived longer than a lot of my heroes.

Terry Real:
Mm.

Andrew Huberman:
And I wasn't impressed by the 27 Club. I mean, impressive artists, but a lot of people I knew and looked up to and who mentored me, dead. And I'm like, "This is awesome." I'm on the second half.

Terry Real:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And so I wake up that way. It's wild.

Terry Real:
Well, it's the small stuff. There's some wisdom in being an elder and you had your fight with your girlfriends 353 times. You asked about me and Belinda. I'll tell you. Belinda's a fighter and I'm a fighter. We both grew up in very violent families, and our adaptive children are fighters. Fuck you, fuck me. I'm standing up for myself. I'm going to bop you right in the nose. And I'm a New Yorker, too, so don't mess with me. That's my adaptive child. That's my instinct. And 30 years ago, we would fight for weeks, Belinda and I. I mean, yelling, screaming, rage. Go to bed at 3:00 in the morning, wake up at 7:00, tell other people how to live their lives all day, and then come back and fight again. This is true. 1%, we look ugly just like everybody else, but 99, we start to fight, we take a break. We both know what that's about. 15, 20 minutes, and it's not one or the other, it's kind of even. One of us will go to the other and say, and it sounds something like this, Andrew. "I don't want to fight. Do you really want to fight? I mean, we could, but I don't really want to, honey. What do you need?" And Belinda will say to me, "Well, you really were an asshole about dot, dot, dot." And I'll go, "Yeah, I was. You're right. I'm sorry. I'll work on that." And she'll go, "What do you need?" And I'll go, "Well, you could really apologize about one, two, three." And she'll go, "I'll apologize about one." 20 years ago, "Well, what about two and three?" Now, "Good. One, fine. We'll take it." "Good? Good. Great. What's on TV? Let's cuddle up on the couch and have an evening." And what I'm really thinking in that moment is this, and this is what I teach people. How do I want to spend my evening? How do I want to spend my time? Is it really worth it to me to prove my point and nail her into the ground, or can we make peace efficiently and skillfully and move the hell on? We behave with skill because it's in our interest to do so. I'm not making peace with Belinda for her. I'm making peace with Belinda for me.

Andrew Huberman:
I love, love, love this word, this language around being skilled in relating, especially when things potentially get tense. It encapsulates all the things around asking for help, asking what one needs. That's so powerful. I've said it like four times, so forgive me, but I think people need to hear it again. Just asking, what do you need? If we could somehow program ourselves to turn the-- We all know that feeling when our limbic system's activated and you start feeling your body, whatever activation state you get into. That's the limbic system. We all know it when it happens, and if that could just translate to the words like, "What do you need?" And as you pointed out, that's best for both people.

Terry Real:
It's prepare All relationships are an endless dance of harmony, disharmony, and repair. I got this from Ed Tronick, infant observational researcher. Ed and Barry Brazelton were the first of a generation to stop thinking about mothers and infants reconstructed from adults, and actually stuck cameras in front of mothers and infants, and then fathers and infants, and looked at what happened. And I borrowed from Ed that all relationships are an endless rhythm of closeness, disruption, and a return. And in our culture, we don't learn the skills of moving from disillusionment, distance, disruption back into repair and return. And what makes life even more dicey is when we're in that disrupted state, we lose our prefrontal cortex-wise adult and move into the adaptive child. So the first skill is getting back in your right mind and then, "Okay, honey, what do you need? Let's fix this together."

Andrew Huberman:
What's the work that men, boys, men can do to understand and work on their self-esteem, dare I say, in a vacuum? I know it's all relational. You have to do it, but there are people whose time is spent taking care of their job, their school, scrolling, spending some time doing-- I see an opportunity in the work that you do, and the fact that you're here, for young guys to start earlier.

Terry Real:
Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I mean, I got lucky with someone taught me how to work out properly a long time ago. He was the guy everyone said was an idiot about how to work out. Turns out it worked, and you didn't have to do it spending your whole life in a gym. I got lucky by having great mentors. I got lucky. I also fired some mentors and got new ones, so I played an active role. But you're incredibly skilled in this domain. It's your profession. And there are guys in their teens, 20s, 30s, all the way up to 80s, 90s, surely, that can learn. But there's a special opportunity in starting to cultivate these skills in one's teens and 20s and 30s. And perhaps even having them when one shows up to relationship in much better form than certainly I had for sure. So what does that work look like? Like is it journaling? How does it work?

Terry Real:
I have two pieces of advice.

Andrew Huberman:
And you have sons, I should point out. You have some experience teaching people how to do this.

Terry Real:
Yeah. We've taught them this. My-- Jack, the son. I was driving to school, and he's giving me shit, and I tell him to stop. He gives me shit. And I look at him and I go, "Do you think this is appropriate for our relationship?" And he falls on the floor. And he says, "Dad, there are dads driving their sons to school all over America. They're talking about the game. They're talking about friends. How many dads are saying to their son, 'Do you think this is appropriate for our relationship?'" Anyway, he does a whole routine about being the son of Touyzot. But they bitch about it, but we taught them. And my Alexander, my high-achieving doctor researcher, to this day, he'll call and he'll go, "I really blew that presentation." I felt, "I know I'm enough, and I matter even though I blew the presentation, but I just want you to know." We can teach our kids healthier mores. It's part of our job as parents. I have a little course online, Raising Relational Boys and Girls. We can insist on more relationality. We can create, like a pick in basketball, we can create a relationally cherishing subculture around our children, friends, family. Teach them. Go into school and do an anti-bullying campaign. We can consciously download this to our kids and be explicit about it. In terms of the young person themselves, I have two pieces of advice. One, find older people who are good at this and let them be your mentor. Go to them and be explicit and let them teach you. But find people who are happy. Teach our kids how to be relational. Stand up for it and create a culture around them that supports that, because the playground won't, the school won't, your colleagues won't. So create a little counterculture of relationality and surround your family with them. For the young person, find mentors who are happy and let them teach you about how to be happy. And the other thing I want to teach, which is true for all of us, and I would not be able to forgive myself if I didn't say this one thing in our podcast. We have a lot of people listening. This is what I want to say. If you get one thing from our conversation today, and you only get this, this one thing will be enough to change your life. I mean it. Here's what it is. There is no redeeming value in harshness. Let me say it again. There is nothing that harshness does that loving firmness doesn't do better. Be firm, but with love, not harshness. And that's you treating others, that's the way you allow others to treat you, and very much, that's the way you treat you I am on an anti-harshness campaign. And what I say to friends, family, students, and it's true, at 75, I have a deal with the universe. If it isn't kind, I'm not interested. And that adaptive child that lives inside me can be very harsh to my own imperfection. And I will say to that, or to Belinda, or to a colleague, "You may have something to say to me, and it may be in my interest to learn and listen to you, but you have to say it like you're on my side. If you can't say it like you're on my side, I'm not going to listen." So, a hallmark of relationality is that it's loving and not harsh. Let that be your bellwether.

Andrew Huberman:
I love that, especially the part about the voice inside of us, because I think we internalize the judgmental voice of the parent or the dismissive voice of the parent. All that stuff gets in our heads, and it drives so much of our misery. And what you just described offers a tremendous amount of agency. Yes, in terms of what we will accept or won't accept from others, what we request from others, let's be positive here.

Terry Real:
Hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
But at least equally importantly is what I heard, is how harsh we are with our inner dialogue, and that we should cultivate a kindness internally. Because I do believe, I'm certain that cultivates an external kindness.

Terry Real:
Yes. Start with you. Be kind to you. Okay, so I'll tell a story, if you're not bored.

Andrew Huberman:
No, please.

Terry Real:
An absolutely true story. So I was off at a conference, and blah, blah, blah. And I was signing books. And it was late, and one of my handlers, "Terry, you're going to miss your plane. Blah, blah, blah." Okay, I gather up, I'm on the plane. I'm on the plane. I'm not drinking now, but I was drinking then. I had a little glass of chardonnay, I had my feet up, and I'm feeling great. And I feel this coldness on my chest. And I looked down, and there was this big black splotch on my shirt. And I realized I was signing books with a Sharpie.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Real:
And in my haste, I didn't put the cap on, and it was permanent ink. And I got to tell you, Andrew, this is one of my "I hope I go on Oprah" shirt. This is an expensive goddamn shirt. And I'm ADD, I'm always breaking things, bumping into things. So that adaptive child part of me was going to town. "You're such a loser. Look at you." And I'm depressive. I've wrote about it. That shirt and the harshness that I would level against myself could've turned into a five-day depression when I was younger. And having learned these techniques, it's just a young boy in me, and I leaned to that adaptive child, and I said, "Listen, sweetheart, let me tell you something. The same ADD brain that ruined this shirt is the brain that wrote the books that were being autographed. So how about you cut me some slack? I'm a therapist. I have very little cost of Kleenex in office. This shirt, cost of doing business. Sit down and let me enjoy my wine." And he did. We don't have to be passive about these things. We can shape what goes on in our relationships, include our relationships to ourselves. Stand up for health, but with finesse and love, not with a blunt instrument. And we get better at it. You love the gym. You go to the gym and you work out. The first time, you feel like you're going to throw up. You go to the gym the 300th time, you got it nailed. Same thing with this. That harsh voice turns on you, and you say, "Honey, stop." The first time you do it, they'll laugh at you. The 300th time you do it, they'll stop. That's called liberation. That's freedom. That's our birthright.

Andrew Huberman:
Fantastic. Well, Terry Real, this was a true education in relational understanding. That's the word I'm looking for. In relational understanding. Because I think men especially, we think about ourselves and the landscape and how we're going to deal with the landscape. Maybe now, just with your permission, I'll just say, I have this wild, somewhat facetious story about the Y chromosome. May I?

Terry Real:
Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

Andrew Huberman:
May I? So I have a theory that long ago, some primordial version of us, a Homo sapiens with a Y chromosome, picked up a rock and was like, "Oh, interesting." And then just hit his head with it and was like, "Ow, that hurts." And then hit the guy next to him, and they were like, "Oh, that hurts." And then they got together and were like, "What would happen if we threw this over that tree? Let's see." And I sort of am half-joking because I think there's something about the Y chromosome that you observe in-- If you go to a wedding and there's boys there, and everyone has their jackets and their ties, and within no time, the boys are combining all the drinks, and they're like, "What would happen if... And who's going to drink it? And then at some point, it turns into this idea of having action at a distance.

Terry Real:
Hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
There's something about the Y chromosome. We want to see that-- Sometimes it's a remote control car. The first time you play with a remote control car, you're like, "Oh, wow, I can control something at a distance."

Terry Real:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
Sounds very diabolical, but it's just cool. You're over here, it's over there, right? And likewise with the video gamers. There's something about this action at a distance and let's see what would happen if. And I look at a lot of my adult male friends, some who are very, very successful phenoms, and they're still playing this game of what would happen if and action at a distance to get this feedback about whether or not they're doing well in life.

Terry Real:
Mm.

Andrew Huberman:
All awesome features to being male. I love being male. I think the Y chromosome should be celebrated, just as the X chromosome should be celebrated. And at the same time, none of that addresses what you were talking about today. And so there are a few people, only a few, and I know you're among them now, having spoken to you and heard from you, more importantly, who can understand the first piece about what would happen if and the action at a distance, and the second piece, the relational piece. And all too often, these are separated. It's like, oh, let's talk about evolutionary theory, about what men need, a provider, protector. And then it's like, no, let's actually feel our feelings and dissolve into a puddle of our own tears, and then we're going to resurrect in a new form that's enlightened. No. These things have to be-

Terry Real:
That's right

Andrew Huberman:
... whole.

Terry Real:
Whole.

Andrew Huberman:
Whole.

Terry Real:
I want wholeness.

Andrew Huberman:
That's the word I'm looking for. You are speaking to how men and boys can be whole people, and I love it. And you give very practical, very actionable advice, and it's going to help a lot of people. So I'm very grateful that you've written your books. We'll put links to your books, to your courses. It sounds like people can sign up for these courses and take these courses.

Terry Real:
Please.

Andrew Huberman:
And for coming here today and for being a public educator and teaching people, men and women, but today mostly men, how to love themselves more, love other people more, love life more, and learn to relate. So thank you so much for coming here.

Terry Real:
You're doing beautiful work. There's so much bullshit and darkness in this world right now, and I want to tell you, it's a blessing to be taken seriously by you and to be offered this opportunity. And it's fun hanging out with you.

Andrew Huberman:
Right back at you. I feel very honored and blessed to have you here, and this was a lot of fun. To be continued.

Terry Real:
To be continued.

Andrew Huberman:
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Terry Real. To learn more about his work, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled "Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body." This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation, and of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called "Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body." And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network Newsletter, the Neural Network Newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the Menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to Newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Terry Real. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

Speaker 3:
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