Profile: Terrence Real, Psychotherapist

Terrence (Terry) Real is a psychotherapist specializing in men’s issues, particularly depression and relationships.  In 2002, Terry founded the Relational Life Institute (RLI), providing workshops that aim to offer healing and wholeness to men through their own resources, with the support and engagement of the parents and partners in their lives.

A family therapist and teacher for more than twenty five years, Terry is the best-selling author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression (Scribner, 1997), How Can I Get Through to You? Reconnecting Men and Women (Scribner, 2002), and The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Make Love Work (Random House, 2008).

Terry serves as a faculty member at the Family Institute of Cambridge, in Massachusetts where he also maintains a private practice. He continues to present lectures on relationship issues and to teach men how to achieve a fully rewarding and satisfying life.

Terry’s work with men led to his understanding that depression manifests differently in men than in women and that depression can go unrecognized for much longer as a result. Men may mask their depression with anger, workaholism, and drugs, such as alcohol. In ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’, Terry suggests that depression affects the lives of as many men as women – even though women are twice as likely to be treated.

In his work with couples, Terry aims to help couples establish better communication and relationship strategies. He emphasizes helping both men and women embrace empathy, closeness, and healthy communication strategies.

In his latest book, “The New Rules of Marriage”, Terry Real shows couples how to master the new rules of twenty-first-century marriage by offering them a set of effective tools with which they can create the truly intimate relationship that they desire and deserve.