Men Say They Want to Be Married. Terry Real Can Help.
The thing that surprised me most, since joining GQ as an editor and beginning to closely follow news about masculinity, is how much men care about marriage. It’s men, for the most part, writing all those op-eds decrying declining marriage rates. Trad wives are a thing, but it’s the male right-wing influencers who take to X and Substack to defend the institution of marriage against the manosphere influencers who are more pro-harem. Even in left-leaning circles, skepticism about marriage has become harder to find. Liberals who, ten years ago, might have been trading books about non-monogamy and the demise of the nuclear family can now be found arguing that a lot of people would be better off if they got off their phone, went to a dive bar, and stumbled into long-term commitment. GQ’s 2025 survey confirmed this ambient yearning: 80 percent of men said that being in a stable, long-term relationship was important to them. When we narrowed the responses to men under 35, the number was even higher, 85 percent.
To understand this moment—in which men are drifting away from women politically but eager to attach themselves to women personally — it helped to talk to Terry Real, a renowned couples and family therapist and the founder of the Relational Life Institute. Real, 74, is the kind of therapist whose clients fly in on private planes to see him (though he reserves more than a third of his case load for pro-bono work). He has testimonials from Gwyneth Paltrow, Bradley Cooper, and Bruce Springsteen.
Real is also the author of an ahead-of-its-time book about depression in men, I Don’t Want to Talk About It (1997), which argued that men are less likely to recognize and address their mental health because they are raised to disavow vulnerability. Not long ago, I thought that idea had become common sense. Six years ago, it seemed that everyone had convinced their boyfriend, brother, or dad to get into therapy. But, now, as old-fashioned masculine dominance is vaunted in the White House and Silicon Valley, talking to Real about the costs men endure when they comply with with traditional masculinity feels radical again.
“What it means to become a man is that you disown anything seen as feminine,” he told me. “You’re not emotional, you’re not vulnerable, you’re not dependent. That’s all bullshit. Every human is vulnerable.” He Zoomed from his bed at his New England beach house, pausing occasionally to check on his wife, therapist Belinda Berman-Real, who was under the weather. “It kills me when the Manosphere guys say, ‘Oh, Terry Real? He is trying to feminize men.’ Bullshit. I want whole human beings.”
