Relational Empowerment and Loving Power
I was weak, now I'm strong, go screw yourself is only half a revolution — the other half is: now what could I give you to help you do that for me?
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 92%
Real's most contrarian argument in the episode. He accepts that moving from disempowerment to individual empowerment is progress, and insists it is only the first step. Relational empowerment keeps the full assertion — the want, the need, the toe-to-toe — and adds the teammate move: an offer of help in return. He calls the capacity to do both at once loving power, and treats it as the antidote to a culture organised around one-up and one-down.
Origin
Real draws the first-order/second-order distinction from family therapy, and the one-up/one-down architecture from his great mentor Pia Mellody's idea of coming out from under the great lie. He aims the argument squarely at his own field, where individual therapists routinely empower a client right out of a workable relationship, and at the popular consensus that the narcissistic partner is untreatable and should simply be left.
Core principles
- 01Under patriarchy you can be connected — accommodating, self-sacrificing, peacemaking — or you can be assertive, independent, competent, aggressive, but not both at once, because power is defined as power over.
- 02Individual empowerment is the first-order move: I was weak, now I'm strong, go screw yourself. Everybody cheers, and it breaks the connection.
- 03Relational empowerment is the second-order move: I was weak, now I'm strong, I'm going to tell you exactly what I want and need — and what could I give you to help you do that for me?
- 04First-order change is rearranging the furniture; second-order change is a revolution in which nobody has to be symptomatic.
- 05What you have to correct is whatever is off in you: if you ride in the one-up, come down; if you ride in the one-down like a fixer, assert yourself and take some risks.
- 06Both directions are vulnerability — for a fixer, standing up and risking someone's anger is exactly as exposing as sensitivity is for a dominant person.
- 07Healthy self-esteem comes from the inside out; your essential worth cannot be added to or subtracted from, which is Pia Mellody's coming out from under the great lie that anyone can be inherently superior or inferior.
How to run it
- 1
Locate your position
Work out whether you ride one-up — entitled, demanding, dominant, not listening — or one-down like a fixer, anxious and accommodating. It is not one-size-fits-all; you correct what is off in you.
Pro tip Real's question is what does my biosphere need, not what is my personality type.
Watch out Position is relationship-specific. Many people ride one-up at work and one-down at home.
- 2
If one-up, come down
Come down off your high horse. Real names the contents of the one-up precisely: entitlement, anger, judgment, contempt, self-righteous indignation, all forms of grandiosity.
Pro tip Real's argument to grandiose men is self-interested rather than moral: it's poison for you, you'll be happier.
Watch out Real rejects the popular position that the narcissistic partner cannot be treated and should be left; he says RLT treats grandiose men breakfast, lunch and dinner.
- 3
If one-down, come up
Identify what you are feeling, identify what you want and need right now without worrying about pleasing them, and learn to articulate it in a way that might actually get listened to.
Pro tip Real's line for fixers is: let the bad thing happen. Being disliked is the rep you have been avoiding.
Watch out Real notes this is genuinely vulnerable — for a fixer, standing up and risking anger is scarier than crying.
- 4
Make the full assertion
Go toe-to-toe. Say precisely what you want and need. This is the individual empowerment half and Real does not want it softened or skipped.
Pro tip Real's stance is that he does not want women to stand down; he wants men to stand up and meet the new demands.
Watch out Dropping the assertion in the name of harmony is just the one-down position wearing better vocabulary.
- 5
Add the teammate offer
Immediately follow the assertion with the relational move: now, what could I give you to help you do that for me? We're a team, I love you, what do you need, let's work together.
Pro tip Real's own rhetorical test — who sounds like that? — is the point. The sentence is rare enough to be disarming on its own.
- 6
Keep caring how you sound
Individual empowerment says I don't care how I sound, just listen. Real's correction: you do care how you sound, or you are not going to get listened to.
Pro tip Caring about delivery is not weakness; it is the difference between being right and being effective.
Watch out Losing the connection while gaining the voice reproduces the exact power-over model you were escaping.
In the wild
Real names the bane of his existence as a couples therapist: an individual therapist who has individually empowered their client right out of a workable relationship. The client arrives having learned I was weak, now I'm strong, go screw yourself — and everybody cheered them on, mom, dad, therapist, twelve-step sponsor, men's group. Real's counter is that the next step exists and nobody taught it: I was weak, now I'm strong, I love you, we're a team, let's roll up our sleeves and work on this together.
→ Identifies a mechanism by which well-intentioned therapy destroys salvageable relationships, and names the missing second step.
Real illustrates first- versus second-order change with the family therapy classic. Tommy is truant. You get Tommy to stop being truant, and then Sally starts pooping her pants. That is first-order change — rearranging the furniture, with the symptom simply relocating to another family member. Second-order change is a revolution in which no kid has to be symptomatic at all.
→ Provides a test for whether any empowerment has actually changed the system or merely moved the pain to a different position within it.
Real responds to an expert on television talking about aspirational masculinity and Elon Musk. Go to the moon, great. Be the richest man in the world, great. Then Real's two questions: you want to be married to that guy? You want to be that guy's kid? He generalises from his own practice — all of the people he treats are incredible successes in the world and a mess inside, done well in the world but not happy between their ears and miserable to live with.
→ Sets up Real's distinction between gratification — short-term pleasure, the million bucks, the flirtation — and relational joy, the deeper pleasure of being connected, which the grandiose have never experienced and cannot name.
Common mistakes
Stopping at individual empowerment
I was weak, now I'm strong, go screw yourself gets applause from everyone in your life. Real's point is that it is a first-order move that trades one broken position for another and leaves you strong and alone.
Ignoring the one-up direction entirely
Real says his field has spent fifty years helping people up from the one-down and almost totally ignored helping people down from the one-up. Entitlement, contempt and self-righteous indignation get no treatment because they do not present as suffering.
Believing you have to choose between connection and assertion
Under patriarchy the two are defined as mutually exclusive, because power means power over. Real's loving power is precisely the refusal of that binary — Carol Gilligan's no voice without relationship, and no relationship without voice.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone who has done the work of finding their voice, and anyone who holds structural power and has been told they are unapproachable.
Not ideal for
Situations of active abuse or danger, where the immediate requirement is exit and safety rather than a relational bid.
From the transcript
“i call it i was weak now i'm strong go screw yourself and everybody will cheer”
“no relational empowerment is the next step i was weak now i'm strong i'm going to go toe-to-toe with you i'm going to tell you…”
“but you can't be both at the same time because power is power over when you move into power you break connection”
“i teach people and particularly women in this one or whoever is coming up from the one down what i call loving power”
From the episode
#810: Terry Real — The Therapist Who Breaks All The Rules