What is Relational Life Therapy?

Discover the integrative approach to couples therapy created by distinguished therapist Terry Real that equips people with the lifelong skills to forge more authentic, honest, and intimate connections.

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Helping Couples Remember
They’re on the Same Side

“We are relating now in a wholly new and expansive way. It’s what each of us knew we were missing but could not have found on our own!”
Tod, Boston, MA

RLT teaches couples how to achieve:

Passionate connection

Fierce intimacy

Deep empathy

RLT works by:

Compassionately confronting and showing couples what they’re doing wrong
Going deep into uncovering where their negative behaviors came from
Teaching people how to behave differently

The result? Dramatic character changes and relationship transformations in rapid time.

“After practicing RLT therapy for two years I am receiving numerous referrals for couples work from other therapists. I have withdrawn from all insurance panels and my income is up!”
— R.G., Madison, CT

Breaking the Rules of Traditional Therapy

Designed to bring deep healing and swift changes that last

You can’t connect to a relationship if you can’t connect to a person, and you can’t connect to a person if you can’t connect to yourself. RLT first reconnects people to themselves—their feelings, desires, and needs—and then reconnects them to their relationships.

What makes RLT unique is…

Lasting Change
Traditional therapy heals through nurture, but this isn’t enough for permanent change. RLT goes even further, equipping people with the lifelong relational skills they need for lasting change.
Swift Results
Letting therapy drag on can be detrimental to clients, especially those in crisis. RLT uses a powerful combination of techniques to quickly get to the root of negative behaviors, understand where they came from, and teach individuals how to change them.
Dramatic Transformations
The idea that character is fixed is outdated. Character is changeable, and through RLT, we can teach people to transform negative beliefs and behaviors, often dramatically and sometimes immediately.
Healing Trauma in the Partner’s Presence
In traditional therapy, trauma work is done individually. But opening up such levels of vulnerability in their partner’s presence helps people go much deeper for more remarkable transformations.
Tackling Shame and Grandiosity
Modern therapy often focuses on bringing people up from shame. RLT is concerned with both shame and grandiosity to help couples achieve healthy levels of self-esteem—working with both is necessary for relationships and individuals to heal.
Radical Honesty
We don’t shy away from directly but compassionately telling clients what they’re doing to harm their relationships. We tell them what to do in certain situations so they can have a corrective emotional experience with their partner over and over.
We Take Sides
Often, therapists remain neutral, never siding with one partner. But relationships are rarely 50/50, so in RLT, we explicitly side with the disempowered partner to restore balance in the relationship.
Therapists and Clients Are Equal
In RLT, therapists aren’t above clients as experts, nor are we simply facilitators. We’re right there in the thick of it with them, sharing our own experiences of relational living to inspire, motivate, and build trust.

Want to Know About the RLT Certification?

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Become an RLT Therapist

RLT can be transformational for your practice

Working with couples can be challenging, especially when clients hit a wall. Seeing your clients struggling to make progress can leave you feeling lost, overwhelmed, or burnt out. In RLT, we move fast, and we make things happen. Your confidence and love for your work will soar when you master and teach the powerful RLT tools to help your clients undergo profound transformations.

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Heal Your Relationship With RLT

Reconnect with your partner—and yourself

Heal the distance between you and your partner and reconnect on a deeper level. Restore balance, respect, and intimacy as you uncover why your relationship is struggling and how to repair it. Working with an RLT therapist, you and your partner will learn to open up, be vulnerable, and hold yourselves accountable so you can continue strengthening and evolving your relationship for years to come.

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What People Are Saying About RLT

“My work with Terry has greatly enriched me as a therapist. I’ve been in practice over 35 years and trained with many exceptional therapists. Training with Terry has pulled all this together and enabled my interventions to be more elegant and to the point, resulting in my client work being more focused and penetrating without sacrificing empathy or compassion”

— Yana Hoffman

“After 25 years of working as a Psychotherapist and Marriage Counselor I was ready to “hang it all up.” I was more than burnt out. Now, 6 months later, I am reinvested in my work and enjoying it in a brand new way. Renewed energy and enthusiasm for my work has replaced the negativity I was experiencing. Thanks so much RLT!”

— Roseanna Zoubek

“Some of the things I love about Terry Real and his work are the practical steps, down-to-earth guidance and his model of having the courage and respect to be honest with couples when one partner is behaving in a way that needs to be addressed first.”

— Rachel M.

About Terry Real, the Founder of RLT

RLT was created by internationally recognized family therapist, speaker, teacher, and best-selling author, Terry Real. Terry founded the Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, and parents around the country along with a professional training program for clinicians wanting to learn his RLT methodology. Drawing on three decades of experience, Terry knows how to lead couples on a step-by-step journey to greater intimacy—and greater personal fulfillment.

A senior faculty member of the Family Institute of Cambridge in Massachusetts and a retired Clinical Fellow of the Meadows Institute in Arizona, Terry has worked with thousands of individuals, couples, and fellow therapists. Terry’s ideas on men’s issues and couple’s therapy have been celebrated in venues from Good Morning America, The Today Show, and 20/20 to Oprah and The New York Times.

“This world does not belong to us, we belong to each other.”
— Terry Real

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What can I expect from an RLT session?

You will begin by creating with your therapist a clear assessment of what needs to change for your relationship to thrive. You can expect your therapist to be forthright in calling out each partner’s anti-relational behaviors and committed to and passionate about helping you both succeed. Your therapist will make suggestions for homework between sessions because relational intimacy is an ongoing practice.

Q: My partner and I have tried couples therapy before with little success. How is this different?

Traditional couples therapy may fail to yield results due to its heavy reliance on impartiality. This means the behaviors that are harming relationships often aren’t addressed, so couples can’t make the necessary changes. Like other therapies, RLT teaches relationship skills, but first we deal with the part of you that doesn't want to use them. RLT seamlessly integrates individual and couple treatment into one therapy to empower you to continue building authentic connections for life.

Q. How can RLT bring about lasting change?

Through RLT, you can profoundly—and permanently—change your individual character. You will identify the roots of your relationship-harming behaviors so that you can turn them around and lock in transformations at a deep level. Once clients experience the rewards of such changes, they rarely return to their old behaviors.

Q. Who can train in RLT?

The RLT training is suitable for licensed therapists (including counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists) who wish to begin working with or deepen their existing work with couples. Relationship coaches with basic training in relationship skills and graduate students in counseling programs will also find the training beneficial to their work.

Master The Practical, Sophisticated Skills to Transform Relationships and Individuals Profoundly and Permanently

Master RLT for…

Your
Career

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Your
Relationship

Find an RLT Therapist

Become an RLT Therapist

RLT can be transformational for your practice

Heal Your Relationship With RLT

Reconnect with your partner—and yourself

What is Relational Life Therapy?

Train in RLT - Apply Here

As human beings, we crave connection, community, and closeness. Yet, we’ve never lived in a world that’s been more disconnected or individualistic.

We’re in the midst of a disconnection epidemic: we yearn for meaningful relationships, but we don’t have the skills to realize them. At no time in history has it been more apparent that intimacy is life’s holy grail.

As therapists, we can help people forge the intimate connections they so deeply desire. We can bring deep relief, healing, and change to relationships that are “on the brink,” catapulting couples to new levels of closeness.

When you train in Relational Life Therapy (RLT), you’ll learn the cutting-edge tools to transform relationships, help individuals heal from long-held trauma, and equip them with the skills to live relational, fulfilling lives—accountability, vulnerability, empathy.

And you know what else? These skills can profoundly affect your own relationships, allowing you to enjoy deeper, richer interactions with your partner, family, and friends.

RLT is a powerful method that, once mastered, can transform your life both professionally and personally.

Shall we begin?

Cutting-edge tools to transform relationships

Transforming the Face
of Couples Therapy

Learn the lifelong skills to cultivate more authentic, honest, and intimate connections with Relational Life Therapy.

Train in RLT - Apply Here

What Is Relational Life Therapy?

There’s a new way we can relate

Many people want to have great relationships, but society hasn’t taught them how. In a world that’s more disconnected than ever, we desperately need to shift into a relational, connection-building culture—and that starts in the therapy room.

Changing how we see ourselves in relation to our partner. It involves changing some fundamental aspects of our identity, even changing how we think of ourselves to begin with, but doing this is vital to creating meaningful connections with others.

Building deeper, more intimate connections with ourselves and others is at the heart of Relational Life Therapy. Created by renowned couples therapist Terry Real, this unique, integrative therapy can profoundly and permanently transform individuals by helping them forge fiercely intimate connections in their relationships. RLT educates as much as it heals to equip people with the lifelong tools to live fully-connected, fearlessly authentic lives.

RLT breaks many of the rules of traditional therapy to go deep quickly and help clients make rapid and significant changes. RLT therapists are real, open, and honest. We set the bar high for our clients. We expect rapid, dramatic change, and to a remarkable degree, we get it.

How RLT Works

Catapulting couples to new levels of closeness, trust, and solidarity

Using a range of powerful diagnostic and transformative tools, RLT helps people to first reconnect to themselves—their feelings, needs, and desires—to build a stronger, more intimate connection with their partner.

Step 1: Waking Up

RLT therapists use loving confrontation to wake clients up to their negative behaviors in a direct but compassionate way. We show clients the difficult truths about how they are harming their relationships in a way that builds trust rather than resistance.

Step 2: Healing & Transformation

Swiftly get to the root of negative behaviors, understand them, and overcome them. Unique to RLT, deep trauma and inner child work is done in the presence of the partner. This allows individuals to go deeper and couples to grow closer.

Step 3: Relational Skills For Life

RLT equips people with the powerful tools they need to continue building authentic, healthy relationships long after their time in therapy is over—the key to creating change that lasts.

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