I don’t know if you’re already aware of this but I’ve spent the last 3 years polishing up my training in marriage counselling with Terrence Real in Boston. Terrence Real is a truly gifted therapist and author of ‘The New Rules of Marriage’. His marriage counselling is so good that couples fly in from around the world with him in order to get the relationship help they need. It is the opinion of many that if Terrence Real can’t fix your marriage no one can!

I’d been doing my best to assist people with their marital problems for years before finally giving up as it seemed to be remarkably unfulfilling. My results in marriage counselling were less than inspiring, couples just kept breaking up. I wasn’t the only one having this experience; people who do work in marriage counselling have developed a joke that couples only come to marriage therapy because they want to break up more elegantly. In hindsight this is clearly ridiculous, every couple fell in love for a reason and my experience, with much better training, is that they are desperate to recapture that feeling.

It wasn’t entirely my fault though as a lot of traditional marriage counselling is badly flawed. On my last trip to Boston I managed to set up a video interview with Terrence Real (I’m aware I’m using his full name a lot but if you knew about how search engines worked you would too). I had him talk about the difference between traditional marriage counselling and what he teaches people to do which he calls Relational Life Therapy (RLT).

You can find the video half way down this page in the box, http://www.therelationshipgym.com/couples_therapy.htm It’s pretty obvious, I’m sat on a the couch and the other guy is Terrence Real. In the video he outlines the 3 major points that make RLT different from other forms of marriage counselling.

1. We are taught to that it’s OK to take sides, not all relationship help needs to be 50/50. Sometimes it really is about one person being totally unreasonable. Take a look at the video, Terry gives a really good example.
2. We are taught to tell the truth (respectfully and with compassion!). If the issue is that Jack just refuses to stop screaming at Laura then we are trained to tell him it has to stop in a way that he can hear.
3. We are taught to then show Jack the difference between right and wrong rather than forcing him to take the next two years to figure it out for himself.

Now that might not sound like much but let me tell you it’s light years on from a lot of what passes for marriage counselling. That first point about taking sides is hugely helpful. In traditional marriage counselling the therapist is actively discouraged from ever taking sides. One of several reasons this happens is that in one to one therapy, the therapist is generally working on raising someone’s self esteem in the name of personal empowerment, which is all well and good because that’s what a huge amount of people come to therapy for. To pretend the same is true of couples seeking help is plain stupid. Generally at least one party isn’t thrilled about being there and really isn’t looking for help with his or her self esteem. What a huge percentage of couples really need is for someone to help them out of the power struggle they are entrenched in. Very loosely put, at least one person is always feeling ‘superior’ to the other in the relationship and it’s causing huge problems. The solution has nothing to do with raising their self esteem and everything to do with bringing down their grandiosity.

Terrence Real is big on the truth. You’ll find often times that in marriage counselling the therapist is being very careful not to frighten one party off, and it’s generally the man. The party least invested in the relationship has all the power which can be a real minefield. So for years therapists have gone very gently on the husbands hoping to build enough rapport with them to eventually tell them that all the shouting or storming out of rooms just isn’t helpful. This left marriage therapists in the same position as a lot of partners, hoping not to offend the offender. Turns out that in order for marriage counselling to be effective I have to be willing to take on the more offensive partner. Men in particular hate being handled, as much as they pretend otherwise they’re very good at changing once they’re clear on what changes need to happen and why.

The next key difference Relational Life Therapy has over a lot of marriage counselling is that therapists trained in the model are taught that showing someone how to do something right isn’t a bad thing. In individual therapy there may be time for an individual to arrive at their own conclusions but when a marriage is on the line Terrence Real suggests that ‘its borderline abusive’ not to give the couple the information they so desperately need. B y the time most couples make it to marriage counselling they are generally very close to breaking point and the quicker a therapist can get them out of pain the better. Couples are very smart and if they were able to figure it out on their own they would have.

As Terry explains in the video, these are three of the major differences between what Relational Life Therapy and traditional marriage counselling have to offer. He puts it across in a much more succinct fashion in the video and you might enjoy the level of incredulity he’s willing to display about what other therapists are up to. It’s Ok, he’s earned the right as far as I’m concerned. I used to make all those mistakes with my marriage counselling before training with Terrence Real. If you want a brilliant introduction to his work then get hold of a copy of ‘The New Rules Of Marriage’. It’s a real page turner, particularly if you’re in a relationship of any kind. Make no mistake; it’s not just people that are married to each other that are struggling. Terrence Real is a family therapist and families exist everywhere, take a look around your work place and you’ll see what I mean.

Best wishes

Michael

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