The Art of Relational Repair: Insights from the RLT Conference

I spent an incredible weekend at the first-ever Relational Life Therapy conference in Orlando, immersed in transformative teachings from world-renowned relationship experts. RLT offers powerful tools for building radically honest, fiercely loving relationships where both partners thrive in equality, focusing on intimacy, connection, and practical relational skills.

• RLT focuses on telling the truth in relationships and why honesty creates deeper connection
• Diversity and inclusion play crucial roles in understanding how upbringing affects relationship dynamics
• Learning practical techniques for vulnerability, speaking truth to power, and working through difficult moments together
• Multi-generational trauma can be healed when one person "faces the flame" and changes family patterns
• Happy couples aren't conflict-free but excel at repair after disconnection
• Small repair attempts like reaching for your partner's hand or saying "we're on the same team" can transform relationships
• Relationships aren't meant to be perfect but real—the growth happens in the repair

Share this episode with a friend and DM me on Instagram @monitanner1 to let me know one thing you're going to do this week to make your relationship stronger.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and RLT Conference Introduction
• 1:38 Understanding Relational Life Therapy
• 3:54 Conference Highlights and Key Learnings
• 6:03 Breaking Generational Trauma Cycles
• 8:33 The Power of Relationship Repair
• 11:30 Closing Thoughts and Wedding Preview

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Secrets of Happily Ever After podcast. I'm your host, monica Tanner, and I have a special episode for you today. As some of you know, I spent this past weekend in Orlando at the first ever RLT conference and, oh my goodness, I have come home with a mind and a heart that is so full of goodness. If you've ever wished you could be a fly on the wall at a major event where the brightest minds in relationship therapy gather, well, today is your day. I am going to tell you about some of the major takeaways I had at this conference with some of the most world-renowned family and relationship therapists in the world, and at the end I'm going to give you a simple and powerful tool you can start using right now to level up your relationship. So this is a shorty episode, so stick with me till the end.

Speaker 0: 1:02

Now if you're thinking, wait, what was that RLT? Again, rlt stands for relational life therapy, founded by the legendary Terry real. It's about building radically honest, fiercely loving relationships where both partners thrive in environment of equality. Relational life therapy is about rolling up your sleeves and growing together through the challenges. It's about intimacy and connection and about honesty. It's about learning relational skills that will help you not only in your marriage, but also with your children and with your community. As I always say, happily ever after doesn't happen by accident. It's something that you build moment by moment, action by action, intentional skill by intentional skill. Relational life therapy promises not only to heal homes and legacies, but our world as a whole.

Speaker 0: 2:07

So some of my highlights from the conference were learning about the history of RLT and why telling the truth is so sexy. We talked about how RLT started, the foundation and influences that Terry used to bring about this powerful relationship modality. One of the things I love about Terry Real is that he is constantly talking about those who have influenced RLT from the very beginning, as well as those who are influencing its growth into the future. One of the things we talked about a ton this weekend was diversity and inclusion and how our relationships are influenced by our upbringing where in the world we grew up, the color of our skin, the things that we believe and the trauma we experienced. All of these things go hand in hand and as an RLT practitioner, it is our responsibility to learn about different cultures and different experiences and especially how these things affect the relationships of the couples we're working with, because every relationship is unique. There are no two that are the same. All want intimacy and connection. In fact, it is our birthright.

Speaker 0: 3:35

We also learned some super practical techniques about opening up vulnerability and honesty, speaking the truth to power, the power of the pause, how to join through the truth, how to let the bad thing happen and work through it together relationally. We learned about sex and RLT. We learned about relational recovery and relational reckoning. I really appreciate the power and you could feel it of over 200 marriage counselors, therapists, practitioners, coaches all together in one room, learning how to support and sustain our clients with more skill, more compassion, more understanding, more love and more relationality. Forgive me as I look at my notes, because I don't want to miss anything really important.

Speaker 0: 4:33

We talked about multi-generational trauma and we can, by changing ourselves, change our generational legacy. My very favorite quote from Terry Real is that family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods until one person in one generation turns and faces the flame. That person brings peace to their ancestors and a better world for their children. Changing ourselves changes the world, and here is the beautiful thing about relationships is they are skills that can be learned and practiced and we're not going to get them right every single time. But in that challenge, in that growth is the magic.

Speaker 0: 5:22

One of the speakers, duran Young, talked about shame and how, when we go into shame, it's from the mindset of using shame as an acronym should have already mastered everything. Of course we're human and we're going to make mistakes. As humans, we're all mistake makers. It's part of our humanity. We are perfectly imperfect and walking through the world. We need others to help us walk back to ourselves. That the reality is. No matter how wonderful our parents were, of course they made mistakes. So many of us are the product of trauma. But in these relationships we can heal the trauma. We don't have to hand it down to our children.

Speaker 0: 6:12

Terry Real called up his wife, belinda Berman Real, for an incredible presentation on multi-generational trauma and how we carry energy or feeling that brings with it a legacy burden. They pointed out that there's no such thing as overreacting. It's just that what you were reacting to may not be what's right in front of you. When major caregivers are mishandling an emotion, no matter what that looks like, whether it's stuffing it down or acting out, they radiate that emotion and hand it down to their children, and what we, as partners in recovery, are doing by learning these skills is moving beyond the legacy of what was handed to us and learning how to do it better. Terry talks about being raised by an abusive, alcoholic father and how his biggest accomplishment is that his sons will never describe him that way, because he's done the work to change that legacy of generational trauma. This is so powerful as we think about the legacy burdens that have been handed down to us and how we can change that for our children and for their children and for generations to come. That's why this work is so worth it.

Speaker 0: 7:36

I'm so grateful for the presenters at the conference, for the friends that I made there, for the resources that I have with all of these different practitioners who were all so invested in changing the world, one couple at a time, and there's certainly not enough time to talk about all the incredible things that I learned, but obviously they are woven into the tapestry of everything that I teach and how I work with my clients, and I promise that if you would stick with me through this episode, that I would give you a golden nugget and what I find so important that you can do right now in your relationship that, no matter where you're at, will improve things, and that is the ability to repair instead of just holding on to resentment, instead of not talking about the impact that your partner has on you. Research shows that what separates happy couples from the ones who struggle is not the absence of conflict. There will always be conflict, and here's why Because you married somebody different than yourself, because as humans, we're all different from each other, so conflict will arise. But the happy couples learn how to quickly repair after the disconnection. So repair attempts can be as simple as reaching for your partner's hand, saying can we take a breath and start over? Making a silly face to release the tension? Or just whispering hey, we're on the same team or I'm not going anywhere, we're going to figure this out. Those are all very small attempts at repair.

Speaker 0: 9:21

So if I can give you a single takeaway from this episode, it's that you're going to mess up, you're going to disagree, there's going to be conflict. You're not going to handle it right every single time, but there's no such thing as objective reality. There's how you experienced it and how I experienced it, and it doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong. What matters is that we keep coming back to each other again and again. So the next time you have a disagreement with your partner, I want you to challenge yourself to make an attempt at repair. The more that you practice this incredible skill, the better you're going to get at it.

Speaker 0: 10:05

Coming home after this powerful and incredible weekend, I'm more convinced than ever that relationships are not meant to be perfect. They're meant to be real. You are two perfectly imperfect humans going about making lots of mistakes. The growth is in the repair. So if you're interested in RLT, if you're interested in learning relational skills, do me a favor. Share this episode with a friend, or any episode for that matter. Dm me on Instagram at montytanner1 and let me know one thing you're going to do this week to make your relationship stronger. I can't wait to hear from you, and I'm so excited because next week at this time, I will be reporting on my son's wedding. That's happening on my 23rd wedding anniversary. I'm so grateful for this momentous occasion in my family. I can't wait to tell you all about it, and I'm grateful that I haven't passed on the generational trauma that was passed on to me onto my son, that I've given him a better blueprint for what relationships should look like. And until next week, remember love and we'll see you right here, same time, same place. Bye for now.