Menu
FREE 15 MINUTE 1:1 COACHING CONSULT → SCHEDULE HERE
Dr. Glen and pye here! in case you're wondering...
why 12 week relationships?
Being completely honest, TWR was born out of our own frustrations with clinical relationship therapy. Specifically the fact that…
The average couple seeking therapy/counseling will spend 5 years and over $40,000 on services that have an 85% chance of failing them in creating long-term improvement.
We created TWR to honor our belief that when it comes to our relationships, we need practical tools to help us create better relationships IN WEEKS, not years.
Continue reading to meet our team and learn more about our journey.
400k+
TWR Friends across social media
500k+
PODCAST DOWNLOADS (AUDIO + VIDEO)
150+
CLIENTS SERVED IN 2022 + 2023
99%
SATISFACTION RATE AMONG PAYING CLIENTS
our cvft™ certified coaches
psy. D. + Professor + author +
co-founder of cvft
Dr. Glen Hong
You can learn my full story down below, so here’s a few things you might not know about me.
- – My wife and I are foodies and we love Japanese food!
- – I love basketball and I’m a hardcore LA Lakers fan!
- – I’m all about stand-up comedy, especially LIVE stand-up
researcher + Educator + co-founder of cvft
Pye Jirsa
What Glen said… But here are a few fun facts and things that you might not know about me.
- – I’m married and have 4 children. Yeah… Our house is insane!
- – I speak fluent Cantonese and Mandarin (oh, and English too)
- – I’m a blue belt in jiujitsu, and our whole family of 6 trains together
Doctor of social work, lcsw, cvft-certified coach
stacey
I’m Stacey! Behind the scenes, I’ve been working with Dr. Glen and Pye doing the research to support Core Value Focused Therapy.
Outside of being a full-time professor and clinician, you’ll find me traveling with my husband and son. Oh, and parasailing is my favorite vacation adventure!
fun fact, do you know...
how our paths crossed?
Pye here. I’m telling you who’s writing because I refuse to write in the 3rd person. 😆 Let’s be real, nobody should ever talk about themselves in 3rd person.
Funny story, Dr. Glen and I actually met for the first time at my house to watch a UFC event. We’re both amateur martial artists. Glen’s a boxer. I’m into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. So we bro-bonded over our mutual love of MMA.
When he left my home, I handed him a copy of my manuscript 📕 that contained the SSRM (our relationship framework) and said, “As a professor and psychologist, I’d love for you to read this and just try to prove it wrong.”
Three days later, Glen called me and said, “Pye, this book is going to change people’s lives and our approach to therapy.” I thought he was just being nice but months later we had combined our research and data to create a completely new approach to relationship therapy. We took the therapy model into clinical trials and the results quickly spoke for themselves.
In late 2022, Core Value Focused Therapy was born and we launched TWR as a platform and service.
But we’d love to take you a little further back to discuss our individual journeys that led to that point in our lives. Perhaps because it just might resonate with your own journey when it comes to relationships.
from photographer/educator to relationship coach
hi, my name is pye!
Yep… Sounds just like 
it’s just spelled a little different.
More than anything, I would say that I’m an educator. My career has mostly consisted of turning complex subjects into frameworks. Frameworks that make it easy for others to learn and master various topics. 
It all started after I co-founded one of the most successful wedding photography studios in the world (Lin & Jirsa Photography). From there, I created education that taught millions of other people how to do the same (SLR Lounge).
So why transition to relationships? 
Because while I was traveling the world teaching photography and business, behind the scenes my marriage was falling apart. You’d never know it from my Instagram feed, but for fourteen years I was meeting with one therapist/counselor after the next. I was also reading every relationship book I could find. And guess what?
My marriage still failed.
In fact, the last therapist I ever met with said, “Pye, you’ve read all the books on my shelf (an exaggeration). I don’t know how to help you in your marriage (the truth).” When I left, I resolved to do two things. Pursue my divorce, and along the way, create the answer that I had been seeking for nearly 15 years.
At that point, I had not only been studying relationship psychology for over 15 years, I had also been collecting observational data as a wedding photographer. You see, my job as a wedding photographer was to document families and love stories. Early in my career as a photographer I thought to myself, “Maybe what I was seeing in front of my lens might help me at home.”
So every night after capturing love and relationships, I went home to document ✍️ the behavior I saw (No personal information was ever recorded, just behavioral data). After nearly 10 years of this, I had over 500 observational case studies. When I left my therapist’s office thinking of creating my own answer, that’s exactly what I was thinking about. I thought that maybe I could take that data along with everything I knew about relationship psychology and turn it into an actual framework for healthy relationships.
It took me nearly 5 years to combine my data into a relationship framework that incorporated evidence-based psychology. When I finished, I called it the Super-Simple Relationship Method.
In 2020 I finished the manuscript. Then I ran into a new problem.
The world only knew me as a photographer and educator, what business did I have writing a book on relationships? Every major publisher thought the same thing. Having no road forward, I sat on the manuscript…
Right up until running into Dr. Glen Hong in 2021.
dr. of psychology, clinician, professor, author
hello! I'm dr. Glen
🩺 I’m a Doctor of Psychology and Professor/Department Chair at Whittier College. With 20 years of clinical therapy experience, my life and career have been all about psychology and relationships.
But here’s what you might not guess… 🔎
Not so long ago I faced a toxic work environment in the field of social work. In short, what I was facing at work threatened every aspect of my life. My health was a disaster. My marriage was on the brink. But here’s what made it even more difficult.
💔 As a clinical psychologist, I still didn’t know what to do.
Like everyone else, I sought out therapy and guidance from peers that I respected. Want to know their advice?
They prescribed me anti-depressants, then they told me to avoid making any significant life changes. Made simple, their advice summed up was to “just maintain.”
Eventually, I left the field of social work to work on my marriage and pursue a more holistic approach to therapy.
💡 When Pye handed me his relationship framework, I knew we had the missing pieces to each other’s puzzles.
Pye’s research and framework created a consistent answer to a fundamental question…
👉 “What does a healthy relationship look like?” 👈
I was able to take his concept and gather a research team which I used to build in the emotional components that were missing. Especially when it comes to addressing components of trauma.
Once this portion of the research was completed, CVFT as a concept became a fully formed and viable therapy model that was ready to be tested.
After 3 months of clinical trials, the results were unlike anything I had ever seen in my 20+ years of clinical work. Our client outcomes were so positive that we decided to launch TWR in early 2022!
I can honestly say that CVFT is the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and practical model out there when it comes to relationship science. Our client outcomes have gotten me absolutely fired up, and I’m excited to see what it will do for you.
See you inside!
© Copyright 2023 | 12Weekrelationships