The relationship one has with a therapist is not "real" in the sense that it's never going to have its equal in real life. There is a narcissism to it, a one-sidedness, it's enveloped in a cocoon of legal and ethical and professional issues.

Real life relationships are messier, more unpredictable, more give-and-take, and also involve relating with people who are not necessarily self-aware when it comes to forces in their emotional past or present. On the plus side, they're free. Or at least, less blatantly financial, as a guy once said about the difference between buying gifts for a date versus going to a prostitute.