How Relationship Coaching Works

Relationship coaching is a relatively new approach to helping floundering marriages and other couple relationships. Because in many cases it is more suited to that task than couples counseling, relationship coaching is become increasingly popular. Here is the model of relationship coaching that I have developed.

The model works both for couples and for individuals. Assuming couples coaching, the process is this: A couple comes to the relationship coach, bringing with them primarily either marital problems or their picture of the healthy relationship that they want to build.

Relationship coaching is a practical method for achieving change through establishing goals and working steadily to achieve them. Consequently, the coach encourages the couple to create specific positive goals for their relationship as soon as possible. Doing so is relatively easy for the couple who comes to coaching with an already-developed picture of the marriage that they want. The couple that comes laden with problems presents a greater challenge.

The coach must get the latter couple to stop blaming each other for their situation and, rather than focus continually on the negative, to begin looking instead for remedies. In doing so, the couple will need to work with what may be an unfamiliar perspective - that relationship problems are usually caused not by ill will but by failures of skill. Partners treat each other poorly because they lack the skills to do better.

With the coach's help, the couple begins to explore problem areas of their relationship. What was needed in a given situation that one or both of them was unable to provide? What actions would have helped? What skills needed to be involved? What could they have achieved with those skills that was impossible without them?

Complicating the search for missing skills is the fact that when partners describe what they need and find lacking in their relationships, they speak not of specific skill-related actions but of abstractions that have a meaning for them that their partner usually doesn't understand. Thus, a partner may complain about the absence of "fairness" in the relationship or state that what she most wants from the other person is "respect" or "acceptance." But what exactly does she mean by "respect," for example?" If her partner doesn't know, he can't give her what she needs.

We would do better to think of "affection," "openness," "respect" and similar elements as verbs rather than nouns - actions rather than things. Consider - as an abstract noun "love" has very little meaning. "Love" comes alive when it is seen as a set of actions - a doing, a verb.

The same applies to "affection," "openness," "respect," "understanding," "good listening" and all the other essentials of a healthy relationship that are so hard to define practically: We need to think of them as sets of actions, behind which are skills that we can and need to learn.

Following this relationship-coaching model, which focuses on skills for success, the coach helps the couple uncover the actions that make up "respect," "caring" and the other relationship essentials. The coach has to compensate for the fact that many couples don't notice each other's behavior at all closely.

Many couples experience each other through labels (She is "bossy;" he is "insensitive") and often would be hard pressed to describe the behavior behind the label. It follows that naming the actions that would be experienced as the opposite of "bossy," for example, would be even more difficult.

The coach helps. As the couple accumulates new skills and practices them, their vision of what is possible for the marriage expands. New possibilities emerge for a successful, happy life together.

The coach helps. As the couple accumulates new skills and practices them, their shared vision of what is possible for the marriage expands and becomes more and more positive. New skills mean more caring, understanding, generous behavior - less conflict and more closeness.

Nothing helps a marriage improve more than partners dropping the blame game, behaving different toward each other, developing a shared vision of positive relationship and together working to realize it.

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Copyright © 2005 Dr. David E. Sanford All rights reserved.
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