Introduction
Being human means having baggage. We all develop emotional triggers, regardless of the severity of our past traumas. We can either ignore them and harm each other, or we can acknowledge that we all require help. Whether you opt for marriage counselling or coaching, life becomes more bearable. Mentorship is the key to extraordinary success.
What to Expect from Marriage Coaching
Did you know that the discomfort of asking for assistance begins as early as age seven? According to researchers, requesting assistance frequently makes us feel inferior or vulnerable. The complete opposite is true. It takes courage to ask for assistance.
Therefore, if you feel stuck in your relationship, contact me immediately. I will assist you in finding your centre, understanding your relationship typology, developing healthy communication habits, and enhancing your relationships with others, including your partner.
Marriage coaches are your thought partners who hold up a mirror so you can see how you and your partner influence the dynamic of the relationship. They won’t give you the solutions, but success frameworks. They will also ask you their thought provoking questions to help you find your own answers.
Together, I help couples create a plan to become better versions of themselves within their relationships.
As a coach, I can analyse how you interact and communicate in less that 45 minutes using an online assessment tools. Then I am able to guide you in creating a tailored plan towards longevity and joy. This then forms the basis for how I hold you accountable.
As a coach, I give you practical exercises and homework in the couples study guides, so you can practice tools and skills to improve your relationship together.
There is nothing wrong with receiving advice, and coaches frequently do so at the appropriate times. Nonetheless, relationships can only improve if both parties are committed to making it work, beginning with a change in themselves. An inner change comes from self-awareness and self-discovery, not from being given advice.
Five Ways Marriage Coaching Can Support You
My online or offline, couples or group coaching involves helping couples identify what type of couple relationship type they are. There are four types, for married and five for unmarried. Then encouraging inner change to resolve relationship issues. The first step involves using the online assessment, which really is an exploration of the current behaviors, before I, as a coach, deploy a variety of techniques to teach couples how to deal more effectively with their stress areas.
I facilitate behavioural change using techniques such as focusing on solutions rather than problems, the future rather than the past, strategies rather than (mere) emotions, and Socratic questioning.
You might notice an overlap between counselling and coaching, especially as you review the following benefits. In short, coaching focuses on building for the future, and counselling focuses on using the past to fix the present.
1. Gain Insight
Marriage coaching builds your understanding of precisely where tough emotions or relationship dissatisfaction come from. You learn techniques to create distance (time out) with those emotions so they don’t overwhelm you such that you react, in regrettable ways. With time, you become more skilled at staying calm and listening. Strong emotions tend to hijack our minds, so listening becomes impossible. Instead, as you become more intimate with the process, you learn to manage feelings, triggers and ensuing behaviours. In short, gaining insight and self-awareness aims to enhance understanding, improve communication, manage emotions, and ultimately strengthen your relationship.
2. Learn Conflict Management Techniques
Knowing your emotions or triggers will allow you to appreciate where they come from. So, a fear of abandonment feels terrifying and can be triggered by your partner working long hours. The lack of respect, may leave you feeling unheard, excluded, or ignored, due to a past unhealthy relationship leading you to become more sensitive to these emotions as a result.
With relationship helper coaching, you learn to talk about those feelings, using the assertiveness techniques and active listening skills to find ways to improve your communication, build trust and closeness.
3. Build Self-esteem
When we are having marital problems, it’s easy to lose sight of the good times, and this has a negative effect on a couple’s emotional health. Relationship coaches help couples rediscover the positive qualities each member brings to the union and how to protect their emotional health.
The ability to express one’s feelings and ask for what one wants in the relationship play a crucial role in a couple’s health, this is called assertiveness. The other three dynamics are self-confidence, avoidance, and partner dominance.
Assertiveness and self-confidence are linked in that being assertive can lead to an increase in self-confidence. When a partner feels self-confidence, they feel good about not only themselves but their spouse. When you are assertive, you are also expressing your needs and desires in a clear and direct manner. This can help you feel more in control of your life and your relationships, which can lead to an increase in self-confidence.
When one partner in a relationship tends to avoid conflicts or disagreements, the other partner might perceive themselves as having more control or dominance in the relationship. On the other hand, if one partner feels that their significant other is exerting a significant amount of control, they might be more likely to avoid confrontation or conflict to maintain a sense of peace.
4. Develop Future Goals
Marriage helper coaching focuses on the future. A key element of that is to create goals that are both specific and timebound.
For instance, you might aim to enhance your relationship, but what specific areas would you like to target? Is it about dedicating more quality time together or finding ways to minimize conflicts? Perhaps you are interested in understanding how to harmonize your values and priorities for a stronger bond. The Prepare Enrich assessment, with its 9 scales and tailored scales, offers various insights to help couples pinpoint these areas to couple can identify and then work towards building a solid foundation.
5. Family Mapping
Family Mapping is another effective tool used in the online assessment to help couples identify the dynamics of their relationship and family of origin. As a relationship coach, I help couples understand the most important aspects of their family of origin relationships as well as aspects of their couples relationship impacts how they relate to one another. The two scales of their family map portions are closeness and flexibility.
The term “closeness” describes the depth of your emotional bonds with your loved ones. A person’s expectations of what a relationship should be like will be shaped by their upbringing. How adaptable your family was to new situations is what we mean when we talk about flexibility. This may be why your partner is so quick to dismiss your “brilliant idea”. The dynamics of a relationship are affected by one’s upbringing in a “rigid” or “closed off” family. You may have grown up in a harmonious household where everyone was given space to “be themselves” and respected for their individuality. Such a family will encourage you and cheer you on as you pursue your goals and spend quality time together. Everyone in the family is close and supportive of one another without feeling smothered or encroached upon. As you progress through your formative years, you strike a good balance between dependence on others and independence from them.
This type of family unit also adapts well to change. A healthy family of origin can deal with uncomfortable emotions and provides a sense of safety and security for you to express what is going on with you as well. There are healthy and open boundaries for family members to share unconditionally with each other.
From this medium, your own personal experience may vary on the map from “overly connected” to “disconnected” as well as from “overly flexible to change” to “inflexible to change”. But I help you and your partner trace precisely where you both land on the map.
This is such an important aspect of your life to bring an awareness of into your marriage. You better believe that the dynamics you experienced in your family of origin will impact the way you relate to your partner!
Conclusion
Marriage coaching is a constructive approach that aids couples in understanding their relationship dynamics, managing conflict, and fostering mutual growth. It prioritizes self-awareness, insight, and the development of practical skills to create a healthy and fulfilling marital bond. By focusing on the future and utilizing various tools such as family mapping and online assessments, marriage coaching fosters understanding, communication, and emotional well-being within the relationship.
