How Relationship Coaching Helps You Fix Your Marriage
Are you overwhelmed with all the different “solutions” to your marriage problems? Is trying to figure out the right thing to do taking too much time? Let me help you take action while you still can.
Too many answers prevent action in marriage
If information was knowledge, everyone would be a genius.
But fixing marriage problems never has been as easy as reading a book on them. A million articles on the internet don’t make it any easier either. The Bible has the right values, but can be a difficult guide to action for people who only know bits and pieces. Knowing that God hates divorce doesn’t exactly tell you how to keep your spouse from divorcing you.
The better you know the Bible, the better you will know what to do in any situation. This is one of your keys to wisdom. I am going to assume however, that your Bible knowledge is inadequate to the task of reconciling your relationship. Keep working on that and I will help you to know what to do in the meantime.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the same answer from every source?
Knowing the Bible will help you to eliminate the bad ideas, but there are still many approaches to skinning a cat or fixing a marriage. Not only that, but some people are invested in getting you to do nothing to fix your marriage. Beware of people who say, “There is nothing you can do.” There is always something you can do. Unless no one in your situation has ever solved your problem, there is pretty good reason to hope that you can.
The fact that few people have success is no reason to stop having success as your goal. It is reason to find out what the successful people do that the majority does not do. When it comes to success, the majority is wrong. Don’t just do what everyone else does. Do what the successful people do.
I want to give you some pointers for getting not only from inaction to action, but from bad action to good action–to success-creating actions.
First, check to make sure you are not blocking your own progress
Self-sabotage is the most common reason for failure. And, the most common self-sabotaging behavior in relationships is…
Blaming
The moment you blame someone else for your lack of progress, you are stuck unless they change. Blaming is abdication of responsibility and leads directly to inaction.
Telling yourself that because it was your spouse who caused the problems, your spouse must be the ones to fix the problems is a sure way to fail. Regardless of what your spouse had done, there is something you can do to make your marriage better.
Assuming you are taking responsibility for improvement, you could still be putting other road blocks in your way.
Four mistakes that tend to prevent action in improving relationships:
- You are asking the wrong questions, Fox example, asking “how can I stop my spouse from divorcing?” is far less helpful than “how can I get my spouse to desire to stay with me?”
- You can’t decide which action to take. You could be like the donkey who couldn’t decide whether to drink first or eat first, and so died of hunger and thirst.
- You are continually searching for faster, more effective, one step solutions, while your relationship is circling the drain.
- You are looking for the cause rather than the cure (the “why” rather than the “how”).
Why asking “why” won’t fix your relationship
A common misconception is that knowing why something occurred leads to improvement. This is often not the case.
Let me illustrate with an example about affairs.
Example problem: husband is having an affair
Imagine a woman’s husband having an affair. It makes her sad and angry and she would like it to stop. She endeavors to learn why her husband is having an affair rather than focusing on how to stop it. She may start by questioning her husband, and he is likely to give her the reason that she was at fault.
Then, she might try to find out why he thinks that and why didn’t he mention it earlier, and why is he having an affair now, and why doesn’t he want to go to marriage counseling to fix the relationship, and so on. As you can imagine, that requires a great deal of conversation. Even if she gets the answers to all of those whys, it won’t help her to get him to stop.
Falling for words
If he claims she wasn’t sexual enough, she may start being more sexual with him, despite his affair. As he continues the affair, and she continues having more sex with him, she will become angry and resentful. Too late will she discover that she should not have had any sex with him once she discovered his affair.
Learning why can help to prevent the same problem from happening the next time, but it won’t tell you how to fix the problem this time. It even being helpful in the future is doubtful because we often don’t get the real reason why something happened. Most often we get one reason when there are actually many that we missed.
Looking for multiple causes is a critical thinking skill. It helps to prevent a condition known as boneheadedness.
Some people go to counseling and search for this “why” with the counselor. This comes out of an old idea about insight therapy that proved more helpful for the therapist than the client.
There are no changes in relationships without behavior change.
The exception
Knowing how to fix a flat tire is much more helpful than knowing why your tire went flat, unless you frequently get flat tires.
For pattern behaviors, the why is helpful information, but it is still not the solution. Your behavior wills still have to change for the pattern to change. Stop trying to think your way to a better relationship. Find out what to do and do it whether you feel like it or not. If it works, great; if it doesn’t then try something else.
How “how” questions lead to marriage solutions
One of the most useful words to go from why to how is “regardless.” It helps us to go from spinning our wheels to getting traction, taking action.
Imagine, with the affair example the wife saying to herself, “Regardless of why he is having an affair, how can I make things better now?” That could lead her to action to stop his affair before it goes on too long.
A counseling vs. coaching difference
A counselor can spend six months talking with a couple about why an affair started and why it continues. That is really good for the counselor. A coach will lay out your action choices in the very first session.
At least I do.
In the case of a spouse’s affair, my client can:
- Divorce.
- Confront the spouse and force a choice between his/her ending the affair or divorcing.
- Delay a confrontation while working to become a more valuable choice.
- Just accept the affair and make the best of the relationship anyhow.
- Have ongoing distance/conflict.
Do these choices change if:
- A spouse has fallen out of love?
- Cheated before?
- Never cheated before?
- Says he or she wants a divorce?
- Asks for time to figure out what he or she wants?
- Has a drug or alcohol problem?
- You go to counseling?
- What the Bible says?
- What your friends and family say?
- Any other thing?
The answer to all of these questions is “no.” Regardless of what a cheating spouse says, or what occurred in the past, or what God hates, there are still only five choices for dealing with a cheating spouse.
Every other relationship problem is the same way. You can chase why’s or you can get to how.
Example: When your spouse wants divorce
A man’s wife wants to divorce. They could go to counseling and spend more than a year talking about all the reasons she no longer loves him, feels resentful, doesn’t trust him, feels controlled, as well as both of their histories of relationship with other people.
Reconciliation coaches cut to the chase and give options.
At least I do.
This man can:
- Cooperate and amicably divorce,
- Try to convince her not to divorce through arguing, counseling, or discussions.
- Try to threaten and shame her into staying with him.
- Pursue her with romantic and loving gestures in an effort to re-interest her.,
- Validate her desire to divorce while working to become a man she won’t want to lose.
What have I done as a coach? I have essentially categorized all those thousands of so-called solutions you would get from an internet search.
His choice of options will determine what actions he needs to take.
Let me say while I’m at it that mixing opposite approaches is not a viable option. Opposite approaches make things worse than either approach alone.
I know what some people will be thinking at this point…
Doesn’t knowing what went wrong help to rebuild love?
That’s the rhetoric. Let’s look at the reality.
Suppose that as a result of your year in marriage counseling, you discover that your relationship had been declining for several years. The reasons were because of getting busier with work and children and spending less time together. In addition, neither of you were getting your needs met and it led to arguing and loss of loving feelings.
You might feel pretty good about having discovered reasons that contributed to an affair or roommate style relationship. But, if you think about it, you already knew these things before you even met with the counselor. You will also discover that despite learning the reasons, your spouse is still distant.
Feeling productive is not the same as being productive
Many people like to do counseling, read books, and watch videos because they provide the illusion of learning or action, even when no actual change is happening. If no action results from these things, then they are just entertainment.
Most often the end of marriage counseling comes with the recommendation to amicably divorce and to continue to work in counseling on co-parenting.
The same thing would happen, by the way, with the man whose wife wants to divorce. Talking about problems and clarifying the past is a very long and difficult way to guess some actions that might help to solve the problem. Emphasis on might.
A caveat
It is useful to clarify problems, organize thinking, and communicate thoughts and feelings clearly. Therapists can help with these skills. After that however, interpersonal action is still required or nothing changes.
If my house has burned down because I was careless with a candle, getting rid of all my candles won’t restore my house.
If a lack of quality time together led to your spouse’s rejection, trying to spend more time with your rejecting spouse won’t restore your relationship. It will only get you more rejection.
It is very useful information to know you need to spend quality time with people to maintain relationships. That is very different from knowing how to get a spouse to want to spend quality time together again.
The only way
Just as there is only one God and only one way to be saved (the blood of Christ),
There is only one way to build any relationship. That is to help the other person to desire you, enjoy you, and respect you.
My Re-Connections Coaching Package focuses on just these skills.
If you need a little inspiration try listening to Elvis’ song: A Little Less Conversation.
How to move from talking to action in your marriage
If you have been struggling trying to figure out how your relationship got to where it is, you can stop struggling. Instead, you can:
- Accept that your relationship is at this point, regardless of how it happened. Denial is not an aid to change.
- Ask yourself how you can start to go just one step closer to your goal. One step at a time is the fastest way to make progress and prevents rejection.
- Take the step.
Perhaps your first step is just being more relaxed around your spouse. Or maybe it is learning to validate. Or doing something that will make you more attractive or interesting. No matter where you are in your relationship, focus on just the next step. Once you accomplish that, work on the next step.
Reconciling will only happen if you do the right steps, in the right order, at the right pace…just like everything else.
You must be likeable before you will be liked. You must be lovable before you will be loved (God is an exception for this), and you must be desirable before you will be desired.
If you are in counseling or are doing a lot of talking with your spouse about your marriage, you need to figure out if it is moving your relationship to the next step. Many people feel their relationship is progressing because they are doing a lot of talking. Don’t be fooled:
If what is happening between the counseling sessions or talks is not improving, then your relationship is not improving.
If you’re ready to move beyond talking and finally see changes, my Re-Connections Coaching Package will show you the next steps, starting in the first session. See the link to this package in the description.
