Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Purpose Marriage Coaching: To Heal Strengthen and Protect Your Own Marriage


Why did we write the book Marriage Coaching: Heart Hope and Skills for a Great Relationship?

In a sentence, the purpose of this book is to equip you for more and better in your marriage; more hope, pleasure and purpose, and better ways to recover, sustain and to protect it. Learning to coach your marriage is a simple process based on simple skills and exercises so don’t be daunted by the idea that it will be difficult to learn. The hope of this fresh self-guided process to heal, strengthen and protect your relationship is that you can know exactly what to do in the most challenging conversations and circumstances with a predictably good outcome.

Despite the statistics that marriage is on the decline and that more than half of today’s marriages will eventually fail, it is possible to build and sustain a great marriage! All it takes to get started is for a couple to agree that they want more and better. From there it’s about heart, hope and skills, which is a formidable combination of humility, desire and ability. While it sounds simple, it isn’t easy…but, it’s very worthwhile. In the words of my brother in-law before Jill and I married, “Jeff, it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do, and the most worthwhile thing.” He was right.

The scope of this book is simultaneously narrow and broad. It is narrow because it presents a few simple foundational concepts and skills for a process that any couple can use to better understand each other’s thoughts, feelings and desires, to set goals and to support each other as you pursue those goals for relationship growth or change. In a nutshell that is the process of coaching your own marriage; a self-guided process that results in the discovery of goals shared by both partners followed by self-monitoring to do the action steps to achieve those goals.

The scope of this book is also broad because the skills are useful with any marital content at any point in a couple’s life cycle, and it is a useful process to help couples consider and apply ideas from other marriage curricula. Listening, asking, setting goals and supporting the growth and change process with encouragement and accountability are effective skills with many applications. What you will experience as unique in this presentation is the emphasis on heart as the motivator and guide for use of the skills. You’ll be challenged to prepare and sustain a hopeful, humble and compassionate heart as the foundation of life-giving conversations facilitated by skills.

How has your marriage improved by coaching it?  Which skills have been the most powerful for your relationship?




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