couples

We offer two distinct types of couples coaching:

premarital
for couples who are unhappily married and/or are having power struggles

We hold these sessions in person at our Naples office or long distance via telephone or Skype.

Premarital

There are enough surprises in marriage without finding out that what your partner believes in and stands for, doesn’t even come close to your own ideals and values. Our premarital consultations are an opportunity for the couple, before they get married, to examine with open eyes, looking ahead together, how to invent the WE based on our SoulMating Model of Healthy Partnership.

In advance, we teach them the tools and skills to lovingly and soulfully handle differences in their relationship. Some potential problem areas could be finances, raising children, lifestyle and religion/spirituality to name a few. In addition, they learn how to form and maintain a loving and nurturing partnership that fulfills their deepest needs and desires, which contributes to an atmosphere of caring and love.

Couples

The emphasis here is teaching the couple how to create a proactive partnership where power struggles are reduced and they are taught, when differences occur, how to create a WIN-WIN relationship. They are also taught to see problems as an opportunity for self-knowledge and wisdom, which helps them connect with themselves and their partner in a more intimate way, transforming the breakdowns into potential breakthroughs.

Our Couples Coaching Practice Model

Working together as a team, we have developed a process, which has proven to be highly effective.

Our couples coaching is based on our SoulMating Model of Healthy Partnership, Two I’s Inventing the WE, where each person is honored and respected, creating a win-win for both people.

I WE I

In order to accomplish this end, we believe that effective couples coaching needs to involve two coaches, a man and a woman, so that each person feels fully understood and appreciated and has a personal advocate, usually of the same gender, representing their point of view.

This is not what usually occurs. A couple generally works with only one therapist or coach. Through our experience and observation, having one therapist often creates a problem for one of the partners, usually the one with the opposite gender of the coach. That person will many times not feel taken care of, feeling misunderstood and ganged up on during the session.

Before the first session

Each partner gets homework prior to the first session that they work on privately. The important thing is that they are totally honest with themselves as they answer these questions and are asked not to share their answers with their partner. We ask questions such as:

What’s working in your life and what’s not working?
What working and not working in your relationship?
How long have you had issues in your partnership?
What have you tried? What worked? What didn’t work?
What do you think your role is in the issues you are having?

Meeting individually

Basha meets with the woman for 1-2 sessions to ensure that she fully understands her thoughts and point of view about why the couple is having problems. Jeff does the same thing with the man.

Basha is a woman and, as is typical, is more emotional and heartfelt while Jeff, as a man, is the logical, rational thinker, more common in the male species. These differences are very helpful in understanding the particular points of view of each partner.

After the individual sessions, Basha and Jeff meet and discuss strategies and generate a plan to help the couple develop a more loving and nurturing partnership.

We all meet

In this first session together, we introduce our ground-rules based on our SoulMating model:

Both people’s points of view are always honored and respected.
We do not accept one person making the other wrong.
Each person is entitled to their own point of view.
We work on creating a WIN-WIN, helping the couple invent the WE.

In this way, both people can feel safe, communicating their feelings and beliefs without being judged.

Then, we share what we think the issues are in their relationship and begin to teach the strategies and skills necessary to help the couple lovingly create the WE.

For example:

Gender differences in how men and women communicate. Most women are emotional so they need to talk to get from their heart to their head in order to solve problems, while the man needs to talk to go from his head to his heart in order to connect intimately.

Understand each person’s personality traits based on Jungian Typology so they can learn to respect each other’s differences – i.e. thinking vs. feeling, introversion vs. extroversion.

Communication Skills – learning to listen to each other with a new set of ears

Assertive, aggressive and passive communication styles

Learning how to be emotionally safe for each other

The importance of “Being” together rather than just Doing

What we have observed over years of doing couples coaching, is that if the couple’s values and goals are similar, which is more common, then it’s easy to change the dynamics of the relationship. Power struggles occur because the couple does not have positive communication skills when differences arise. Our goal then, is teaching the couple the skills and strategies to work and live happily together, as they create a WIN-WIN in their relationship.

Conversely, if we determine that the couple has different values and ideas about how they want to live their life, then we might recommend that the relationship ends in an amicable fashion. We also help facilitate that eventuality. Or, the couple might decide to stay together but lead separate lives. There is no right answer. Every couple has to determine what is best for them.

Following each session, we give personalized homework to the couple so they can continue working on their issues before we meet again. We have the couple practice skills together and report back to us at the next session. Each session is audio-taped so the couple can listen to what transpired and move more quickly to get the results that they desire. “In our experience, and documented by research, a person is only capable of remembering about 35% of what transpired during a counseling session, so the audio provides an additional resource to help remember exactly what transpired.”

Our track record has proven consistently that couples usually start feeling better about each other immediately and have achieved demonstrable results within 4 sessions.