Photo courtesy Sheepfur
For the past several years I have been in private practice working with couples in the midst of marriage and life crises. While I am a big proponent of therapy and believe there are many times in life when it is extremely beneficial, there are many times when couples come to therapy too late. In fact, research continues to show that couples on average don’t seek professional help until 7 years after the problem arose.
By this time, one or both of the members of the marriage have checked out emotionally and/or mentally. So therapy sadly becomes a means to dissolve the marriage. Thus giving therapy a bad wrap. Granted, there are marriages that are helped a great deal through counseling, but this is not always the case.
Enter, the world of Marriage Coaching.
And if you are unsure what exactly the world of marriage coaching is, this is the part where I bet you’d like me to explain the idea of marriage coaching, right? Well I’m not gonna. Instead, I’m going to make a fabulously wonderful offer so you can see for yourself.
Since the world of marriage coaching is new to most people, I am offering 3 free marriage coaching sessions to 2 couples. To be qualified for this offer, you must be willing to blog about the experience, whether on your own blog or here at Simple Marriages (unedited by me of course).
If you and your spouse are interested, let me know via the comments or email (corey at simplemarriage dot net). If there are more than 2 couples interested in my exceptionally generous offer, it will be up to my discretion as to the couples who are selected. I guess I’m also prepared to hear crickets chirping in the comments if no one is interested, although this would be somewhat embarrassing.
To qualify for this experiment:
Sessions are most often weekly or every other week so the blogging about the experience would be after each session.
- Both you and your spouse must participate.
- You have to be available for 1 hour sessions each week.
- You need to have some areas of marriage that you want to improve.
- You both need to be willing to commit to the process.
- You both need to be open minded.
- You must be in the US (sorry to all my overseas readers at this point).
Interested? Try it out! You really have nothing to lose.
* I have stolen this idea from Tim Brownson of The Discomfort Zone. So before you say “wow what a great idea!” check out his blog.
UPDATE: Marriage coaching is over the phone so you can live anywhere in the US to qualify. Also, you will have until the end of the week (Friday the 12th) to let me know if you want to be one of the 2 couples.
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Wow, what an INCREDIBLE offer!
Wow, an amazing offer…and one I would take up if my work schedule didn’t involve crazy overtime right now. As it does I can’t even put my name in the hat but kudos for offering. I can’t wait to read about how it goes though. Would there maybe be an encore offer if this first round goes well?
I am interested and just need to talk to my hubby who is currently sleeping. I will post again tomorrow (although tomorrow is our anniversary and that may or may not be the best day to pop the question of “would you like to do marriage coaching with me?” but I am going to ask him anyway
Thanks!!!
@Mark- At this point we’ll have to see how this offering goes. Perhaps there could be another round at a later date.
@Jackie- As for asking your spouse on an anniversary, I would see this as a tremendous gift. It’s not counseling where there is something necessarily going wrong, instead it’s coaching where you’re admitting that things could be even better! And who can’t admit that?
Wow – what a cool offer! Would the couples need to be local? I’m in NC. If you DO NOT have to be local, I’d like to give it a try!
I also need to talk to my husband about this, of course
@Meredith- Coaching is over the phone so you can live anywhere in the US.
My hub and I are both in. We would love to take it to the next step! I was really surprised when I asked the hub. He smiled and said yes, that sounds like a great thing!
What are some things that folks usually work on in marriage coaching? I want to start thinking about it in case we are the lucky winners!
What about pre-marital coaching? My fiance and I both have previous marriages and want to avoid past mistakes. I attended premarital counseling before I got married the first time and, while informative, didn’t seem to cover how to handle the situations that ultimately ended my marriage.
My marriage is brilliant, but I just wanted to say what a great idea!
Seriously Corey, this is a great way for you to raise awareness of not only yourself but also your profession and I’d encourage any other bloggers in similar industries to try it.
Thanks a lot for the link it’s appreciated, and good luck with it!
@Laurie- You can work on anything you’d like to see improved in the marriage. Everything topic is coachable.
@Reese- Pre-marital could work. I’ll put you guys on the interested list.
@Tim- Thanks for the idea and for the encouragement.
That’s a great idea. My husband and I would be interested, if you’re still taking applicants.
Do both spouses need to blog about it? I think my wife would be interested in the coaching, but I’m not sure whether she’d go for the writing portion.
@evil dad- Great question. Both spouses need to be part of the coaching but only one needs to write about it. Although the hope would be that both spouses would collaborate on the writing in order to give the couple’s perspective.
A Good Husband blogger Cory sent me over here. I suppose that means we have something to work on. lol. Sure, we will participate and blog about it. Contact my husband Cory at cory_huff at yahoo.com if you think we’ll be good candidates.
I would love to do this! My husband and I have been in counseling before and want to continue…
Pick us!!!!
We both know that we have things we need to improve on for ourselves and for each other…we love each other dearly, love the family we have created and want to make things work….but we do need help in figuring things out.
We’ve been married 4 years, we have a 2 1/2 year old daugher and we lost our first child when I was 6 months pregnant, just 2 weeks after we got married. We have some issues surrounding the loss and also around understanding each others “love languages”. Please contact us and we can discuss further. I think this is a beautiful offer and I think it will be great for people to read the blogs and feel understood if they are experiencing something similar.
Peace, love & light to you,
Shannon
My wife Shannon just wrote in…I just read through the post and she assumed correctly that I am also interested! I think this sounds awesome and we’d love to be a part of this…benefiting us as well as the community. Be in touch!
Sincerely,
Dino
My husband and I have been promising each other we’d go to counseling for years now, so I can see how your point about waiting seven years too late is par for the course (it will be 12 years in January we’ve been married). Count my husband and myself in for the running.
The response has been great. I’m going to keep this open until Friday night at midnight. Let me know if you want in on this offer by then.
It’s a great idea, and I’m envious of all the couples offering to reveal the challenges and rewards of their marriage. Having just ended a 20 year marriage, I can vouch that both need to be involved, need to communicate, need to join hands and explore themselves and each other fully. I think each spouse must also truly be prepared to hear their partner speak about their “shadow”, the insistent urges and impulses lurking off to the side that need to be aired in a healthy way. Without the safe ground to give the shadow some light, there is the danger of succumbing to total darkness.
Bravo to all of you for being brave enough to work together!
Unfortunately, I think my husband and I are at a place in our marriage where we should be seeking counseling instead of coaching.
Emails just went out this morning announcing the 2 couples selected for the experiment. If you do not receive anything, email me and let me know. Thank you to the 16 couples who responded with interest in this experiment. I am truly grateful.