If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It – Make It Even Better!
The idea of building a better marriage is this – take your marriage at it’s current level and move it to the next. Start small, keep it simple, get naked – it’s all part of growing up.
My previous post encouraged you to DO SOMETHING!
Now I’d like to help you make this happen – so I’m offering 2 slots to couples interested in receiving 3 free marriage coaching sessions. Closed
If you’re not sure coaching is right for your marriage, here’s the reaction from a couple who participated last time I made this offer:
I subscribe to a blog called Simple Marriage. The author, Corey, has some great marriage advice.
Corey is a marriage counselor and marriage coach. The difference between a counselor and coach, as I understand it, is basically this; people who are trying to save their marriage see a marriage counselor and people who want to take a good marriage and make it even better should see a marriage coach.
One day, Corey was offering free marriage coaching to two couples. So I put my name in, and we won free marriage coaching.
The point of all this is that [my wife] and I have a great relationship but actually going to a marriage coach was really fun. We had no pressure to “save” our marriage, only make it better. And we have. Just by thinking about making our marriage better, and knowing Corey was going to follow up with us on the goals in our next session we set actually helped. I probably wouldn’t have paid for the coaching before but now I see it as something I would do once a year, kind of like a checkup. And I’d recommend it to everyone.
We had three sessions. We spaced them out a few weeks apart, we were really busy, but I liked having a couple weeks to work on our goals before talking about them again with Corey. The whole thing started in September and we had our third session the first week of November. While I would say (and [my wife] agrees) our “quality of marriage” hasn’t instantly improved over the last few weeks, my awareness of our marriage has, and this awareness is the key take-away.
If you love your spouse, if your relationship is fine, and you aren’t trying to save your marriage, then you should see a marriage coach. (btw, if you are trying to save your marriage, you might consider a marriage counselor.)
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 this offer, it will be up to my discretion as to the couples who are selected.
To qualify for this experiment:
- Both you and your spouse must participate.
- You have to be available for 1 hour sessions (sessions are most often weekly or every other 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 English speaking.
- And you must be willing to give a brief write up of your experience.
Marriage coaching is over the phone or video so you can live anywhere in the world to take part in this process.
Interested? Throw your name in the hat – you really have nothing to lose (except not being selected as one of the 2 couples).
This offer is available until October 15, 2009 at Midnight CST.
Photo courtesy pedrosimoes7
Corey is the editor of Simple Marriage as well as a licensed marriage & family therapist. While he has a Ph.D. in Family Therapy, he only occasionally likes to be called doctor. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe so you don't miss any future posts.55 Responses to “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It – Make It Even Better!”
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[...] response thus far to the free marriage coaching opportunity has been great! So great in fact that I’m asking for your [...]
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[...] ago I presented Simple Marriage readers with the opportunity to be one of 2 couples selected for 3 free marriage coaching sessions. The response – 63 couples threw their name in the hat for consideration. I then followed up [...]
We are interested.
We’re ready to go!
Is pre-marital coaching an option? We are getting married January 2, 2010 and were planning to meet with a counselor/coach but haven’t found someone yet – and I love your blog, it’s very inspirational.
Absolutely- what a great way to use this offer!
On a side note- if you are not selected for this offer, I am putting together a pre-marital package to offer couples. It would include taking the Prepare and Enrich Instrument (which is great) as well as 3 – 4 coaching sessions to go over the results and any other things you’d like to discuss. I also will have a similar package for already married couples looking for a jump start to more.
If you don’t want to do something like that, I’d be happy to help you find someone to work with. Best of luck.
That sounds like something we would totally be interested — I’ll keep my fingers crossed for the free offer, but if not then I’ll send you an email to hear more about that package. Thanks!
Hey, my fiancée and I are getting married that day, too! How cool! (I entered below, but this thought seemed relevant here
)
Awesome! It’s going to be a beautiful winter day, at least I keep telling myself that. Congrats!
My husband and I would love to!
We went to a couples retreat soon after we started dating seriously. We heard the statistic that if you put a minimum of 8 hours a year into developing your marriage, you can improve it greatly. We took that to heart and try to fit in a retreat/coaching a few times a year. We have really enjoyed this site and have grown together because of it.
It is a second marriage for both of us. We have been married for a year and a half. We are both in our 30′s with 5 children between us.
We both tried marriage counseling in our first marriages. I’ve learned it is more fun (and productive) to do coaching to keep things running smooth, before you end up needing counseling. It is often my husband that suggests we are due for some coaching. We just want to keep the love growing!
We would love to have this opportunity. We have been married 5 amazing years. We would greatly appreciate the opportunity to have support from your coaching to grow and maintain what we have. We also would like to contribute more than just a good example to our friends and community. We see so many complaints and struggles. It is one thing to successfully work through challenges in our relationship, yet quite another to be the resource we would like to be for others.
We’d be interested!
We are interested!
We are ready for the next level!
I love the idea of a marriage coach. Please add us to the list!
We are interested. Married almost 5 years, happy and expecting our first child. Want to transition to parenthood while making sure our marriage not just survives, but thrives through this next stage in life.
We’re interested!
After 10 years of marriage my husband and I could definitely benefit from some coaching. He returned from a year long deployment to Iraq with the ARMY back in July, and we have four girls who are 4, 3, 3, & 3. Working for the airlines now means he works 3 or 4 days and then is home 3 or 4 so our schedule is still quite different from the norm. To say that we work on our marriage is an understatement, but we would love to have a little bit of guidance! Thanks for the chance.
If premarital coaching is a viable use of this offer, then my fiancée and I are totally interested! We are just shy of 3 months out.
We’d be interested. We’ve been married 4.5 years – together almost 8. We’ve got a 2 year old. We’re a great fit for each other but are always open to ideas for improvement!
We’d love to put our names in the hat. We are loving the Marriage challenge and are participating as best we can in the forums!
We’d love to be involved. We are happily married but love to keep growing, and we might be in a unique situation because my husband does coaching and I’m a marriage and family therapist. But then as you know, just because you are in the field doesn’t mean you couldn’t still benefit from an outsider’s perspective.
We’re interested. We’ve been married since 2007.
Would love to be selected!
We would love to try coaching. It would be great to see what a ‘marriage coach’ actually does that is different then a counselor !
We would really like to be selected. We’re going on four years, still in love, and want to keep making things better!
What a nice offer, we are very interested!
We’re in but understand if you choose someone who hasn’t worked with you.
WOW what a generous offer. We’d definitely be interested.
Thanks!
We are interested!
Maybe I should let you know some details about us….
I am 39 and DH is 43, we have been married 2 years last month and I have 2 step children ages 10 and 13…..we are happy but could use a marriage “boost”! Tips for communicating better would help us so much.
Please consider me for this offer.
Some detail…We are both 27 and have been married for 7 years. We are madly in love, that is not the issue…but just like I take and utilize tips for workouts, I definitely don’t have all the answers for marriage and would love to suprise my wife with an opportunity to go to the next level. Thank you for the offer.
I am totally interested in this offer! My husband & I have been married 13 years and are quite happy. We’ve done our own version of “marriage maintenance”
– reading and discussing books, blogs, etc.. But with 3 young children, jobs and life, it can be tough sometimes to focus on the marriage and we’d love some coaching and suggestions on how to keep our relationship strong.
Hey, since you made the offer worldwide, I’ll throw us in for chance as well! Happily married for 16 years, 4 kids, cross cultural marriage with me being the foreigner (and I DO speak English!) I follow Simple Marriage PRECISELY to make our good marriage even better so this is right up my alley.
Thanks for the offer. Count us in. Married for nine years with three kids. Our youngest being a special health needs child surviving three open heart surgeries and countless other hurdles. This has been the hardest year of our lives…
I just discovered your blog and we could definitely use some coaching to keep us focused in the right direction. Looks like you’ve had a great response to the offer.
Almost 9 years into marriage, we’d welcome the tune-up!
Robin
We are definitely interested! Sign us up!
Last month we celebrated our 3rd Anniversary and we have a wonderful 7 month-old boy added to the mix. I think a marriage coach would greatly help us since our biggest challenge so far is getting time for our marriage after our son’s birth. We are deeply in love, but there are always areas for improvement so we would love the opportunity to be coached.
P.S. I love this blog!
We’re definitely interested!
We’re in! We’ve been married 8 years and have 2 children one is 3 years and the other is 8 months. We would love tips on how to communicate better with kids! Our marriage seemed so easy until noise entered the picture!
Pick us! Pick us!
We would very much like to one of the couples you choose. We’ve been married for 22 1/2 years and have 2 teenagers! We sure could use this! Thanks for the generous offer!
Hi! We’ve been married 10 1/2 years, 2 kids (ages 4 1/2 & 18 months); and are going through some struggles – could definitely use the time with you. I love your blog and it’s provided me a lot of insight to help us stay on the track to staying together. Thanks for doing this, and for considering us for the slot.
We are soooooo there! Love your site, love your posts and would love to participate in this! We are a blended family, married for 2 years – 16G, 12B, 8B and it has been interesting! We are trying to find ways to prioritize our marriage, so this would be a great start!
We would definitely be interested. Married for almost 12 years and there is always room for improvement. Parenting three small ones is rough on a marriage.
We are interested! I am in the states and my husband is in South Korea (military)
Let’s make a great marriage AMAZING!
We are interested too.
We are interested. Thank you!
Put my name in. We have been married for 3 years and have a 5 month old. My husband and I have gone through A LOT. His father passed away when I was 5 months pregnant. It was devastating because this was the first grandchild. I had a HUGE pay cut when I went back to work. I had health and mental complications after the birth which lead me to a terrible post-partum depression. I want to so badly do something to thank my husband for being so understanding and helping me to my recovery- but I don’t want to BUY him something, I want to return the favor emotionally. Anyway put us in the hat! Woo Hoo!!!
We would love to. we’ve Been together for 10 years and seperated we have several issues we need to work on and we really want to make it work. We have a 2yr old daughter that were fighting to keep our family together for. We truly love each other, but weve started fighting consatntly,so we seperated.
We’d be interested. Our family is growing (3 year old and 9 month old twins). This year has been full of changes with two new babies. We’re about to move to a new house, which I see as a change to try some new things in all parts of our lives.
Married 13 years! On the verge of DIVORCE! Mostly because of ME! One person is at least still committed. Need help and soon! Please consider us….we have one boy who is 13! Can this work……
We need help:
Communicating
Realizing that “life happens” and our issues are normal, real and can be overcome
Seeing eye to eye raising our children!!
Please help-I hope we win!
Vikki
I am having some trouble in my marriage and would really like some help. How can i sign up?