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What Is Marriage Coaching?By: Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. from Marriage Builders, Inc.

I was raised in a Germanic tradition of "no pain, no gain." Many, if not most, of mychildhood achievements were accomplished through personal sacrifice and hard work.During my adolescence and then later as an adult, I applied the same rule of personalsacrifice to almost every goal I had. Without a doubt, if I had not forced myself to work longand hard, I would not have amounted to much. And that's the story of most people whohave achieved their personal objectives — they must work for it.

My approach to achievement made me a natural coach. From my high school days right upto the present, I have been coaching people to do whatever it takes to be successful.Whether the goal is mastery of academic subjects, physical conditioning, careerdevelopment or... marriage, I have tried to help people understand that they can have whatthey want, if they are willing to work for it.

In my ten years of teaching psychology and statistics (1967-1977), I gave every student achance to earn an A, but they had to earn it. Tests were given on every lecture and readingassignment, and students could retake them until they had a perfect score (a different testwas given on each retake). Free tutoring was available to students who were having troublelearning the material. My goal was for each student to learn all of the material I presented. Idid not want students to be satisfied with a B grade, because it meant that they had missedsomething that I felt was important.

Students usually reported that they spent more time studying for my classes than they didstudying for all their other classes combined. For many of them, the A grade they earnedfrom me was the only one they had received in college up to that point. But after learninghow to study for an A, from then on, they earned A's in many other classes. Theydiscovered that the time and effort they spent studying was proportional to the grades theyreceived, and so their grades improved as their overall commitment to study improved.

The approach I used to help students succeed in my psychology courses proved successfulin achieving other personal objectives, as well. I helped scores of overweight people loseweight and keep it off. I helped hundreds of alcoholics stop drinking and smokers stopsmoking. I did it all with plans that were proven to be successful if people were willing tofollow them. My job, as their coach, was to provide the plan, and then motivate them tofollow it. And in most cases I was motivating people to follow a plan they really didn't wantto follow.

Whether it's getting an A in a psychology course, losing weight, giving up smoking, orhaving a great marriage, the plan that achieves your personal objectives is usually

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something that you would rather not do, and that's why a coach can be so important. Thecoach's job is "getting players to do what they don't want to do so they can be the kind ofplayers they always wanted to be" (Tom Landry, former coach of the Dallas Cowboys).

Marital fulfillment was one of the many personal objectives I tried to help people achieve inmy earlier days as a psychologist. Once in a while a couple would come to me on the vergeof divorce, and I would try to steer them toward a happy marriage. My problem, at first, wasthat I did not have an effective plan to offer — even when they did what I suggested, almostall the couples I tried to help eventually divorced! So I took courses and read existing booksand articles about strategies for improving marriage. I even hired a well-respected maritaltherapist to guide me toward an effective counseling procedure.

But much to my disappointment, the courses, books, articles and even the mentor did notoffer me a plan that even tried to improve marriages. Much of what I learned was to helpcouples make the most of their upcoming and inevitable divorce! There was almost adeliberate effort to demonstrate that the couple should never have married in the first place,and that divorce was their best choice for future happiness and fulfillment.

At that time, the devastating effects of divorce on children were not understood, andcounselors were telling couples that their children would do better after their divorcebecause they would not be subjected to all of the fighting that was going on. No oneseemed interested in teaching the couple to STOP FIGHTING!

In fact, teaching the couple anything was frowned upon by my mentor. It was his opinionthat the role of a counselor was to help couples gain insight, make their own decisions, andtake responsibility for those decisions. That way, the counselor was off the hook for failingto do what he was hired to do - save the marriage. He couldn't be held responsible forbeing ill-equipped to do what he was being paid to do.

Of course, since counselors in those days really didn't have any effective plans to save amarriage, their fall-back position of having couples do all their own planning made sense.But they should have told clients that they didn't really know what they were doing. Instead,to justify their fee, they rested on the belief that a counselor was incredibly arrogant tosuggest a plan to a couple, and then coach the couple through that plan. They deceivedthemselves into believing that the moral way to counsel was to let the innate wisdom of thecouple come to the rescue. No one was rescued, but at least the counselor felt morallyjustified in charging a fee.

When I finally came to the realization that marriages could not be saved by this popularapproach to marriage counseling, I broke ranks and started to create my own plan basedon my marriage counseling experience. Much of what I learned about saving marriagescame right from the mouths of the couples whose marriages I was trying to save. I wouldtell them in advance that I had not yet figured out how to save marriages, and wouldn'tcharge them for my help. But if they were willing to work with me, maybe we could figure itout together. Then we would create a plan and try it out to see if it would work. The mosteffective plans were fine-tuned, and what you see today on [Harley's] Marriage Builders siteis the result of all that trial and error.

There is still plenty of fine-tuning ahead, but the basic concepts that helped create theseeffective plans are proven to be true every day. Now it's only a matter of motivating couplesto follow the plans. And that's where marriage coaching can become an important part of

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saving marriages.

When a couple first came to my office, one of my goals was to help them identify and meeteach other's most important emotional needs so that they could deposit enough love unitsto fall in love with each other. But my goal and their goal was very different.

When I first started encouraging couples to meet each other's emotional needs, at least onespouse was usually in the state of withdrawal, which meant that he or she did not want theiremotional needs to be met, and they certainly did not want to meet their spouse's emotionalneeds. Even if both spouses were in the state of conflict where they were willing to havetheir own needs met, they were not willing to meet the other spouse's emotional needs(unless it was also their own need that was being met). Since almost all the spouses I sawwere either in the state of withdrawal or in the state of conflict, most were not interested infollowing my plan.

That's where my job as a marriage coach began - to motivate couples to do what theydidn't want to do so they could have the kind of marriage they wanted to have. I coachedthem into meeting each other's emotional needs at a time that they didn't feel like doing it.Granted, it often required a bit of house cleaning first to remove some of the biggestobstacles to following the rule, such as angry outbursts, disrespectful judgments and selfishdemands. But in the end, if my coaching was successful, they would actually meet eachother's emotional needs, and that usually started them on the road to marital recovery.

I had similar problems motivating couples to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement (never doanything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). When a coupleconsiders each other's feelings before making decisions, the end result is thoughtfulnesswhich protects the feelings of both spouse. The alternative, of course, is thoughtlessness,where one spouse gains at the other spouse's expense.

As a marriage coach, I tried to motivate couples to take each other's feelings into accountwith every decision they would make. But for many of the couples I saw, it was as if I wastrying to take away their "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." They felt that freedommeant freedom to trample over the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of their spouses.Even couples who finally agreed with me on the wisdom of my plan, found following it to beone of the greatest challenges of their lives. Asking their spouses how they felt aboutsomething before the decision was made seemed foreign and out of place. Yet, as theypracticed following the Policy of Joint Agreement, it became increasingly natural andspontaneous. Eventually they learned to protect each other from their selfish behavior,because they forced themselves to get into the habit of being considerate.

The Policy of Radical Honesty and the Policy of Undivided Attention, are also rules thatmost couple do not feel like following when they have lost their love for each other. Whenlove is lost, it's extremely difficult to do what's right in marriage.

Historically, marriage counseling doesn't begin with a plan, nor does it try to motivatecouples do what they don't want to do. But marriage coaching does. That's why it succeedswhere marriage counseling fails.

Can you resolve your conflicts and restore love to your marriage without a coach?

I created the Marriage Builders website to help couples who don't need a coach as much as

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they need an effective plan. The plan I offer saves marriages if couples will simply follow it.There are many who lose weight, stop smoking, improve their career skills, get out of debt,and achieve a host of other personal objectives without the encouragement of a coach. Allthey need is a plan that works. Similarly, there are many couples who restore love to theirmarriages without a coach — they simply follow my plan.

But there is a big difference between achieving personal objectives and achieving maritalobjectives. Personal objectives require only one person to be in agreement with the plan,while marital objectives require the agreement of two people. If you want a successfulmarriage, both you and your spouse must agree on the plan, and then you must both followit.

Most of the couples I've seen consist of one spouse who is willing to do what's necessary toimprove the marriage, and the other who isn't. This is especially true for a couple goingthrough the tragedy of an affair. For these couples, an effective plan is not enough. Thesecouples need a coach — someone who will motivate them to do something they should do,but do not want to do.

You can be the judge whether or not you need a coach for your marriage. I have created aplan for your marriage that will work if you both follow it. But if one or both of you are notwilling to follow the plan, then you may need a coach to achieve what will be one of themost important objectives of your life — to have a fulfilling marriage.

In the last newsletter, my article was entitled, "How to create your own plan to resolveconflicts and restore love to your marriage." I encourage you to read that article and createthat plan. Then try to follow the plan until you and your spouse are in love with each other.But if you cannot agree on a plan, or if you can't motivate yourselves to follow the plan, thenyou may need a coach to help you do what you don't feel like doing.

In selecting a coach, be sure that you choose someone who is familiar with my approach torestoring love in marriage, and someone who will help you follow the plan. A simpletelephone call to local marriage counselors will help you determine who is a marriage coachand who is merely a marriage counselor. If you cannot find anyone locally that passes thetest, I suggest that you try the coaching we provide by telephone. Appointments can bemade by calling our toll-free number, 1-888-639-1639, or visiting the Marriage BuildersCounseling Center section of [Marriage Builder's] web site.

I've found that the majority of couples do not need a marriage coach. They can learn toresolve their conflicts and restore love to their marriages without any outside help as longas they have a plan that works and motivation to follow the plan. I've provided you with thatplan, now all you need is the motivation. But if either you or your spouse lack thatmotivation, don't go through the rest or your life with a loveless marriage, or worse yet, endit with divorce. Instead, get the help you need to do the right thing when you don't feel likedoing it.

This article is used with with permission from MarnageBuMers.com,

© Marriage Builders, Inc. All rights reserved This article was reprinted with permission. Please do not publishthis article without direct consent from Marriage Builders, Inc. Family First is not authorized to permit the

reproduction of articles contributed to FamilyFirst.net by non-staff authors.

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