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When we offer couple coaching, we like to start at the end.
Many coach trainings teach people to start at the beginning.
But when we know where we're going, it's much easier to get there.
We can encourage you to make decisions - but
we will not try to make decisions for you.
We can encourage you to see other points of view - but we will not take sides.
We can support your choices but we will not pressure anybody to change.
Partnership
Do you want a better partnership? Is your partnership in
trouble? Or is it great and you want to make it better? Our couple coaching
can help you have better relationships. We offer a complete model of
pre-marital counseling, marriage and a similar service for business
partners.
We help partners check their goals, roles, habits, rules and beliefs.
We help them solve emotional blocks and relationship problems. We help people
dissolve marriage
problems and enjoy better partnership.
When couples want to improve their relationships,
we also help them assess the impact of their relationships with their extended
family and the expectations of their communities in the context of their goals.
Conjoint Therapy & Systemic Coaching
During conjoint (simultaneous) couple therapy and systemic
coaching, we assist partners or family members to improve their
relationships. We provide a complete coaching
methodology that includes couple contracts for fulfilling relationship
goals and responsibilities.
While there are usually advantages if both partners attending
sessions together, we prefer to first meet the partners individually. Our aim is
to get people to work together, so that our sessions become a catalyst for
change.
Wishes & Demands
Every mature partner will have ideas or wishes that he or
she believes would make things even better. And every mature partner will
have some demands - non-negotiable requirements that must be met for the
relationship to continue. (Immature or dependent adults may be unable to
express their wishes).
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"My partner only does that to
try to make me feel better."
Heard many times during couple coaching ... as a complaint! |
- A wish might be, "For my happiness, I ask
that you kiss me before you go to work".
- A demand might be, "Unless you get rid of that
ANIMAL by the end of the month, our partnership will be over"!
Couple Coaching Agreements
If you are committed to a partnership, you can use agreements
to clarify your relationship. This often clarifies strange partnership behavior
and unexpected events. It also provides a focus for effective telephone coaching
when a person, a partnership, or a family is in trouble. You can:
- Define your concepts of your partnership responsibilities
and the benefits that you
expect to gain from your partnership and from your partner.
- Write what you and your partner expect to give and to
receive. Contracts can deal with every aspect of family life:
relationships with friends, achievements, power, sex, leisure time,
money, children, and etc.
- Write a contract based on both of your needs and wishes.
These will include your healthy needs and plausible wishes, as well as
unreasonable needs and conflicting wishes. You may find that your attempts to
fulfill your partner's needs assume that your
own wishes will be fulfilled.
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Case History: David & Susan
We wrote our responsibilities and wishes
separately and we agreed not to discuss them until we had both finished. We
could then
read and talk about our papers as mush as we wanted. We made some changes or
additions, but we also kept our original words and noted our changes. At first
we felt puzzled - yet later we were very pleased with this.
Soon, we could use each other's wishes on
our own initiative, without asking questions like, "What is in this for
me?", or "Does my partner get more than me?" Instead, our
wishes all evolved to "How happy can we be together?" David
& Susan, 2001, Hawaii, USA |
Partnership Wishes
Although each of you may know what you want, you may be less
aware of your partner's wishes. If you assume that your partner agrees to a
certain point, if your wishes are not fulfilled, you may react with anger,
anxiety, depression or withdrawal. (This is especially likely if you believe
that you fulfilled your obligations but that your partner did not.)
- Together explore all of your wishes, and find conflicts
- Resolve your conflicts and integrate your wishes to
form partnership goals
To better integrate your wishes, systemic coaching can help
you:
- determine what you want from each other
- determine what you offer to each other
- test the realism of your fantasies and expectations
- create partnership goals that meet both your needs
Simple Suggestions for Finding Partnership Goals
- Write your desired individual responsibilities
and wishes separately
- Read your written responsibilities and wishes to
each other
- Avoid any form of complaint, criticism,
blame or justification
- Take turns initiating and playing out each
other's wishes
- The initiator plays out his or her own wish
- Later check your written wishes to be
sure that you fulfilled them all
- Both of you add new wishes and repeat
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Success & Sanity
It is obvious to our senses that the world is mostly flat,
and that the sun moves over us. The Polish astronomer Nikolaj Kopernik
(Copernicus) overturned that notion - at some risk to his health. Sanity
changed. Galileo, Newton, Einstein ... many people risked the labels of
insane or heretic to change our paradigms of reality.
And these paradigm shifts became resources for future technological success.
Alfred Korzybski - in his
great book Science and Sanity - provided models for clear
communication. Dr Clare Graves provided a great hierarchy of human development
in relationships. Dr Gregory Bateson created a very useful hierarchy of abstraction.
We integrated these models into our systemic coaching to help ordinary people get
extra-ordinary
results.
We help people gain clarity, dissolve
emotional blocks,
enjoy good feelings and build healthy relationships.
Online
Coaching & Mentorship
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright ©
Martyn Carruthers 2004-2012 All rights reserved.
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