Marriage Coaching vs Marriage Counseling

Marriage Coaching Book Review

Summary

Marriage Coaching: Heart, Hope, and Skills for a Great Relationship (2011) is a book by Jeff and Jill Williams that provides insight into how to be a good listener, a good asker, a good goal setter, how to be supportive, how to be accountable, how to manage crises, and how to coach a marriage. The central idea is that married couples can self-monitor their own marriage to make sure it is healthy and on the right track. Supporting this idea are the various chapters that explain what skills are required and how to obtain or use these skills.

The book begins by highlighting the need for hope and perseverance, as these are both Christian virtues that a Christian marriage needs in order to survive. Without either, no couple will stick it out and make it work. The book refers to Scripture and encourages spouses to not give up on one another or on their marriage. It then defines marriage coaching and explains how a couple should look at their marriage as though it were a client, i.e., as objectively and not subjectively. They should be able to view their client (marriage) disinterestedly, professionally, and clinically in a sense. This can help them from becoming too caught up in their own feelings.

Then the book goes into how effective listening should be conducted and what it means to ask questions of the other spouse. Both skills are shown as essential to a good marriage because they get one invested in the marriage and engaged with the other person. The key theme throughout all these chapters is that a good marriage is built around giving support for the other spouse. It is not a self-centered affair but rather one in which each spouse lives for the other spouse. But it is also about expressing gratitude and showing appreciation, being kind with words, thoughts and actions, and being present in the moments that spouses share. Marriage in this sense can be thought of as a journey and like with all journeys those who are aboard for the journey should try to be as well-behaved and considerate of others as possible. Self-centered passengers never make for good companions. The book’s final message is that when viewing the marriage as something apart from oneself one can more easily see what one is contributing to the marriage and what one could be doing to make it better.

Concrete Responses

In the endnotes section of the book, Williams and Williams (2011) state that “many couples have ‘joked’ that they need to take us home to coach them through their conversations at home” (p. 202). In my own experience, I have often thought just the opposite—that if only I could be on a secluded island with the person I love, away from all prying eyes, I would be able to show the love and affection the other person wants, requires and deserves. I often suspected that my failures in relationships stemmed from self-consciousness about how others might judge me.

But what this book taught me was that I was actually being the judgmental one, judging myself wrongly and fixing a judgment on others as well. I did not want prying eyes around because I did not want to see myself objectively. This quote from the book helped me to realize that a relationship is not about bending everyone and everything to my will, but rather learning to bend my will to fit in with the good standard or measure of what a healthy relationship should be. Thanks to this book, that standard or measure is made apparent, and it aligns with Christian concepts of marriage. I can see in it the wisdom of Scripture in which wives are urged to submit to their husbands and husbands are urged to love their wives (Eph. 5:21-24).

Reflection

One particular ah-ha moment came when the authors discussed the difference between coaching and counseling and how some couples may need supplementary counseling in order to benefit from coaching. Coaching is for couples who have “a high level of adaptive functioning”—meaning, they are able to function in the various spheres of their lives (Williams & Williams, 2011, p. 203). It is when this functioning ability is impaired that some counseling might be required. The idea here is that coaching depends upon the ability of the couple to have some skills already: a coach needs players who are ready and willing to play, who have the fundamentals, and who want to be there. They are eager and energetic to improve and play hard. But a couple who cannot even show up for practice, or who is failing in class and therefore cannot participate (to extend the analogy) is a couple that needs counseling too. The counseling can help get the couple straight on the things that have become crooked, and the coaching can put them in a position to win once their heads are back in the game. I really liked this idea coaching and counseling can go together, because I feel like for most people there is going to be a need for some kind of supplementary counseling since most people don’t start looking for help until they realize they are already in a bad way. The fact that the authors recognized this as a possibility and thought to discuss the matter in some detail helped me to see more broadly how marriage coaching could be relevant to more people.

Application

The revelation described above actually gave me a better sense of how marriage coaching could be applied in my own professional growth process. Instead of trying to see marriage coaching as a good fit for everyone, the book helped me to see that it might often be the case that people need supplementary counseling. But if they do, it does not mean they also won’t benefit from coaching. Coaching and counseling can go together to help couples overcome hurdles, prepare better for the contest, and improve their relationship by improving their own sense of self, mission, and ideal.