What is the difference between Marriage Coaching, Relationship Counseling and Couples Therapy?

How many sessions will it take?

Most clients learn the skills and build new positive relationship habits in just three sessions over one month. You set your time frame. I will match your pace and effort.

Many customers request additional life coaching on parenting, career, leadership, speaking, confidence, and advanced sexual techniques.

Where are you located?

I see clients at my private home office and by phone.

305.986.2905

What kind of issues do you specialize in helping couples solve?

Stage 1: Stupid Fights

Stage 2: Infidelity and Betrayal

Stage 3: Divorce Discernment

Do You Accept Insurance Coverage for “Marriage Counseling?”

No, for two critical and confusing reasons.

1. Be aware that most insurance plans do not consider “Marriage Counseling” Diagnostic code V61.1, as “medically necessary.”

You still pay the private out of pocket rate.

If you call and ask for “couples counseling” the insurance customer service agent will assume you mean procedural code “90847” which means a partner may attend a covered session for treatment of anxiety or depression.

Many psychologists will offer “marriage counseling” and enter a diagnosis of depression or anxiety which is medically necessary but ends up as a permanent record on your file.

2. Employers can legally obtain a mental health diagnosis.

If you have security clearance for military or government, that can affect you. Other professions can access mental health diagnosis before making a hiring decision; police, fire, and healthcare.

Working with a coach offers additional confidentiality and security of not filing any paperwork for diagnosis or insurance reimbursement.

What is the difference between a psychologist and a coach?

Couples Therapy comes in many different types, but often focuses on the past, stories about the past and how that has created the future you live in now. Therapists often believe that by understanding your past, you will become happier in the present. Coaches believe the past no longer exists. We will stay focused on the present moment with regards to what you want to experience in the future.

Marriage coaching is a client-focused service where a primarily functional individual or couple is guided to create their desired relationship. Once defined, setting smaller goals allows the coach to hold you accountable to moving forward one step at a time, together. The focus is primarily on moving forward with the goal of enabling ongoing personal and relationship growth.

Clients who have chosen other therapists have told me that it felt like a referee judging who was right or wrong in any given previous situation. Coaches believe the past no longer exists. All there is is the present moment and the goal of where you want to be in the future. The coaching session revolves around small goals and actions to create that future. They left feeling frustrated and upset without a plan to move forward.

What is Marriage Coaching?

Marriage coaching is a client-focused service where a primarily functional individual or couple is guided to create their desired relationship with practical support and information. Couples Therapy comes in many different forms focusing either on behaviors or past emotional trauma. The Coach enables the client(s) to become clear about their needs, hopes, and desires, and to develop understandings and strategies to achieve these in a mutually supportive way. While addressing and releasing past hurts happens, the focus is primarily on moving forward, with the aim of enabling ongoing personal and relationship growth.

What is Parent Marriage?

Even one thinks they know what marriage is, but if you ask any individual to define “marriage” you will get a variety of answers, especially from couples married to each other. Getting clear on why you are married and what the intention is, is the secret to creating a happy marriage. Couples Therapy has an underlying assumption that marriage is perfectly reasonable and there is something wrong with you if you are having problems in your relationship.

If both partners are deeply in love with their kids, creating a parent marriage where being a great parent becomes the cornerstone of the union. Defining a clear purpose is the quickest way to turn around a relationship near the brink of divorce.

Other types of marriages include Starter, Companionship, Long Distance, Open, and Covenant (traditional religious).

What is Sex Coaching?

Sex Coaching is a pathway for sexual growth. Sex Coaching is a client-focused approach that works with sexually functional individuals and couples to enable them to deepen and expand their experience of sex, love, and intimacy. Depending on the needs of the client, it may include ancient and esoteric teachings, sex education, and instruction.

The Coach helps the client to discover and enhance their eroticism to create a love life that is one of ongoing growth and fulfillment. Couples Therapy may or may not incorporate sex into the healing process. It heavily depends on the therapist’s comfort level discussing sex.

3 Levels of Sexual Encounters

4-7 minutes of penetration, instinctual, short, unsatisfying, uneducated, and often using pornography as the template for an optimal experience. Women fulfill “wifely duty”. Orgasm often faked to make her man feel better.

7-25 minutes of penetration, ample foreplay, women turned on and ready, focused on pleasing the women first and then the man. The couple is sexually happy, may feel routine or slightly annoying due to repetition. You know how to please each other. “She gets hers, and he gets his.”

Man learns to delay orgasm (gains control) and eventually becomes multi-orgasmic. Deep awareness around the sensation and sexual turn-on of the women. Women secure in her body, her sexuality, no longer holds back or tries to control. Both partners surrender to pleasure for extended periods of time (1-2 hours) and sex becomes goalless as both partners can no longer “keep score.” Sharing sexual desires and making space to play with fantasy, kink, or expanded sexual practices build intimacy and add novelty to longer term romantic partnerships.

What are Sacred Sexual Teachings?

All the major world religions have a “mystery school” that teach esoteric sexual practices. Tantra is a spiritual and energetic approach to sex and life that comes from ancient India. Along with the Taoists of China, Jewish Kabbalist, and Buddhist, these approaches to sex, love, and intimacy are broader and deeper than conventional Western understandings. Through practices that include breathing, mindfulness, energy and sensual touch, you will learn to connect with your partner in a way that is real, deep, poetic and intensely beautiful.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Once both partners maintain their emotional connection, we can coach to expand your Emotional Intelligence. EQi is a new concept to couples therapy with Sue Johnson as its principal advocate. Matthew is certified to administer the EQi 2.0 from MHS Partners.

Each spouse will review the results individually; then we host a group session to share between spouses to see how it deepens understanding between each other. We will coach around any areas that you lack or show way too much of:

• Confidence
• Self-Actualization
• Emotional Self-awareness
• Emotional expression
• Assertiveness
• Independence
• Interpersonal relationships
• Empathy
• Social Responsibility
• Problem Solving
• Reality Testing
• Impulse Control
• Flexibility
• Stress Tolerance
• Optimism