Every page on the internet about couple coaching tells you what coaching is. Structured, forward looking, goal oriented, tools and homework. All true and all useless, because it describes a category rather than an hour. What you want to know before you spend money is what happens between the moment you sit down and the moment you walk back out to the car.
So this is that page. I am Matthew Hoelscher. I coach couples from an office at 12755 SW 116th Terrace in Kendall and by video anywhere in Florida and across all 50 states and DC. Below is how the work actually runs. If you want to know first whether you are even the kind of couple I take, that is laid out in who I actually work with. If you want 10 concrete things to try tonight before you book anything, those are in 10 effective pieces of guidance for couples in Miami.
It starts with 25 free minutes
Before anybody pays me anything, we talk for 25 minutes. That call is for people who have never worked with me, and it exists for one reason: to find out whether I am the right person for what is happening in your house. Sometimes I am not, and I would rather say that in 25 minutes than take your money for a session that was never going to fit.
You do not both need to be on it. A good share of those calls happen from a parked car because it is the only place nobody can hear. That is normal and I have never once thought less of somebody for it.
The free 25 minutes
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You tell me what is happening, in whatever order it comes out
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I ask how long it has been true and what changed right before it started
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I tell you plainly whether this is coaching work or belongs with a licensed professional
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If it is coaching work, I tell you what the first session would go after
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You decide afterward, not on the call. Nobody books under pressure in my practice
The room, and the first hour in it
The room is a room. Two chairs, close enough that you have to look at each other, and me. There is no clipboard, no intake battery, no waiting area with pamphlets about grief. That is deliberate, because the environment tells a couple in the first 30 seconds what kind of hour this is going to be, and I want it to say conversation rather than examination.
The first session is not history taking. I am not going to walk you through your childhoods for 3 weeks before we touch anything live. I want the thing that is actually happening, this month, in your kitchen. Most couples give me the presenting version for about 15 minutes and then somebody says the real one, usually by accident, usually in a sentence that starts with the words honestly I.
I interrupt. I want you to know that going in, because it surprises people who were expecting the nodding professional from television. When one of you starts building a case, I will stop you, because the case is the problem. Nobody in a marriage has ever been argued into feeling closer.
The frameworks I actually use
I use 3 things constantly and I will name them so you know what is happening when it happens.
What I am running under the hood
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The 8 Stages
Marriages fail in a recognizable order. Knowing which stage you are standing in tells us what the first move is, and stops us doing stage 5 work on a stage 1 problem, which is how months get wasted.
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EC3
Connect, Correct, Create. Connect first, because nothing lands between two people who are braced. Correct the pattern that is actually running. Then create the thing you want instead, on purpose, rather than hoping it grows back.
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The Marriage Trap
The set of assumptions you both signed without reading, mostly inherited from the houses you grew up in. Almost every couple I see is fighting about clauses neither of them agreed to out loud.
The fourth thing is the parent marriage, which is less a framework than a description of the specific marriage most of my clients are in: two competent adults running a household with real efficiency and almost no contact with each other.
What I ask of you between sessions
This is where coaching separates from what most people picture. The hour is not where the change happens. The hour is where we work out what to try. The change happens on a Thursday when you do the thing we agreed on and it is uncomfortable and you do it anyway.
So yes, there is homework, and no, it is not worksheets. It is usually one specific conversation with one specific person about one specific thing, or a behavior you are going to stop doing for a week to see what fills the gap. I keep it small on purpose. A couple with 2 children under 5 does not have bandwidth for a program. They have bandwidth for one thing, and one thing done is worth 6 things intended.
How long couples stay
Not forever. I am not building a dependency, I am handing you a way of operating and then getting out of your kitchen.
Couples who are simply disconnected often get most of what they came for in a handful of sessions, because the goodwill is still in the account and neither of them is bracing for impact. Couples in genuine crisis usually need a concentrated run and then a longer tail of check ins as things settle. Couples who came in with nothing wrong, wanting to get deliberate, frequently do more in 3 sessions than a couple in crisis does in 9 months, for the simple reason that nobody is defending anything.
That is why the 3 session package at $700 exists. It is not a discount and I do not run discounts. It is a container, and containers matter, because the single most common way marriage work fails is that a couple books one session, feels something move, and never books the second one.
One session, or a run of 3?
Book one and see
Completely reasonable, and how a lot of people start. You get a straight read on what is happening and one thing to try. The risk is real life: the week gets loud, the momentum goes, and the second session gets booked in November.
Good for testing fit. Weak for building anything.
Take the 3 session package
$700, and it commits both of you to seeing the first change through to the point where you can tell whether it worked. Three sessions is roughly the minimum span in which a pattern can be named, interrupted and replaced.
This is what I recommend to most couples who are serious.
Kendall, or a screen anywhere
The main office is in Kendall at 12755 SW 116th Terrace, Miami, FL 33186. If you are coming from Pinecrest, Doral, Coral Gables or Brickell you already know what the Palmetto is going to do to you, so build in the buffer you build in for everything else.
Everything else is video, and I want to be blunt about that because people ask it apologetically. Video is not the discount version. For parents of small children it is frequently the only format that survives contact with real life: no sitter, no drive, no 90 minutes lost either side of the hour. I work by video throughout Florida and in all 50 states and DC, and the results hold up.
Insight without execution is entertainment, and it is expensive entertainment at my rates.
Matthew W. Hoelscher, PCC
Where I am the wrong call
I will say this plainly because it saves everybody money. If your marriage involves physical, sexual or emotional abuse, an active addiction, or an untreated mental health condition, that belongs with a licensed professional and I will tell you so on the first call. I am a coach. I do not diagnose and I do not treat. If you want to understand the difference honestly rather than commercially, I wrote it out in marriage coaching compared with the clinical route.
Betrayal, for the record, is coaching work in my practice and I handle it constantly. It is a relational injury, not automatically a clinical one, and what it needs is speed, structure and somebody in the room who will not let the first 3 conversations turn into the fight that ends the marriage.
I am also the wrong call if you want me to fix your spouse while you observe, or if what you are protecting is the appearance of the marriage rather than the marriage.
Talk it through
If that sounds like the kind of hour you could use, book the free 25 minute call or call 305.986.2905. First timers only, no cost, and the only thing I am trying to establish is whether I am the right person for what is actually going on in your house.
Questions couples ask
What is the difference between couple coaching and the clinical route?
A licensed clinician can diagnose and treat conditions. I cannot and I do not. I work in the present, on the live pattern, with something to execute between sessions and a bias toward the smallest change that would actually matter this week. If a diagnosis or treatment is what your situation calls for, I will tell you on the first call and point you toward a licensed professional.
How many sessions will we need?
It depends on which couple you are. Disconnected couples with goodwill still in the account often get most of what they came for in a handful. Couples in crisis usually need a concentrated run and then a tail of check ins. The 3 session package at $700 exists because the most common failure is booking one session, feeling something shift, and never booking the second.
Do we have to come to the Kendall office?
No. I work by video throughout Florida and in all 50 states and DC, and for parents of small children that is frequently the only format that actually happens week after week. If you are local and can get to Kendall for the first session I will usually suggest it, but it is a suggestion and not a requirement.
Is there homework?
Yes, and it is not worksheets. It is usually one specific conversation with one specific person, or one behavior you are going to stop for a week to see what fills the gap. I keep it deliberately small, because one thing done is worth 6 things intended and nobody with young children has bandwidth for a program.
Can I come without my partner?
Yes. Plenty of people start alone and it works, because we look at your half of the pattern, which is the only half you control. What I will not do is coach you into tactics for managing your partner. That is not coaching, and it always surfaces later as a problem of its own.