Marriage coaching principles and practices

Media Representations of Marriage Coaching

Marriage Counseling

Media Representations of Marriage Counseling

The protagonists of the film are three married couples who are all friends and attend church together. Each couple experiences tension and discontent with their marriages. Rather than each wife and each husband taking personal responsibility for their actions that contributed to the unpleasant state of the marriage, each spouse wishes to force a change upon his/her spouse. While attending a church service one Sunday, the pastor introduces another couple that invites couples in trouble to a marriage retreat in the mountains. When they arrive in the mountains, what the couples think will happen and what they actually experience are vastly different. Through various activities, therapies, and accidents, the couples come to rediscover what they love about each other, ways to strengthen their marriage, as well as ways to improve themselves as individuals. The retreat weekend is an awakening, enlightenment, and epiphany for the protagonists as well as for the couple who runs the retreat. The couple who runs the retreat is additionally a couple that needs a refresher, unbeknownst to them. Overall, the film is concerned with communication, loving, introspection, and relationships.

First time viewers of Marriage Retreat should look for contrast. There is contrast among the couples themselves, what kinds of people they are, their personalities, the problems in their marriage, and their approach to the retreat. Viewers should also consider the contrast within the individuals and the couples when they first met, when their problems began, how the change over the course of the retreat, the status of their relationships at the close of the retreat, as well as the contrast in how each individual reflects upon and perceives themselves. Attention to contrast proves helpful to viewers who are in the same position as the couples as well someone who would counsel them.

One important scene or sequence of connected scenes is when the three husbands meet with the doctor individually to discuss their perspective on the problems in the marriage. The scene is very revealing about the personal history of each man and each man's perspective on his life, his marriage, and himself. The scene also demonstrates effective counseling techniques by Dr. Sullivan. Another scene/sequence is the parallel scene for the women. Sometimes couples need to take some space in order to come together. Another interesting aspects to these scenes is that the sessions with the counselor(s) do not last long. A stereotype of therapy is that sessions go on and on in order to be effective or productive.

Therapeutic Implications

Having noted the scenes that have value for use in coaching practice, what is the specific value that that is seen for use in the coaching process? For example, if you observe emotional outbursts, angry tirades, attempts at connection, empathic listening, etc. point out the scene and the way in which it could be used to enhance clients understanding of the skill/technique you are attempting to teach. Are you using this scene to make an emotional, cognitive, or spiritual connection? What is your rationale for choosing this scene?

There are a few coaching practices that prove valuable in the film. Separating the couples by gender in their sleeping quarters as well as in their therapy sessions is a smart move. Dr. Sullivan is an acute listener and asks direct, yet simple questions. Dr. Sullivan does not tell the couples what their problems are, he does not tell them how to fix their problems; he listens, reflects and asks questions that push the couples to reflect and come upon important epiphanies on their own, within themselves. Thus, one of primary techniques that stands out in the film is empathetic listening. Another compelling technique in the film is honest, direct dialogue, specifically between the Sullivans (the couple that runs the retreat). They have the most honest communication of all the couples and it helps the wives when they overhear and observe them in the woods by the fire, for example. It changes how they communicate in the future.

Personal/Professional Implications