Marriage counseling often assumes there’s something wrong with you or him or the two of you together. The counselor may point back to unresolved childhood issues or relationships with your opposite-sex parent to diagnose a problem. The promise is that if these deep-seated issues are healed, the marriage will improve. There’s no telling how long that will take. It could be a while.
Intimacy skills assume there’s nothing wrong with either of you, but that you want to find ways to nurture a long-term, intimate relationship. If you start using the skills today, you’ll see results immediately.
I am not saying that no one should ever get help with her marriage from an expert. Just having someone listen and acknowledge your painful situation can be a huge relief. But instead of assuming that you’re well and just looking to improve your skills in the area of relationships, marriage counseling often assumes there is something wrong with one or both of you. A counselor may be trained to ask if you come from a dysfunctional family, or to look for an undiagnosed mental health condition, or to address your inner child. Those kinds of conversations may feel productive, and they can certainly be interesting. However, based on my experience and the experiences of thousands of my clients, those conversations don’t get you to happily-ever-after as effectively as learning the skills that contribute to connection in intimate relationships. Rather than therapy, a more modern-day approach is to get relationship coaching from someone who has had the transformation herself. You may think I’m just using slightly different terminology, but counseling and coaching are definitely not the same.
Marriage Counseling |
Relationship Coaching |
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Assumes there is something wrong with you that needs to be fixed or medicated |
Assumes you want to become proficient in nurturing intimacy |
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Focuses on the problem |
Focuses on the solution |
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Provided by someone who has achieved academic (theoretical) mastery |
Provided by someone who has had a personal transformation and enjoys the benefits of having the desired skills |
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Explores past hurts |
Provides specific actions for the present and future |
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For men, women, and couples |
For women only |
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Based on models developed in the nineteenth century |
Based on the latest advancements from this millennium |
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Promotes blaming the other person or parents |
Promotes personal accountability |
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Invites you to say hurtful things in front of your husband and a stranger |
Promotes emotional safety and respect |
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Talk-oriented |
Action-oriented |
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No guarantees |
Money-back guarantee |
Until very recently, there hasn’t been anywhere to go when you needed relationship help except marriage counseling. It’s not like there’s an option to take “Relationships 101” at school. So where do you go to learn the skills that contribute to an intimate, passionate, peaceful relationship?
That’s what this book and the companion site (skillsforlove.com) is all about: a new perspective and a new way of approaching your relationship.
I am not talking about learning how to suck it up and stay in an unhappy marriage year after year. As women, we want and deserve to be cherished, desired, protected, and adored for life. The point of learning the Six Intimacy Skills is to make your relationship so sweet and satisfying that it wouldn’t even occur to you to go to marriage counseling—much less get divorced.
The reason I can confidently say that marriage counseling is downright dangerous is because once you know the Six Intimacy Skills, you’ll see that the prevailing wisdom of marriage counseling is the opposite of what actually fosters intimacy, trust, and connection.
To be fair, it’s not just the counselors who are confused. The wrongheaded messages are everywhere. This makes me furious and sad because I still remember what it was like when I was confused, hurting, and lonely in my marriage. I still remember putting bad advice into action only to find myself even more miserable and hopeless. I remember dismissing or not recognizing good advice because it sounded so contrary to the conventional wisdom I heard over and over again.
Now I go out of my way to jab at popular relationship advice for the purpose of pointing out that:
• Only people with good marriages have valuable advice on how to have a good marriage. A diploma is no guarantee that someone has a good relationship.
• Divorce is not inevitable or random. Most divorces are unnecessary and result from lack of training.
• A warm, tender, passionate relationship isn’t just a matter of luck—it’s a matter of learning the skills that contribute to intimacy.
• Women have much more influence over the culture and happiness of a relationship than men do.
• No matter how you spin it, divorce is not just “part of life” but a failure and a tragedy for everyone concerned. A few are necessary, but most are not.
• Any woman with a good guy can learn and practice these skills to have the intimate, passionate, peaceful relationship she deserves.
Marriage and relationships are up to women—when and if they happen and whether they’re fun and connected or stressful and distant. It’s all up to us. It’s also within our power to make them the gratifying unions we crave.
Women think about, dream about, and agonize about marriage from an early age. We play bride, we play house, and as we grow up, we talk a lot about boys and our relationships with them.
When we’re old enough to date or marry, we have the power position because we are the ones who audition suitors for the part of our boyfriend. As women, we’re all magnets for men, and it’s the men who must take the risk of pursuing us if they want the opportunity to impress us. Then we get to accept or reject them as we see fit, the same way the director of a Broadway show would hire or reject dancers who want a part.
Women have a lot of power right from the beginning, and it continues for the duration of the relationship.
We’re also more willing to walk away from our marriages. Surprisingly, wives initiate two-thirds of all divorces, and among college-educated women, as high as 90 percent of them according to a study reported in the American Law and Economics Review. In any negotiation, the person who’s willing to walk away always has more power. When you’re buying a car, if you walk off the lot during the negotiation, there’s not much the car salesman can do to close the deal. The statistics suggest that women are constantly evaluating their husbands to determine if they are worthy, even after years of marriage.
Here’s a test to see if you have more power in your relationship. Ask yourself this question: Who loves who more? Do you love him more? Or does he love you more?
Don’t overanalyze the question—just trust your gut.
If you’re like most women, the answer is that he loves you more than you love him.
If you’re separated or there’s been an affair or some other crisis in your marriage, this dynamic might be out of whack at the moment. But that doesn’t have to be permanent. You can regain your feminine power, which is formidable.
One of the reasons women are so powerful in intimate relationships is because we are the sexier sex. We’re the ones with the fancy tail feathers. That’s a big part of the reason men pursue us in the beginning: to have sex. Once we’re in a sexual relationship with a man, we are still the gatekeepers of sex, because in general, men need sex more than women do.
But it’s not just sex that gives us power. Men are driven to please women, to make them happy. Men feel successful as partners when their wives or girlfriends are happy and smiling. They not only want to do chivalrous things for us in order to make us smile, they also want the feeling of fulfillment they get from succeeding at bringing us joy.
It’s also up to us if we will get married. When I meet a couple who’s been together for years without ever saying “I do,” I know that it’s because she doesn’t want to get married. She’s content with just being boyfriend and girlfriend, because if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be happy in the relationship, and then he wouldn’t be very happy either, and something would have to give.
Most men are not commitment-phobic, but they seem that way to women who don’t know how to use their power. Take the following couple, for example.
Paula was incredibly happy with her boyfriend of two years, but as they were thinking of moving in together, she realized that she couldn’t kick her strong desire to be a wife, even though she and her boyfriend had each had two failed marriages already. She knew the topic would be a sore one, because she’d already brought the issue up: Before his second divorce was final, she had asked him if he would ever get married again. His answer was a swift and short no.
Still, Paula’s desire was not going away, so two years later, she simply presented the facts to her boyfriend: “I really want to be a wife,” she said. “I’m the marrying kind, and I just know I would be so happy to be married.”
Her boyfriend shocked and surprised her when he said, “I’ve been thinking about that lately. I don’t have a good reason not to marry you. I just need some time to adjust to the idea.” They were married a few months later.
By taking a different approach, Paula got a different response. The first time she brought up the topic, she was premature, asking what he was planning while he was still married to someone else. In the second scenario, she simply expressed her desire at the right time without trying to manipulate or control the outcome.
Naturally, her boyfriend wanted her to be happy, and when he didn’t feel controlled or pressured, that desire to make her happy took precedence over his previous reservations.
Paula held the key in her relationship. For two years she thought her boyfriend was a commitment-phobe. When she used her gift—the feminine gift of expressing pure desire without control or manipulation—she was happy to find that she was wrong.
As women, we always have this power, right from the start and right up to the end.
If you don’t see evidence of your man being eager to please you, that doesn’t mean he’s an exception. It may mean that he feels like he can’t please you, or didn’t get the message about how he could please you, or has been busy defending himself against your inadvertent control or complaints, which he hears as criticism instead of instructions about how to please you.
This was the case with Ellen, who thought her husband was lazy and insensitive. One of the things that drove her nuts was that when she came home with the groceries, he didn’t offer to help bring them in. She would sigh in exasperation and mutter about carrying everything herself, but her husband stayed planted on the couch and barely responded to her.
After learning the Six Intimacy Skills, Ellen took a different approach. When her husband happened to carry a bag in, she mentioned how much she loved that.
“You do?” he said, perking up. She assured him that it made her very happy. The next time she came home with groceries, he ran out to the garage and told her to go in and relax while he carried them all in.
Now Ellen and her husband have a new routine: She calls him when she’s leaving the store, and he’s there waiting for her in the garage when she comes home so he can bring in all the groceries while she goes inside to relax. He’s proud to make his wife happy, and she feels well taken care of. Everybody wins.
That’s just one example of the thousands I’ve heard from my clients about the lengths men will go to for the delight of their wives.
This was quite a culture shift for Ellen’s relationship, which had previously been filled with bickering and conflict. Now she feels cherished and taken care of, in this area and many others. Ellen wrote me to say, “I believe in ghosts, astrology, and the afterlife, but I never believed I would feel so happy to be married to my husband!”
Even if it’s not evident to you now that your man would be happy to do thoughtful things for you, I’m willing to bet that he is, and that you’ve got the power to create the same kind of relationship Ellen enjoys—once you learn how.
I’ll explain what the feminine gifts are and how to benefit from them in the next chapter.
Recently we got a call from a woman named Alison who wanted to set an appointment for herself and her husband. When she heard we only coach women—not couples or men—she asked if we had anyone who does see couples. One of my senior coaches asked why she preferred being coached as a couple, and Alison answered, “Because the problem in our relationship is my husband. He’s the one who needs to change.”
That’s what I once thought too. And nearly every woman whose marriage is in trouble feels the same way.
Deanna was sure that her husband was the one making things so tense and distant between them. They were separated under the same roof, barely speaking to each other for eight years despite raising five kids together. She was sure there was nothing she could do to end the cold war. When I asked her if she wanted to regain the connection in her marriage, she shrugged reluctantly. “I don’t see how that’s going to happen because it’s not up to me,” she said. When I asked her again if it was what she wanted, she hesitated and fidgeted, but finally agreed that yes, she did want to have a husband again and not just a silent, brooding roommate who slept in the guest room.
“But what can I do about it?” she asked.
“Have you thought about letting your husband know that you miss him?” I asked.
“I couldn’t do that,” she said unequivocally.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“It’s just too awkward,” she told me. “You have no idea what my husband is like!”
“You’re right, I don’t,” I agreed. “But I do know this: His wife misses him on some level, and that might be helpful information for him to have if you’re ever going to have intimacy, passion, and ease again. And it sounds like you want that.”
Deanna reluctantly agreed that she did want that, but she still didn’t want to deliver the three-word message: “I miss you.”
When I probed further, she admitted, “It feels scary, and I’m a big chicken.”
I could understand why she was scared. The message I suggested was a vulnerable one and left her open to the possibility of further rejection.
“Well, if you’re okay with the way things are now—” I started to say, but she interrupted me.
“Can I write him a note?” she asked.
“It’s a start,” I agreed.
It took her a few days to deliver that note, which turned out to be the beginning of a slow dance of reconciliation between Deanna and her husband.
There was no obvious response when he got the note, but when he saw her he smiled at her for the first time in a long time. Then there were more notes, then they spoke, and a few months later she emailed to tell me they were fully reunited.
Thank you for getting me over the hump, challenging me to become vulnerable (even though I thought I already WAS being vulnerable—WRONG!). And thanks for encouraging me to not ever give up…and assuring me of the possibility of regaining our lost love affair. David and I are still enjoying the newness of wanting to make the other feel loved (me), respected (him), and cherished (both!). I can’t thank you enough. I’m looking forward to the mistletoe this year!
It was only once Deanna decided to use her feminine gifts to heal her marriage that a dead relationship came back to life. That’s because she had been holding the power to reconcile all along. Her husband never stopped wanting to make her happy, but he didn’t see his opening, and he didn’t feel successful as a husband until she gave him that first tender message.
Relationships thrive or struggle, rise or fall, are easy or hard based on the wife and her skill level. You may have been taught, as I was, that marriage is 50/50, or even 100/100. But it wasn’t until I became aware of my enormous power as a wife and how to use that power—the way I did when we were dating—that I started to enjoy the kind of playful, connected, sweet romance I’d had then and that I’d always craved.
Ready to learn the skills you need to make that happen in your marriage? Let’s dig in.