Relationship Coaches for the Family

Relationship coaches can also work with families.  Every human being is in a relationship; starting from within the home with your parents and friends, then moving into your neighborhood or community with your neighbors, friends, and acquaintances, over into work or college where you are part of a community with individual yet common interests and goals that bring you together, then into the romantic relationship that you share with that special someone, and eventually full-circle when you become a parent yourself.
 

Negotiating all these relationships, with the myriad egos, temperaments, and personalities involved, can be tricky business. This is where relationship coaches can be useful in many ways. When one is in a personal relationship of importance, issues are often clouded by emotions, and often we end up relating to each other by saying or doing the wrong things, things that work against a relationship instead of for its benefit.

Consider this father and son: the father is a well-educated, scholarly type, the son ? well, the son eats, sleeps, and breathes sports. Although each may care for the other deeply, the potential for conflict here is ripe, as the personalities of the individuals involved lie at opposite ends of the spectrum. The father, believing he has his son's best interests at heart, pulls him in a direction away from what the son treasures, from sports into literature. The son in turn, pulls away from his father's nudges, moving towards where he feels his heart truly lies, and both end up frustrated and drift apart.

Since the father sincerely cares about his son, they opt to start seeing a competent relationship coach for counsel. Over several months, perhaps even a year, the coach works personally with the father and son, both individually and as a team, coaching them to integrate their different personalities when dealing with each other, and advising them on ironing out their differences without either one rejecting or hurting the other's sense of self. Eventually, though both individuals retain their basic personalities, each learns how to appreciate the other without prejudice, and a relationship that would have fallen apart is renewed and taken to greater heights. Though their values may be worlds apart, the relationship they share will be rock-solid.

Though the above scenario is somewhat overly-simplified, it is a classic example of how competent and caring relationship coaches can objectively assist in building bridges where there were none before.

   ~ By Dean Martins -- Dean Martins, a freelance writer, is based in Kenya, and can be reached at

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Four-Part Article:  "How to Communicate More Like a Long-Necked Giraffe (and Less Like a Jackal)

  1 - Communication for Healthy Relationships

  2 - Relationship Tips

  3 - Relationship Problems

  4 - Relationship Help