How a love coach could take your relationship to the next level

Loving, meaningful connections with others are highly rewarding, but they’re often far from easy. Advice from a love coach or relationship counsellor can help.

Humans are social creatures and our need to love and feel loved is considered high among our basic needs.

But that doesn’t mean loving, fulfilling relationships come easily.

A good relationship can take time to build and it requires energy to maintain.

While Australians have very low rates of help-seeking for their relationship problems, relationship counsellor Dan Auerbach believes most couples could benefit from professional guidance.

“I think a lot of people feel that they shouldn’t have to have that level of help, like a lot of things with our mental health,” Dan tells House of Wellness radio.

“We hope that we should be able to manage it better.

“(But) we do know that a little bit of help to communicate in a marriage is not only needed, but often is the difference.”

Listen to Dan Auerbach’s interview here: 

How can professional relationship advice help?

Life and love coach Angela Barrett says she does a lot of work with the individual to ultimately help people achieve their goal of being in a healthy relationship.

“I start with getting them really clear about what it is they want, because one of the biggest problems people have is they don’t identify what they want in a relationship,” Angela tells House of Wellness TV.

“Some might want to be married, they might want to have children – that becomes the goalposts for that person.

“We then work intentionally about what it is that that person needs to work on within themselves, identify and let go of in order to move towards that goal.”

Angela says she helps people unpack how their previous experience may be influencing the way they’re presenting to their current partner or a potential new partner.

“I help people turn the microscope on themselves in quite a gentle way, but it’s really important and valuable to be able to know what your part was in a flawed dynamic so you don’t do that again.”

When to see a love coach or relationship counsellor

Dan says many couples wait too long before reaching out for help.

“Couples who come to counselling come in one of two states – either they’ve grown distant from each other, or they are having constant conflict,” he says.

“People often think constant conflict is a bad sign in a relationship, but we know that conflict is a stage often in which you’re still fighting for the relationship, so that in itself is not a sign that things are going to go badly.

“Whereas people who have developed a distance from (each) other… disconnected emotionally from each other, that’s often a bigger warning sign.”

That’s when one of the partners may already have tuned out of the relationship, Dan says.

“That often presents as one partner becoming very urgent and saying ‘can we go to counselling?’, and often it’s hard to bring the other person back,” he says.

Tips for a healthy, respectful relationship

Dan and Angela share their key advice for fostering a solid relationship:

• Know what you need from your partner, and articulate that in really simple and clear terms to that person.
• Understand your own foibles and weaker points.
• Find positive rituals for connection at the end of each day.
• Find ways to take an interest in and acknowledge each other.

More positive relationship advice:

• Why healthy couples fight
• Do happy couples seek relationship therapy?
• Could learning your ‘love language’ improve your relationship?
• Dump month: Can your relationship make it through December?

Written by Claire Burke.