Musing on Marriage(tm) Feel the Pain

I attended a coaching intensive this summer led by Dave Buck, one of
the leaders in the coaching industry. He talked about the difference
between a good coach, a proficient coach and a masterful coach. His
assertion was that a good coach listens to the client, looks for
problems or issues that are familiar and then helps the client
`fix' those things. A proficient coach can looks for problems and
issues throughout the conversation with the client and helps to work
through those things – even if it is something new and unfamiliar
to the coach. A masterful coach CREATES problems.

A masterful coach understands that real personal growth comes from
rocking the boat which can be a less than pleasant experience –
at least at the outset.

And that is where the idea of feeling the pain comes in. For those
of us who work in the marriage healing industry our long term goal
is to craft a marriage that is happy and fulfilling to both husband
and wife. So it seems counter-productive to go to a place of more
pain. And yet, I find that is exactly what happens. My experience
has been that the changes couples must make in order to heal their
marriages make it virtually unavoidable that things will look and
feel a whole lot worse before they begin to be better.

When marriages are hurting often the people involved hide that hurt
behind anger and disrespect. Focusing energy on how terrible the
other person is allows us not to feel the very real and very deep
pain that we carry inside. When we stop those angry and
disrespectful behaviors we are often overwhelmed with the intensity
of the hurt. Our first instinct is to find some way to not feel it.
Bury ourselves in our work, our kids, our homes or even in the
recovery and healing of our marriages. None of those are
intrinsically poor choices, but I believe that real internal shifts
take place in the fecundity of grief.

In grieving the past, and the loss of the dream, we have the chance
to really examine our own role in that loss and to dig deep for the
courage to change ourselves. Part of the pain that we must
experience and the grieving that needs to be done is for the loss of
our own innocence. When we can grieve our own culpability we can
begin to take the steps towards shifting our attitudes and behaviors.

Feeling the pain is not the same as wallowing. It's not about
choosing to be miserable. In fact it is the antithesis of that.
Feeling the pain is about facing head on the death of the marriage
you thought you had or were going to have. And from that pain
finding the strength to do what you need to do to create a better
vision for the future.

As a coach it is tempting to move couples towards light and easy. It
is painful for me to see the pain of others. Growing into being a
masterful coach means sitting peacefully with those in pain and
guiding them gently through the process of loss towards the light at
the end of the tunnel.

If you are hurting today, my heart is with you. I hope that you see
that you have the wisdom and the courage to go through the pain and
reach the other side where healing can begin for real.

All the best,
Penny