Coaching Couples with ORSC

As couples change jobs, have children, and encounter illness or other life stresses, the relationship becomes more challenging to navigate. Maddie notes that most of us learn our relationship skills from watching our parents. While these role models did the best they could, they may not have had the understanding or skills to function well together as a couple.

The good news is that people in intimate relationships tend to be highly invested. They care deeply and want to make the relationship work.

“There’s often longing, tenderness, heart, intention – wanting something for the relationship that isn’t happening,” Maddie says. “We blame our partner, or we complain about our partner. That’s what we’re taught, and not just at home. Culture and the news are all about blaming each other.”

“Coaching helps people to reel that back in and connect with what they really want.” 

Communication issues and power struggles

Many clients come to Maddie with similar issues.

“‘We have communication problems.’ That’s usually what they call it,” Maddie says. “They have different styles, different approaches, a different sense of timing.”

The same qualities that first draw us to a partner often begin to irritate us later on. Each partner wants to have things their own way, and that conflict turns into a power struggle.

“Most couples are triggering each other,“ Maddie says. “What happens is that one person’s trigger will interact with the other person’s trigger, and suddenly the grownups have left the building.”

Learning to listen

When couples are fighting, they’re not listening to each other. Instead, they dig into their own position and try to prove themselves right.

“It’s not done in a kind or inviting way, but often in a demanding way,” Maddie says. “Like – “You should make me happy. You should do this. You should do that.” There’s a fair bit of “shoulding’ that goes on!”

Working with couples isn’t about avoiding conflict altogether. Instead, couples learn how to be more conscious and skillful in dealing with conflict when it does appear.

The relationship is the client

One major feature in systems coaching is that the coach works with the relationship itself, rather than deciding who is right or wrong.

“We’re not holding that one person has a problem, and the other person doesn’t. It’s more like there’s something that wants to change or emerge in the relationship,” Maddie says. “As the coach, we see both people equally. We’re looking at the relationship between the two of them.”

Instead of assigning blame, systems coaching invites both partners to take responsibility for what happens between them. Maddie likens it to becoming the architects or designers of the relationship.

Coaching is different than therapy

While therapy looks more at the past, coaching is more focused on what is happening in the moment and going forward. The assumption is that the relationship has the ability to heal itself. Rather than providing direction, couples coaching holds up a mirror so that the partners can see what they are like in relationship and make their own adjustments.

Often, it’s about developing an awareness of what is happening between you. Many ORSC tools and skills focus on shifting the way that people look at a situation, so that they begin to see alternate points of view.

“I’ve learned from the ORSC model to look at the dynamic between people – whether it’s two people or a team,” Maddie says.”With just two people expressing something that’s happening between them, we’re putting language to something that’s a felt experience. We are training ourselves, as coaches, to look at that infinity loop. It takes time to build that muscle.”

For over 20 years, Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC™) has helped every type of relationship thrive by taking a systems-inspired approach. Whether you’re working with partners, families, team members or even global organizations, this skillset adjusts to support relationship in any context.