Our launch is right around the corner, and I am really excited! The book, Relationship Reset: Revolutionize Your Love for a Lifetime is in the middle of the publishing process, the video training is in production, and we have recently wrapped up another fabulous live event. There is an incredible team of people helping get the details finished and I cannot believe we are so close to this project finally being available to all couples looking to have a better relationship.
I thought it would make sense for this first post to tell the story behind why Relationship Reset was created in the first place. So, let’s start at the very beginning.
Back in 2013, I received an email from a woman named Sarah. Sarah was on a couples retreat planning committee at Lake Harriet United Methodist Church in South Minneapolis, Minnesota. She had found my website, liked what she read, and wanted to know if I would be willing to lead a retreat. I emailed her back and said, “Thank you for the compliment, but I don’t lead couples retreats. Best of luck to you!”
You see, at that time, I thought, “I don’t lead couples retreats. I run a private practice with a caseload of couples, teach couples therapy to graduate school students, and supervise students learning to practice couples therapy, but retreats?” Why I couldn’t connect the dots now makes me laugh. The next year, I received the same email from Sarah. Once again, she was planning their annual couples retreat and was wondering if I would lead it. This time, it all made sense to me—maybe if I lead a retreat, I can get to couples before they would need to see a couples therapist.
You see, I had come to understand that getting to couples before they got to me was critical. After spending over a decade specializing in couples therapy, I was really disturbed by a statistic. This statistic reported it takes unhappy couples up to six years after problems start to seek help. And what I knew was that six years was too late. These couples came into therapy worn out and struggling, often unable to bring their relationship back to a better place. What had started their problems was “normal” stuff that every relationship faces at one point or another, but left unaddressed or unresolved, it had avalanched into bigger struggles that were taking the relationship down with it. I often found myself thinking, “If people only knew sooner what a couples therapist knows, then they could become experts on their relationships. Maybe they could reset things before it got too late.” Because, truth be told, most couples were never going to come into my office.
Why? Well–“You have to be crazy to go to therapy.”
Have you heard that before? It’s true; there is a BIG stigma that a person must have some significant problems if he or she sees a therapist. This stigma is one of the main obstacles to couples getting support early on when their problems are still manageable. Maybe you have also heard people say this, “Couples only go to therapy to break up.” Believe it or not, this idea has some validity, because, by the time most couples get to therapy (as I’ve shared above), they are so beat up in their relationship that often the only solution that seems reasonable is to be done.
Then, on top of these common opinions, therapy also requires two things people find scarce: time and money. It is increasingly difficult to afford to see a couple’s therapist, and so when people do come, it is in crisis. I liken this experience to the way we deal with our physical health. If we have a cold, we still go about our daily business and press through. But if we have cancer, our world stands still, and we spare no expense to find health. When couples come to therapy in crisis, they have realized there is cancer in the relationship they have to address. It is only when the relationship is facing a terminal threat that couples clear their calendars and open their wallets. But the reality is, this is the hardest point to reset your relationship.
Clearly, there seemed to be a gap in the help couples could access for their relationship problems before therapy and I wanted couples to get critical, relationship changing information years earlier. So, I designed Relationship Reset to give couples everything I wish my clients had known before they came to see me. The type of information that can normalize what every couple goes through while providing simple tools to make relationships better before crisis strikes.
If you have found this post, stay connected here, because I believe Relationship Reset is meant for you. Let me know if you want information on the launch by pre-ordering the book and training or, if you are ready today – sign up to be a Beta Couple!
Looking forward to all that lies ahead!
Until we meet again—Love each other well
