Sigma Coaching vs. Marriage Counseling

Since writing The Sigma Male: What Women Really Want, I am routinely asked to explain the difference between Sigma Coaching and marriage counseling.

Having experienced my fair share of marriage counseling first hand, I can safely say that the following short video is a great example of a “therapeutic” approach. In the clip, Susan Johnson, the developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, outlines the steps she takes to therapeutically engage a couple complaining about a lack of sex. 

First, I agree with Johnson’s assertion:

If we’re angry and scared, sexuality goes on the back burner. Anxiety and rage do not fit with relaxed, coordinated erotic fun and sexuality.

However, the beliefs and practices of Sigma Coaching and therapy begin to diverge with Johnson’s next statement:

Therapy focuses on the negative patterns that cut people off emotionally from each other.

While I agree that negative patterns definitely affect how people respond to each other, Sigma Coaching does not focus on the emotional effect of those patterns.

As Johnson continues to describe the therapeutic process, Sigma Coaching and therapy part ways even faster. By Johnson’s definition, therapy explores the pathology behind a couple’s behavior by asking questions like:

• How do you emotionally connect?
• How do you lose each other?
• What patterns do you have in your relationship?

Johnson goes on to describe a couple she currently works with in counseling. The wife admits she pushes her husband too hard but does so because she feels lonely. Her husband says he responds by attacking her and then feels awful. The husband says he feels “hopeless and helpless.”

Therapy attempts to dial in on those feelings in order to resolve the issue. Johnson explains:

The couple stops talking about the content issues of what’s happening and they start talking about how lonely they feel, how they see each other, how they don’t have this connection. Then, if they stay with me in therapy, they can look at how they scare each other, look at how they get stuck in these patterns of distance.

I’m going to help them have what we call a “Hold Me Tight” conversation where they’re able to talk about their attachment needs and fears, helping them move close and open up to each other. And as they open up emotionally, they become accessible and responsive — and they start to open up physically to each other too. Their sex is going to start to improve.

Sounds complicated, right?

Sigma Coaching recognizes the source of the problem (much different than the one diagnosed by Johnson, by the way) but is not concerned with the pathology of a couple’s behavior and how it makes them feel.

Instead, Sigma Coaching lays out a step-by-step path to mastering the roles of Protector, Provider, and Presider. Rather than worrying who’s doing what to whom, coaching focuses on implementing a simple skillset that immediately improves the relationship.

The end goal may be the same (a better relationship and increased intimacy), but the approaches of Sigma Coaching and therapy are very different.

While therapy lingers on exploring and understanding the self-indulgent expressions of a man’s therapeutic “issues,” Sigma Coaching helps that same man change his behavior by practicing simple skills, thus addressing the real source of his relationship problems.

Which sounds better? A drawn-out therapeutic mish-mash of inefficient hand-holding or Sigma Coaching’s manageable timetable of assertive, self-sustaining action steps?

Seems like a no-brainer.

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Dr. John Alexander is relationship expert and the author of The Sigma Male: What Women Really Want. To learn more about Sigma Coaching, visit his website, subscribe to his blog, “like” his page on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter.