One couple came to me for a VIP day. She arrived early. He arrived 45 minutes late. Immediately she was saying, “You see, you don’t care about me.” There was a lot of mudslinging, and I set a boundary: “Timing is timing. You came here for six hours. You’ve got six hours minus the 45 minutes you lost.”
By the end of that day they went home and made love tenderly for two hours. These were people who had not been in the same room with each other for months. Here is what happens in between.
What happens in the first session of intimacy coaching?
We start with an audit. It gives me a good temperature read of where you are.
- Where are you now with touch?
- Where are you with communication?
- How often are you being intimate?
- How long have you been together?
Each of you also answers a questionnaire on your own, so I get an idea of where you’re at without the other overhearing. Then you take the Touch Reset Quiz, so I can see which Touch Pattern you’re in and what your Pleasure Language is. Often those are the missing pieces.
What do you actually do in an intimacy coaching session?
You practise, in a container that keeps it safe. A container is something you can hold on to: a set amount of time, always on a timer, and everything completely confidential.
- The Dyad. I teach you the Dyad with my Intimacy and Communication Cards, and the three answers: thank you, clarify that, summarise that.
- One prompt, twenty minutes. I run one prompt with you for twenty minutes, so you see that anything you bring up here is safe. There is no blame and no shaming. It starts to hone down what you are really looking for.
- Three minutes of timed touch, on yourself first. Each of you, on your own body, before anything is asked of the other person.
- Sensation language. Most people are so in their heads, thinking so much, that they haven’t recognised what is going on in their body. I teach you the words for what you feel.
- Your Pleasure Languages, once the ground is safe.
What does a couples VIP day look like?
It looks like the couple at the top of this page. Once I had set the boundary, I started with a Dyad: “Tell me what you need me to know, for twenty minutes.” Every time they went into blame or shame, I course-corrected them, again and again.
We stopped for lunch to let everyone settle. Then I put her on the massage table and showed him where to hold her, and how to ground himself, so that she could trust his touch again.
What do people get wrong about intimacy coaching?
They think it will be a three or four hour sex session. It usually starts by taking sex off the table.
A couple came to me who hadn’t been intimate with each other for 23 years. I told them, “We are taking sex off the table for six weeks.” They laughed. “That’s what we came to you for. It’s already been off the table for 23 years.” I said, “Just remember that I told you this.”
I gave them a very clear container:
- a set time
- exact practices to do together, and exact practices to do alone
- date mornings, not date nights, with new things they had never done
- everything they used to love about each other, back in focus
No sex, but touching lovingly again, and curious about themselves again. At week four they came back, very sheepish: “Yeah, that homework.” That is what happens to most of my clients. They had been so focused on what wasn’t going well that it was all they were getting. Once the pressure came off, it opened again.
What comes up once you feel safe?
This section mentions trauma.
So often, people who work with me find out they carry some very early, pre-verbal trauma. They feel safe enough for it to come up.
When it does, we work through it with my Rapid Release Rewire Restore method, RRRR®, which brings together EMDR, hypnotherapy, NLP and metaphysical processes, with EFT tapping where it helps. At the same time I use body releases, so it moves both ways: top-down through the mind and bottom-up through the body.
Do you do one-off intimacy coaching sessions?
No. You either work with me for a VIP day, or for the three-month intensive. One session on its own doesn’t give your body the container it needs to change. If you are still deciding whether this is for you, start with how I work as an intimacy and touch coach in the UK, or read what actually happens in relationship coaching.
Picture another year of the same conversation ending in the same silence. Then picture twenty minutes where nobody is blamed, and something true gets said.