FAQs

Firstly, please take solace in the fact that you are not alone. The unfortunate news is, couples therapy has a very high failure rate, some say up to 75%! Here's the research.

What sets The Academy of Lasting Love apart from traditional couples therapy and mainstream relationship courses is that co-founder, Nikki Green, has spent over 30 years being a couples therapist. But, it wasn’t until the mid-point of her career, when she went to couples therapy with her husband, that she realized there is a huge distinction between therapy that helps your marriage survive, and therapy that helps your marriage thrive.

If you’ve asked the above question, you’ve likely experienced some form of conventional couples therapy that spent a large portion of time focusing on your relationship’s problems, each other’s flaws, and indulging a lot of negative discussions that didn’t lead to anything productive. It is completely understandable why many of us, have found therapy to be an overall disheartening ordeal.

Nikki’s personal experience in couples therapy with her husband wasn’t much different and she was receiving similar reports from her own clients regarding their previous therapy encounters.

It became clear to her that something was seriously wrong with the conventional approach. She dove into researching the reasons for the low success rate. After she anonymously surveyed a cross-section of willing clients, the answers became clear.

Greater levels of success were reported from couples who Nikki had worked with in the aftermath of an affair. What set those couples apart from ‘regular’ couples was the fact that regardless of whether they’d been the cheater or the cheated-on, at least one of them one of them described how they had made a conscious decision ‘to do whatever it takes’ to win back the love of their partner. That was the key, doing whatever it takes (barring going against their values of course).

They were making “kindness deposits,” regardless of whether or not their partners reciprocated. They were diligently following Nikki’s instructions for how to get loving connection back, regardless of how checked out or challenging their partner was being. And their partners eventually came around - it was only a matter of time!

The Academy of Lasting Love’s approach to relationship coaching is centered around the principle of strengthening ourselves first by increasing the kind-regard and connection that made us feel like soulmates initially.

When we start saying and doing things that rebuild the goodwill in the relationship, no matter how unreceptive or unappreciative our partners might be, and let go of expecting immediate reciprocity, the results can be amazing!

Not only did this radical fresh approach save Nikki’s own marriage and get it back to soulmate-status, but it has done the same for many clients at The Academy of Lasting Love. The ability to have it ALL is right at your fingertips, are you ready?

If you’re at a point where you feel like you’re the only one still invested in your relationship, then you’ve come to the right place.

Sadly, many couples in therapy are told that each partner has to take 50% of responsibility for the state of their relationship. This happened to The Academy of Lasting Love co-founder Nikki Green.

She realized that this 50-50 split of responsibility made her miserable because she kept looking for reciprocity from her husband for the changes she was making. She kept getting stuck in his business; was he reading the book, was he doing the exercises like she was? And of course because he wasn't, she was getting more and more demoralized, losing hope they’d ever be able to fix their marriage.

It's wasn't until she realized that the common denominator in all her failed past relationships, regardless of the kind of men she chose, was HERSELF.

So, she decided to take 100% responsibility, both for her own happiness and the health of her relationship. When she started showing up differently, and treating her husband differently, he started to change.

In fact, that's what the Third Law of Lasting Love: 'Choose Change to Create Change' is all about. It's founded on the Fifth Law of Nature - 'The Law of Cause and Effect’.

So, please take solace in the fact that there is actually so much you can do by yourself to fix your relationship!

This is why we created our program ‘The Laws of Lasting Love’ to work not just for couples who attend together on a 'Joined-Up-Journey', but also for those taking it by themselves and are on a ‘Just-Me-Journey.’

Your ‘Just-Me-Journey’ could be you preparing for a future relationship you want to make last, or because your partner is caught up in their own feelings and isn’t ready to do anything to change just yet, regardless, you have the power to move mountains!

In fact we’ve even helped people whose partners have moved in with the person they had the affair with or who have filed for divorce.

So please DO NOT underestimate the strength of the relationship bond or your ability to resuscitate it!

We completely understanding wanting to fulfill personal growth while also improving your relationship. These two goals are certainly not mutually exclusive! 

However, through decades of experience, we have found that it is often very difficult for the therapist seeing the individual to have a clear picture of the relationship and to be an unbiased party, which can really muddy the waters and negatively impact the outcomes of couples coaching. 

It is almost impossible to focus solely on oneself in therapy when also in a relationship. No matter how hard that individual tries to keep therapy centered on themselves, more often than not, that partner will start bringing in issues from their relationship into their individual counseling. 

In order to get the most out of your couples coaching, we generally recommend pausing your individual services while you attend couples sessions. **However, it is vitally important that you do not stop your individual services prior to discussing this with your couples coach; there are specific instances in which it is best to continue individual services and either combine them with couples work or delay couples sessions until the individual is in a better position.

You may be surprised by how much personal growth can be won through working on your relationship. We often subconsciously choose our partners based on the deep desire to become the best versions of ourselves we can be; in order to have a successful relationship with our partner, we are required to grow and change in ways that heal past trauma, overcome personal foibles, and help us become much more loving and well-rounded versions of ourselves. It really is a win-win situation!

When wondering whether or not your spouse is compatible, the question you’re really asking is “What if I’ve married the wrong person?”

In fact, at The Academy of Lasting Love, we would wager that there’s not a person out there who hasn’t, however fleetingly, asked themselves that self-same question. It’s a great question, and really, how do you know?

When we first meet someone and fall in love, love is easy. It’s aided by the body’s production of a cocktail of chemicals and hormones.

Research shows that we like others because they are either similar to, or better than us. That’s also where it starts with our love interest.

We choose them for the things we have in common, like our shared love of walking in nature, or our common dislike of the rude barista at the local coffee house.

We also choose them because often they have strengths that we don’t, like his ability to do that math equation in his head, or her ability to know exactly what to say to make someone feel better.  

We choose them so that we can feel re-joined with our long-lost twin self.

It almost feels like a Cosmic attraction, doesn’t it?

When you think about it, this is precisely why:
In good relationships, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Sadly, because most of us were never taught how to deal with differences in opinion or taste with respect, empathy and humor, our differences, once the love and goodwill begins to fade, usually end up being the things that irritate us the most about our partner.

Ironic, considering they were the things we originally found most impressive, and were drawn to in order to find balance.

Another question that every single one of us has asked is “How can I make my partner change?” and the simple answer is you can’t. You can’t make anyone change.

Don’t be under the false illusion that your partner doesn’t want to change though. It’s likely that if you’re not happy in the relationship, they aren’t either. So, they probably do want change, but just not change that being imposed on them.

If you don’t think it’s nearly impossible to change someone who is not willing to change, just think how hard it is to change yourself, and you are willing.
- Charles f. Glassman

What’s the first thing most of us instinctively do when we’re told by our partners that we MUST do something? We dig our heels in.

It’s a funny thing, but at The Academy of Lasting Love, we have seen so many different examples of people who end up hurting themselves to try to avoid making the changes their partner has asked of them; whether it be to eat healthier, spend more time with family, or to take a break from work — no matter how well-intended and helpful the change is, asking for it results in push-back.

Naturally, at this point in your relationship, where there’s so little kind-regard and connection, EVERYTHING is probably going to feel like a demand, regardless of how nicely you ask for it.

So right now, don’t expect your partner to do what you ask, eventually though, if you follow the Laws of Lasting Love, they will get back to a place where they do care, they’re just not there now.

If only we got a dollar at The Academy of Lasting Love for every time someone has told us that they felt hoodwinked by their partner. “She had a great figure or he had a fantastic job when I first married them, now see what’s happened. I just don’t feel like they’ve kept their side of the bargain.”

We always ask the same question  in reply, “Did you make it clear that was part of the bargain when you married them?”

Many of us 'expect' (which is such a dangerous word), each other to fulfill certain roles in our lives. For example, to work just as hard as we do, have the same level of nurturance towards our kids, or care just as deeply for our future financial safety.

When we do this to our partner, we are in effect turning them into a ‘Role-mate’ and not a Soulmate. Role-mates only last for as long as they are fulfilling a role, they need to stay static and not change, which of course is impossible, because we are all constantly changing.

When they inevitably stop doing what we want, or otherwise let us down, the magic starts to fade. Sadly, it’s an inevitable stage in most relationships. The phone calls and the conversations start to become a nuisance, and touch begins to feel either unwanted or obligatory.

When you compare the euphoric feeling you had at the start of your relationship with how you currently feel, you might even wish to feel that again, but with someone else. It may seem more achievable and certainly easier, than from the seemingly impossible place you now find yourself with your partner.

You could certainly fall in love with another person, but we can absolutely guarantee that eventually it won’t work either, because as the wise poet Rumi so succinctly put it: Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

While finding a new partner is the most radical substitution for our emotional fulfillment, there are many other ways we replace our partner once we begin to feel let down by them. We turn to work, the kids, our friends or family, or so-called addictive behaviors, like TV, food, alcohol, social media or porn. Or a combination of some or all of the above.

What have you turned to?