Do you sometimes wonder if it’s going to take a miracle to find the solution to your relationship problems?

You’re not on your own. We often feel powerless or helpless in the face of relationship or marital difficulties – we desperately want our relationship to be better, but we’re often at a total loss as to how to achieve it or even where to start. We can find ourselves going over the same old ground and getting nowhere with our partners.

We all know what we don’t want from the relationship:

• We don’t want to fight about housework anymore.
• We don’t want to disagree over money.
• We don’t want to argue about other family members.
• (please feel free to add your own relationship “don’t want” list)

However, we aren’t always aware of what we do want. It’s all to easy for us to play the blame game with our partners, but that doesn’t give us a direction towards what we do want.  It’s like saying, “I want to get away from here”, and then not knowing which particular direction to head, because all directions lead away from here.

So how can we set a direction? How can we decide where we want our relationship to be in the future? How do we decide I want this kind of relationship rather than that kind? The answer, surprisingly enough, is to think about what would happen if a miracle occurred.

Try it now. Imagine that while you were asleep, all the problems that have been bothering you and your partner; your job and money, the arguments, your in law/blended family issues, -everything was fixed.

Take a minute to think about it:

• Where would you be?
• What would be the first thing your partner would do?
• How would you respond?
• How would you feel towards your partner?
• What would their attitude to you be like?
• What would your relationship be like?

It’s a weird way of thinking about things isn’t it? It’s called the “The Miracle Question” and it’s an intervention from the Solution-Focused school of therapy.  In the right hands and as part of the counselling process, it can really empower people to ‘think outside of the box’, and opens up all sorts of new possibilities and outcomes for the future.

By using the miracle question a counsellor can build up a very detailed picture of what you want to achieve from couple counselling. You can then start to formulate a number of specific goals for your relationship. As soon as you allow yourself to imagine what might be, you have a direction to head towards. As part of the ongoing counselling process the Miracle Question also allows us to explore and identify the root of the relationship problems.

Relationship change becomes more attainable and can happen quite quickly when we focus on walking towards instead of walking away from. The Miracle Question is one of a series of solution focused interventions which can be used flexibly to help you achieve happiness in your relationship.