The Loving Longer Philosophy
You deserve a fulfilling, loving, and passionate relationship.
A Common Story
Sally and Raul fell in love. They got married, had kids, changed jobs, changed cities, and suddenly ended up here, talking to me, confused about what had happened.
Somewhere along the way they had stopped feeling so in love — so connected. Sex became more routine. Romance and passion were replaced with laundry and grocery trips. Small misunderstandings led to larger arguments which led to certain topics being left out of discussion at all.
They were happy (or at least content) most of the time, it seemed, but they craved something more. They were sick of arguing about sex or money or dirty counters. They weren’t sure how to truly have fun together anymore but they desperately wanted to.
They could feel themselves drifting farther away from each other. Comfortable in their daily lives but too busy and overwhelmed to know where and how to start to connect back to each other.
Sally tried reading books and listened to podcasts. Raul browsed Reddit. They both attempted to bring new ideas to the table but nothing seemed to make any significant differences.
They had almost accepted this would just be the way things were (friends reported similar levels of disenchantment) when a colleague told Sally about her work with me. Sally perused the website, read a few articles, and reached out immediately. She scheduled a consult for the next week and we began our coaching relationship the week after that.
In the beginning, they were convinced they just needed some tips and tricks for the bedroom and date nights. But as they opened up in our sessions, they noticed their communication needed some help and that conflicts tended to create quite a bit of tension between them.
Over time, our work together supported and challenged them each in learning more about how they were influencing the relationship patterns so that they could shift into something that felt overall more satisfying, intimate, and fulfilling.
While they still continue to experience moments of disconnect, they know better how to handle them to get back on track. And they know, most importantly, that existing the way they were before is not how they are willing to live.
And they’re eager to keep learning — for the rest of their days together — how to love.
You deserve to communicate honestly and compassionately with your partner, to each feel heard and respected. You deserve to have more relationship intelligence and skill so that you can stay loving for longer.
You deserve to enjoy your time with your children and to feel stronger as a couple because of it.
You deserve to embody the values you want to model. You deserve to strengthen your marriage through your relationship as co-parents.
You deserve to be compassionate, respectful, and honest with yourself.
You deserve to make intentional choices that align with your values. You deserve to feel grounded, peaceful, and happy.
It’s Time to Learn How to Love
So that You Can Stay in Love Longer
It isn’t all about longer relationships… even though we sometimes think it is. It’s about longer happy relationships.
And it doesn’t all come easy and naturally… even though we are told that it should. Successful relationships — the ones that last longer and stay loving — are the ones where both partners have a certain level of relationship intelligence. They’ve learned the skill of being in relationship.
Loving Longer doesn’t teach you how to just “stay together.”
It teaches you relationship intelligence to support you today, tomorrow, and decades longer into the future. It teaches you the relationship skills necessary to foster intimacy, passion, and connection in a way you’ve only dreamt.
You deserve the skills and intelligence of how to love. So that you can love for longer.
What makes Loving Longer Different?
I believe that you, just like every person, deserves to live your life in a way that matches your values and enlivens your spirit.
Most relationship improvement coaching services or self-help online courses will offer you a to-do list (tools and skills) to engage the body without compelling the mind.
But these efforts aren’t sustainable because there isn’t a bigger awareness and intentionality driven by the heart.
Loving Longer is values-based, first and foremost.
Here at Loving Longer, we will focus on deeper internal work to support you both in becoming the individuals you want to be so that you can create a relationship that not only lasts LONGER but is, most importantly, a partnership that enriches the lives of both individuals within it.
Loving Longer aspires to create a community of people supporting one another in being more kind, compassionate, confident, accepting, peaceful, and respectful — in self, marriage, and parenthood.
As a curriculum, Loving Longer is an inspiring balance of thinking, doing, and being.
Based strongly on cultivating the practice of mindfulness and mindful living, it encourages you to live a life with meaning, purpose, and joy.
Loving Longer Academy offers personalized Relationship & Intimacy Coaching services by a licensed practitioner who is a trained Sex Therapist with a Master’s Degree in Marriage, Couple, and Family Counseling.
The Loving Longer Philosophy
1. Relationship intelligence is a skill that needs to be learned and strengthened, not something we happen upon in the wild.
You didn’t learn this stuff in school, even though you should have.
Loving Longer is founded on a reverence for evidence-based research. Above all else, I want to support you in being an informed conscious consumer of all things in your life — including your relationship!
Think of Relationship & Intimacy Coaching with me as a marriage enrichment course or a school for healthy intimacy. The goal is to help you get smarter when it comes to navigating the relationships in your life. It’s meant to create a foundation of awareness and skills to support you for many decades to come — not just for the short time we work together.
2. A happy healthy relationship is only possible between individuals who are whole and healthy themselves. The sum is greater than its parts.
I’m convinced that Coaching is an art form.
Our mission, you and I as co-creators of this art, is to create a solid foundation of trust and education that supports you in being successful as you apply what you’ve learned and practiced into your daily life.
Most Coaches focus on behavioral to-do lists and accountability… but I don’t want you to make behavioral changes only to be accountable to me – or even to your partner.
I don’t believe that this recipe of behavioral approaches fosters honesty and respect for you, the consumer of your relationship.
I think it fits in with our culture’s desire for quick fixes and instant relief. I believe it misleads you, as the consumer, to set unrealistic expectations.
To be really honest, I think it’s a recipe for regression and within this strictly behavioral model, positive changes will likely only last so long.
I want you to be accountable to yourself — not to me or even your partner. I want you to have insight into your own self, feel more confident and respectful towards yourself, and approach the world around you with compassion and respect as well.
True long-term change that sticks is the kind that comes from an inner awakening – an inner knowing.
Through the Loving Longer approach, you will foster accountability to yourself through tapping into your own personal insight and learning to live more confidently and compassionately in alignment with your values.
How do you want to show up in the world?
3. In times of struggle, we don’t “rise to the challenge” — we fall to the level of our training.
You deserve to be educated and informed so you can make educated and informed choices.
I believe strongly in the power of information. This is why the beginning of our coaching relationship starts with a lot of psychoeducation to inform you, build trust in the process (and in me as your “relationship friend”), and provide us with a shared language as we move forward in our mission together.
The goal is to inspire you to love learning. (Shhh — this is the true secret of long-term happy relationships.)
4. Intimacy is a sacred gift we can give to ourselves that helps us experience wholeness.
It’s often misunderstood, mistreated when missing, and overly simplified for the sake of consumerism. It’s not ONLY (or sometimes AT ALL) related to sex – even when it looks that way.
5. The relationship between you and me is a crucial element contributing to the success of this process.
You and I, as a team, will build an authentic coaching relationship that creates safety, support, and trust in the process. Our relationship is just like any other very real relationship you may foster in your life, except likely including more frequent moments of tough love from me – and of course an exchange of money.
I don’t particularly love the title “Coach.” While this certainly is a form of coaching, our success in working together relies on us forming an authentic relationship that is far more intimate than that of a typical “coach.”
Maybe in my wildest dreams I would prefer to call myself your “relationship friend.” We are on this journey together and I intend to show up for you, listen, provide support, and challenge you in all the ways a true friend would.
But I also get to bring to the table a decade of expertise in relationships and intimacy — a level of skill and experience that your friends likely don’t have.
In our work together, I believe that you are the expert in your relationship and yourselves, and that I am the expert in how relationships function and what tends to work best in achieving a happy long-term one.
Together, we make a mighty team.
Oh, and ready for a fun fact? Research tells us that the relationship between the two of us (you — or you TWO — and I) is one of the best predictors of success. So even if you’ve tried reading books, purchasing courses online, or listening to podcasts, be brave enough to try just one more thing.
6. Growth isn’t comfortable — but it’s worth the risk to be able to show up as the human you want to be in this world.
While my goal is to help you love each other for longer, it is also more generally about learning how to love – and that includes how to love yourself.
How to stand up, on a daily basis, and be the person you want to be. For you.
Sometimes this means that the growth from point A to point B is bumpy, includes more conflict or discomfort than you had before starting this process, and requires facing parts of yourself that are embarrassing or undesirable. Unfortunately, the only reassurance I can give is that the way out is through.
Every happy “ending” in a book has a period of conflict or hardship in the middle.
There’s also always a chance that as you and your partner learn how to be more loving towards yourselves and others, one of you discovers that this relationship is not in alignment with your values.
I don’t agree with Coaches who say they are going to help you fix everything and live happily ever after. This isn’t reality and it isn’t treating you very respectfully because it isn’t arming you with the authentic truth.
So here’s the authentic (and brutal) truth: sometimes learning what is fulfilling to you as individuals might mean risking the relationship itself.
But if you don’t take that risk to show up in the world as the human you want to be, what good is it to stay in a relationship molded around a version of yourself you aren’t proud of?
But if our goal is help you both live a happier life that matches your values, and learn how to navigate through that together with respect and compassion, then here’s my experience with most couples:
It works if you work it.
If you’re both willing to show up, be open-hearted, listen with humility, and learn new things (some of which might be very uncomfortable or disappointing), then the Loving Longer approach is right for you.
Not everyone is ready to face the parts of themselves that they’re embarrassed or ashamed of. Not everyone is ready to admit that they have areas to grow. Not everyone is ready to put aside their own ego in order to see things from their partner’s perspective.
Sometimes one of you just isn’t ready. But even if that’s the case, you can’t un-learn what you’ve learned.
You’ll still carry everything from our time together with you into the world and your future relationships – and you’ll be able to continue loving yourself and important people to you for longer. Even if it isn’t this important person.
This is the brutal honest and hard truth. It is not as romantic as what you maybe promised from other Relationship Coaches… but it is certainly more authentic.
This is what you can expect from me. Honesty, authenticity, and warmth – delivered with some important comedic relief interspersed.
Is Loving Longer right for me?
You deserve more support in living a life that feels joyful and purposeful.
You deserve a relationship that is happy, healthy, and lasts.
You deserve to know yourself and feel confident and at ease with how you choose to interact with your world.
Loving Longer is for you if you want to…
- Reach a deeper level of satisfaction, pleasure, and connection with your partner both in the bedroom and outside of it
- Improve your communication about all things (including intimacy)
- Understand why one of you has more sexual desire than the other one — and what to do about it
- Learn how to better manage conflicts between you so that you walk away from arguments with more connection and appreciation for one another
- Connect through parenting to reach a new level of intimacy and feel supported and united in how you are choosing to raise the tiny humans living in your house
- Live more in-alignment with your values — both individually and as a couple — so you can model a lifestyle that you believe in and stop answering the question of “How are you?” with “So busy!”
What does Loving Longer Offer?
Born from her experience as a highly sought-after marriage and sex therapist and coach, Kelsey offers the opportunity for you to jump-start the changes you are wanting to make.
Loving Longer Coaching offers:
- Flexible scheduling and virtual meetings
- Personalized experience to support you in identifying and living your values
- Down-to-earth approach that helps you feel heard in what is most important to you
- Tough-love challenging so as to support you in consciously deciding how you want to show up in your relationship and the world
Unlike other coaching services which tend to focus on behavioral changes and quick fixes, Kelsey contributes an honest, direct, and compassionate approach that incorporates research, philosophy, and practical application.
Through personalized coaching, you’ll feel more confident, peaceful, and grounded in how you choose to live your life and relate to the people around you.