Why One-on-One Support Is Ruining Your Relationship
From Together- The Sacred We by Michael Elliott and Courtney Wren
May 14, 2026 · 48 min
About this episode
Mike and Courtney discuss how individual support can harm relationships and emphasize the importance of relational work.
Ready to do the relational work — not just the individual work? Mike and Courtney's 2:2 couples container holds both of you, tracks the patterns in real time, and wires you toward connection. 💛 Work with Mike & Courtney 2:2 → https://www.sacredrelating.com/sacred-relating-couples What if the most well-intentioned support you're getting is quietly wiring you further from your partner? In this disruptive, deeply honest episode, Mike and Courtney challenge one of the most common beliefs in the personal growth world: that doing more individual work will fix what's broken in your relationship. It won't. And they've both lived it. Courtney spent the first several years of her career as a therapist watching the same thing happen over and over: the more she affirmed each person's individual pain, the more separation grew. Mike worked with his first couple using 15 years of coaching skill — and things got more volatile. Both of them kept hitting the same wall: individual support, without relational training and advocacy for the relationship itself, doesn't heal the we. It erodes it. Research backs this up. Studies show that therapists without relational training will pathologize…
People in this episode
Hosts: Mike Elliott, Courtney Wren
Topics covered
- relationship support
- individual work vs relational work
- couples therapy
- personal growth
- communication
- connection
Keywords
- relationship
- support
- therapy
- individual work
- couples
- connection
- communication
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: sacredrelating.com
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- Reclaiming the Mother Village: From Isolation to Support · April 16, 2026 · 46 min
- From Then to Now: A Real Couple's Journey Through Grief, Growth & Sacred Love · April 9, 2026 · 1h 14m
- Why Couples Wait Too Long To Get Support · April 2, 2026 · 56 min
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