Parts Work with Couples: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Parts Work with Couples, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Practices that may help

1. Make bids for shared enjoyment, not just support
   Invite your partner to enjoy something together — playfulness and delight are also bids.
   Turning Toward: The Daily Practice That Builds Relationship Resilience
2. Invest in shared social networks
   Spend time with people who affirm and are connected to both of you as a couple.
   Relationship Maintenance Behaviors
3. Cultivating complicity: shared secret aliveness
   Build a private world of in-jokes, gestures, and references that only you two share.
   Mating in Captivity: Sustaining Desire in Long-Term Relationships
4. Create and protect the couple bubble
   Agree that you each put the relationship above any third party, including family of origin.
   Secure-Functioning Relationships
5. Secure-Functioning Relationships
   Secure functioning, as defined by Stan Tatkin’s PACT model, means both partners operate as a team that actively manages each other’s safety and security — rather than each person managing their own needs separately. The model has a strong mechanistic basis in attachment neuroscience; formal RCT evidence for PACT specifically is limited but growing.
6. Regularly share novel and enjoyable activities
   Do new things together — not only comfortable or habitual ones.
   Relationship Maintenance Behaviors
7. Turn toward bids for connection
   Respond to small, everyday bids for attention as if they matter — because they do.
   The 5-to-1 Positivity Ratio in Relationships
8. Build rituals of connection and shared meaning
   Create repeatable rituals that signal the relationship is a priority.
   The 5-to-1 Positivity Ratio in Relationships
9. Build shared rituals that update your map
   Create recurring moments designed to share inner worlds, not just coordinate schedules.
   Love Maps: Knowing Your Partner's Inner World
10. Make capitalization a habit
    Treat your partner’s good news as a recurring opportunity to build the relationship.
    Active-Constructive Responding, Made Practical

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My partner and I have become roommates who just handle logistics→
• My partner and I have drifted into totally separate social lives→
• We used to have our own little language→
• My partner sided with their family over me again, or didn’t back me up in front of others, and I’m left unsure whether they’ll actually put us first when it counts→
• We’re comfortable and we still do plenty together, but it’s the same loop every week→

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.