Love Coaching is a powerful and personalised form of guidance that supports individuals or couples in reaching their goals, developing their skills and maximising their happiness in love.
Investing in coaching for your love life can be valuable for several reasons:
‘If only he would…!’ ‘If only she could…!’ Feels good, doesn’t it? That delicious sense of being right.
During coaching sessions, I often smile and say, ‘I don’t have that at all!’
It’s my way of letting clients know they’re not the only ones expressing their emotions in ways that aren’t always helpful.
Coaching offers a space for deeper reflection. It helps you become more aware of your needs, values and beliefs when it comes to love and relationships.
This awareness builds confidence and brings clarity about what you truly seek in a partner. When each partner is allowed to express their essential longings and needs, something deeper emerges, a connection beyond just being right.
Sometimes relationships can become complicated and it may feel as if you are stuck in a vicious circle of tension, miscommunication or unfulfilled (intimate) needs. Fortunately, there is a path towards the change you desire: relationship coaching (also known as couples therapy).
Coaching offers a safe and supportive space where you, either on your own or together with your partner(s), can explore the challenges that are holding your relationship back from growing, reconnecting and enjoying each other again.
It always saddens me to hear that some people would rather separate and face the costs of an expensive, unnecessary move or divorce, than overcome their shame and find the courage to seek help in deepening their intimate relationship.
So what is relationship coaching at Magic Love Company? It means guiding people in an intimate relationship towards more depth, more shared growth and more fulfilling intimacy.
The outcome of this deep, beautiful and often fascinating process is never the same. What matters is that by the end, something has shifted. The course has changed, even if only slightly, so to speak. Whether you decide to stay together or part ways in a friendly way, the patterns that no longer serve you in this relationship will not be carried into your future.
What you have learned, or unlearned, will no longer stand in the way of a loving future.
Coaches can help you identify destructive patterns or inner blocks that may be affecting your love life. These might include a fear of commitment, or the tendency to repeat unhealthy relationship dynamics. Becoming aware of these patterns allows you to take meaningful steps to break through them and make healthier choices.
Relationship therapy is not a sign of weakness. On the contrary, it shows courage and a willingness to invest in a loving, flourishing relationship, rather than repeating the same heartbreak and pain over and over again. Take the step towards Love Coaching if you are single, or relationship coaching if you are in a partnership, and create a love life that truly fits you.
Coaching in the area of intimate relationships is a form of guidance that focuses on improving or resolving unhelpful patterns within romantic partnerships and supporting personal growth in that context.
It works through conversations, guided reflection and practical exercises, where a professional coach helps individuals or couples identify problems, develop more effective communication skills and explore ways to strengthen and deepen their relationship.
The steps typically followed during Love Coaching or relationship coaching are:
Together with the client or couple, the coach identifies obstacles and recurring difficulties in their love life, such as communication problems, trust issues or unresolved conflict.
The coach helps clarify the deeper needs, expectations and goals each partner holds within the relationship.
The coach introduces practical tools to improve communication, resolve conflict and build a stronger emotional connection.
This stage often brings up unresolved emotional pain or childhood trauma. If needed, separate sessions may be used to reduce emotional sensitivity, using techniques such as EMDR or hypnosis.
Individual wellbeing and personal growth are essential to any healthy relationship. The coach encourages reflection, emotional awareness and resilience.
The coach supports clients in recognising positive changes in their words and actions. This reinforces progress and brings more depth and emotional growth to their relationship or love life.
One key difference between coaching and therapy lies in how the client’s question or need is approached. Coaching assumes a certain level of resilience in the client and focuses on desired change in the future. Therapy, on the other hand, is more often aimed at processing or coping with past trauma or emotional pain. In psychotherapy, the therapist may also be authorised to prescribe medication, which coaches or non-medically trained therapists are not allowed to do. During coaching, what I often refer to as ‘old emotional pain’ may still surface. When that happens, I assess whether the situation is suitable for coaching with a healing element, or whether it would be more appropriate to refer someone to a specialist who can offer the right type of therapeutic care.
Within this approach to Love Coaching, I use four pathways to support clients in reaching their chosen goals:
Asking questions about the past, facts, desires and the meanings we attach to them. This often brings up well-meant beliefs we grew up with in our culture. Many of these were passed down in strict ways, or we interpreted them rigidly ourselves, which can lead to a conflict between what we believe and what we truly long for.
As human beings, we grow up surrounded by countless images and beliefs, many of which only prove to be inaccurate years later. This can conflict with how we experience our intimate relationships. Because I have specialised in long-term fulfilling intimate relationships, I know what kind of information my clients need to move forward with greater ease.
A large proportion of people have experienced moments of insecurity during childhood, ranging from mild to severe. These experiences shape attachment styles, from insecure, around 30 percent, to secure, around 60 to 70 percent. These are averages and strongly depend on where in the world you were raised. These attachment styles continue to influence our lives as long as they go unacknowledged and unresolved. Professional support can help you recognise and heal these patterns. There is also a growing awareness of
Finally, almost all of us have been raised with strong ideals around romantic love and the way it is ‘supposed to be’. Think of the cultural era, religion, or community someone grew up in – where love was only valid if it was heterosexual, monogamous, ‘until death do us part’, and otherwise a sin that led to hell.
I do not find it strange that most of us could benefit from a bit of therapy. When appropriate, I use – in consultation – EMDR (Francine Shapiro), NLP-based hypnosis (Richard Bandler and others), Focusing (Eugene Gendlin), or EFT (Gary Craig, tapping).
My experience in a long-term intimate relationship does not mean I believe everyone should have the same kind of relationship my partner and I have. What I can offer, as someone with lived experience, is an awareness of time and a broader view than the drama moment you might find yourself in.
The awareness that if you are willing to grow and learn together, you can become better at the rhythm of harmony, disharmony and repair.
During one of the coaching sessions I said: ‘This is a phase in your intimate relationship where you are playing the power game and trying to find balance. As long as both of you remain grounded in your own strength, this does not have to be wrong or harmful. The key is to find the right balance that allows both of you to feel happy and fulfilled.’
This game is probably played in many intimate relationships. The way it plays out often changes over time, or changes with the help of Love Coaching or relationship therapy, especially if you are getting tired of how the game is going.
How the power dynamic develops or stabilises is actually one of the things that makes a long-term intimate relationship so interesting. Just like many other things, of course, but I am sure you know that already…
In Love Coaching, I often work with individuals who want to overcome guilt, shame and fear. People, whether
Here are some of the reasons people come to me:
Love Coaching, or relationship therapy, is intended for couples who choose to enter the coaching process together.
The combination of high motivation and high stress just before starting Love Coaching, relationship therapy or coaching in general, tends to produce the greatest and most lasting results. The effectiveness of relationship coaching has been supported by multiple studies.
In relationship therapy , two elements are especially important:
1. the quality of the personal relationship with the coach or therapist
2. the extent to which the coach masters the methods and techniques being used, combined with their ability to tailor these approaches to the couple’s unique needs.
At the same time, it is crucial to emphasise that without positive motivation and true collaboration, the desired outcomes will not be achieved. The goal is to reconnect as a couple in a way that feels good, light and fulfilling in all areas, including intimacy.
Voor relatietherapie pas ik onder andere de effectief bewezen Gottman Methode toe die onder meer gericht is op het positief waarderen van elkaar en het hebben van een gemeenschappelijk doel. De twee pijlers van een goede, langdurige liefdesrelatie rusten op vriendschap en fijne intimiteit. Woorden als ‘vertrouwen’, ‘respect’ en ‘waardering’, vallen onder deze twee elementen.
The stories below are based on real situations. To protect anonymity, illustrations are used and some background details have been changed. It would be impossible to share them all, but I hope this gives you a sense of what I stand for as a coach. For the methods I work with, see the section Methods.
For those unfamiliar with the term polyamory, here is a short explanation. Polyamory refers to having more than one intimate partner at the same time, with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.
Honesty and freedom are key values in this. Sometimes polyamorous relationships include sexual intimacy, but not always. There are many different forms of polyamory.
The methods and techniques listed below are tailored to the individual needs of each client. In some cases, I create a custom exercise if I believe it may be helpful in a specific situation. Everything is, of course, done in consultation and with the client’s consent. Audio recordings are made of the sessions so clients can listen back at home, helping them become more aware of desired changes and recognise the progress they are making.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a way of looking at the world. In the 1970s, researchers Richard Bandler and John Grinder asked themselves, ‘What are successful therapists doing differently from those who are less effective?’
As mathematicians and researchers, they began studying communication patterns. What they discovered became a set of practical tools for communication, and how communication influences a successful, fulfilling life.
Put simply: what you focus on, what you think, and what you do, all shape your life. One of the techniques I use when helpful is hypnosis, such as demonstrated by Paul McKenna, to support desired changes in your love life.
Core elements of NLP include: cognitive distortions (learned untruths), becoming aware of your own and others’ thinking styles, the 16 core assumptions of NLP.
I trained in the Quantum Leap Coach System with Femke Mortimore, with a strong focus on what I call meaning questions and the impact that your answers have on your mental and physical state, and on your life as a whole.
This method builds on NLP models but goes deeper. Rather than relying on repetition or tracking behaviour, Quantum Leap aims to reach the root of self-limiting beliefs.
As your coach, I work with you to trace the exact moment in your life when you internalised a limiting belief and began to experience it as ‘true’.
Together, we transform that belief into one that supports, encourages and empowers you – for example, through the use of hypnosis – so that it becomes easier and more natural to embrace your love life as it has been, and move forward with confidence in your own unique way.
John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman are the founders of The Gottman Institute, known for its scientific approach to intimate relationships.
Their research is guided by a key question: What are happy, successful couples doing differently from those who are unhappy or break up?
The institute also provides tools and therapy programmes for couples who are struggling in their relationships. The Level 1 training offers practical exercises for managing conflict while also focusing on shared meaning. They call this ‘building the Sound Relationship House’.
Esther Perel is a world-renowned psychotherapist of Polish-Jewish descent who explores the tension between the need for safety and the desire for freedom in intimate relationships.
She became internationally known for her nuanced and respectful perspective on infidelity. One of her core insights is: “We are not looking for another lover, we are looking for another version of ourselves.”
In her annual multi-day online workshop Sessions, Esther Perel brings together clinicians, therapists and coaches from diverse backgrounds. The goal is to share tools and practices that we – as helpers and guides – can use to support people facing modern relationship challenges.
In 2018, I attended her in-person workshop Love in Context in Belgium.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. It is a therapeutic method used to process emotional trauma.
For those dealing with heartbreak, lingering pain or emotional blocks around love, EMDR can help reduce and resolve the negative emotions, thoughts and images connected to these experiences. The results can be surprisingly fast (see client reviews on the homepage).
I use EMDR ethically only. This means, for example, that I do not use EMDR to try to ‘treat’ someone for being different in their approach to love. What I do use EMDR for, is to help people who have been bullied or harmed because they are different in how they love.
So to be absolutely clear: I do not use EMDR to treat someone simply for being LGBTQIA+. That would be unethical and potentially retraumatising.
Van 2012 tot 2020 heb ik op verschillende universiteiten in Nederland en in Engeland (Londen) lesgegeven als Docent Gynaecologisch Onderzoek.
From 2012 to 2020, I taught gynaecological examination skills at universities in the Netherlands and in England (London).
As a Gynaecological Teaching Associate, I trained medical students, doctors and GP residents in both the technical and interpersonal aspects of pelvic exams. I mention this here because I believe it’s important to recognise how often genitals, and the perception of our own genitals, are surrounded by unnecessary shame and judgement.
How we perceive and value our bodies, including our genitalia, has a major influence on our intimate lives, and in turn, on our relationships.
I cannot leave out Spiegelogie (Mirrorology), because the practice has had a profound effect on my life. The late Willem de Ridder (d. 2022) believed that your experience of reality is shaped by how you describe it – by what you think and feel.
All over the Netherlands, small ‘fan clubs’ meet to support each other in this practice. The idea is to order what you do want out loud, and to encourage each other in doing so.
I regularly attended these free meetings and also led some of them as a group facilitator. If you’re curious, I recommend joining the Facebook group Spiegelogie, where new meetings are announced.
Everyone is fan of each other 🙂.
If you find this a bit ‘different’, consider this question: How often in a day do you criticise yourself or others? And how often do you encourage yourself or someone else, especially when they want something different or are still learning?
What is your criticism-to-encouragement ratio in your relationship? Is it top-notch? Or could it use some attention? According to The Gottman Institute, this ratio is one of the strongest predictors of divorce. Couples who regularly support and encourage each other are far more likely to stay happily connected.
If you’re feeling curious and you’re ready to invest in a professional Love Coach, I encourage you to book an introductory meeting.
It’s important to realise that I charge a premium rate for my time. I offer a guarantee of positive change when you complete the agreed assignments or if I accept your request for a short-term EMDR track.
If you decide to book multiple sessions at once – for example, when it’s time for a real shift – a reduced hourly rate applies.
Here are the next steps:
Yes, at the moment I coach all clients myself, either in my coaching space in The Hague (Ypenburg) or via video call. In future, I may collaborate with other coaches who have personal experience in long-term intimate relationships and have been thoroughly trained.
Anything related to long-term intimate relationships and intimacy.
I want to highlight that the longest relationship you’ll ever have is the one you have with yourself. If you constantly have to adjust for the other person, or expect them to adjust for you, and this doesn’t truly fit, it will eventually take its toll.
I support people who feel stuck in their intimate relationship, in a way that allows space for desires – even those that may be considered unconventional and where the outcome becomes a unique, co-created version of the relationship. My wish is for Magic Love Company to be the place where you dare to meet each other again, with fewer masks and growing appreciation for who you truly are.
I also support people in processing situations where one or more partners have been unfaithful, or as I prefer to say: not transparent. The goal is to rebuild transparent connection.
Singles and couples exploring intimacy are also welcome, as long as it’s done ethically: age-appropriate behaviour, all parties are fully informed and give clear, conscious consent, actions are guided by common sense and mutual care
If you choose to enter a coaching journey, I assume that your love life matters enough to you to invest in yourself. What do I mean by investing? You make time for the coaching sessions. You make time to listen back to the coaching sessions before the next session and you take notes on what you observe in yourself, for example: You suddenly stop talking. Your voice rises or becomes louder or softer. You notice discomfort in yourself. You notice that you are triggered by something you perceive. You notice and strengthen the insight that suddenly appears. You notice resistance in yourself. You notice that something is still unclear. You notice that you disagree with something and do not say so. You notice that the pace of coaching feels too fast or too slow and that you find it difficult to say so. You notice…
You notice that it becomes more and more natural to observe your physical reactions, feelings and emotions in certain situations, and to become aware that you can steer your behaviour yourself or ask for support in doing so. Since you are here anyway…
The spacing of the coaching sessions is arranged in consultation. When processing old trauma or emotional wounds, I use EMDR, in which case it is more effective to schedule multiple sessions close together. This is an intense process, and physical and emotional side effects may occur, often experienced as tiring and sometimes overwhelming. This is normal and will pass. I advise, if possible, to keep the following evenings and days as free as you can, so you have space to process the emotions and feelings in a way that suits you.
The most important thing about Love Coaching is that you talk to someone about your love and/or intimate life who is trained, knows what they’re talking about and, if possible, also has lived experience in the area you’re seeking help with. That is not the same as having a good cry with friends, as I sometimes see passing by on social media…
Crying is absolutely allowed! As a Love Coach, I pay close attention to what is happening behind the tears. I observe thought processes, thinking patterns, physical reactions and emotional wounds that often show up in the form of absolute beliefs that do not serve you. What I observe, I relate back to the longing that brought you to me. That becomes the foundation for choosing the methods I use, so that you can take the right actions with more confidence and ease, as soon as possible.
I have experience with long-term intimate relationship(s) and with being in a relationship with someone who is very different from me.
My specialism is consciously distinguishing between short-term thinking and long-term thinking, and having the courage to go deep, using everything I have learned through my experiences, trainings and education. This also includes letting go when you know it is time to move on and take a new direction in your love life. I support that too.
This sounds intense, and it is. When you change in the way that truly fits you, you will notice that your environment starts to respond differently as well. This too creates opportunities to continue the conversation with others on a deeper level.
In short: you come to me because you want to feel, think and act differently when it comes to love and/or intimacy. The more open you are, the more self-reflection you allow, the more faithfully you listen to the sessions, and the more new actions you take, the greater the chance of achieving the result you desire.
There are coaches who work for free alongside their daytime job, and there are coaches who offer programmes that cost €150,000 per year.
A single intensive EMDR coaching session of 2 hours, with a results guarantee, currently costs €300 including 21% VAT. The Year of Love programme, which includes 15 sessions, offers a lower hourly rate. All sessions and programmes are paid in advance.
Important to know: I always conduct an intake (conversation), and I do not accept every request. Sometimes I refer clients to other professionals.
As you can imagine, my availability is limited. The sooner you get in touch, the sooner we can get started. Friday evening and weekend sessions are priced higher than regular weekday rates. In urgent cases, there is often more availability at the weekend than during the week.
Yes, Magic Love Company is also open in the evenings and on weekends. From Friday evening to Sunday evening, separate higher rates apply. The regular rate applies from Monday to Friday afternoon.
I offer a guarantee on the desired result, as long as it lies within yourself and you carry out the assignments I give. Every participant in a coaching session or coaching programme listens to the audio recordings before attending the next session. You also take notes based on what you hear, which you then use as input for the following session. For the separately bookable 2-hour intensive EMDR sessions, I guarantee a meaningful result provided I accept you for this session. We define the desired outcome in advance. The session is recorded, so you can listen back to the beginning afterwards. It is not uncommon for people to look back and hardly believe how much something used to affect them.
