Become a Certified 6 Pillars of Intimacy® Coach

You already sit across from couples in crisis, whether in a pastor’s office, a counseling room, or a mentoring conversation after church. You hear the same story in different words: we can’t talk, we’ve grown apart, we’re just roommates. You want a clear way to help them see what’s happening, and a clear next step to hand them.

The 6 Pillars of Intimacy® Certified Coaching Program gives you that structure. It’s the framework Tony and Alisa DiLorenzo built and have used with couples for years, now organized so you can learn it, practice it, and use it in your own work.

Who this is for

This program is built for people who already sit with couples in some capacity: coaches, counselors, pastors, ministry leaders, and mentors. A couple can go through the program together and coach side by side, and the two of you take one spot in the cohort. It also fits someone who has walked through their own marriage rebuilding and wants a structured way to help others do the same.

This program is open to you whether or not you hold a counseling license, as long as you’re someone a couple already trusts enough to talk to.

What you learn

The certification is built around the 6 Pillars of Intimacy® framework: Emotional, Physical, Financial, Spiritual, Recreational, and Sexual Intimacy. The framework points you to which pillar is under strain, because the loud complaint and the real issue are often two different things.

The training includes:

• Ten modules, covering the framework itself plus one deep module for each of the six pillars
• A 200-page training manual that stays yours after the cohort ends
• Six coaching tools you’ll use in real conversations: a Diagnostic Tool, a Reframe Guide, a Triage and Referral Guide, a First Conversation Flow, a Story-to-Structure worksheet, and a Weekly Reps practice tool
• Live coaching practice labs, where you work the material out loud in real conversations
• A written exam and a coaching demonstration, live or recorded, to complete the program
• A Certified Coach License for your first year, with continued access to office hours and the private Facebook group after the cohort ends

The whole program builds toward one coaching discipline: pick one pillar, offer one reframe, give the couple one action. You learn to help a couple find one honest starting point and work from there.

The program also trains you to recognize when a couple’s situation is outside what a coach should handle. Part of the certification is a clear guide for when to refer a couple to a licensed therapist or other professional, and how to make that referral without it feeling like a failure.

Each cohort runs for 10 weeks.

What this is not

Certification prepares you to lead couples through the 6 Pillars framework using a clear, structured process. This certification does not promise you clients. What you do with the credential, and how you build the coaching or ministry work around it, is up to you.

Building a practice around it takes real effort, and our graduates say so plainly. Certification gives you a recognized credential, a working set of tools, and a directory listing alongside other certified coaches, so people already looking for a 6 Pillars coach can find you.

What it costs

We set pricing for each cohort, and it can change from one to the next, so the current price and payment options are on the program page. If you lead a ministry, reach out before you enroll and we’ll talk it through.

The certified coach directory

The Certified Coach Directory lists graduates already using the 6 Pillars framework in their own coaching, counseling, and ministry work right now. Browse it to see the kind of work certified coaches are doing, and to picture your own listing there once you’re certified.

From Alisa

“Over the years, I’ve seen how often caring, capable people are asked to help a struggling couple but don’t know where to begin. They can hear the pain in the couple’s story, but they need a way to identify what is happening underneath the issue that feels the loudest. I built this certification to give coaches, pastors, mentors, and marriage leaders a practical way to use The 6 Pillars of Intimacy® to bring clarity to those conversations. It gives them the tools and practice to help a couple move out of blame and confusion and identify where rebuilding can begin.”

Alisa explains why she built the certification, and who it is for, in this short video.

Read the transcript

There’s a question that I get asked rather frequently, and that’s this: Why did you build the 6 Pillars of Intimacy Certified Coaching Program? And here’s a bit of the backstory. I’ve spent a lot of years working with couples and individuals, having conversations as we’ve traveled around the country, and I often see the same thing happening over and over again.

There are so many people that want to help those in marriage, so many people that naturally have people come to them, and I realized that they did not have a clear framework for knowing what they were hearing or where to begin. We might be talking about pastors, mentors, coaches, ministry leaders, or just simply a trusted couple sitting across from a struggling couple and thinking, “I really care about them, but what do I actually do with all of this information that they’re sharing with me?”

And like the 6 Pillars of Intimacy framework itself, I wanted to create something practical, a way for them to hear a couple’s story, identify where the marriage is under strain, ask better questions, offer the ability to reframe the situation, and help them help the couples with a useful next step.

This program is for people who already find themselves helping couples or who feel called to do that work and want training, structure, tools, and practice. It’s also for people who know that good coaching is not about having all the answers. You need to know how to listen, stay neutral, ask questions, and help a couple see what they cannot see themselves.

You know, this is not about making you become a therapist, a trauma specialist, an addiction counselor, or a mental health professional. Those are all situations where a coach should refer out rather than attempt to handle it themselves. What I wanted to create was a practical marriage coaching framework that sits somewhere between, “I care about couples and wanna help,” and, “I actually know how to lead this conversation responsibly.”

Graduates leave this program able to take the story that a couple brings to them and turn it into a structure, identify the pillars to start with, get into this place where they’re offering non-shaming reframes, ask useful questions, and guide into realistic action.

All of those people that I’ve had the privilege to have conversations with over the years, these are the people who are taking this framework, taking this certification, and in a beautiful way, taking it into their communities, taking it and impacting people that I might not ever get to meet because these are folks in their community, and they are equipped to shift and have a positive impact on marriages, helping couples feel heard and understood, helping them to see the problems that are in their marriage through a fresh set of eyes, helping them take action and know what the accountability looks like.

As I say, throughout the certification process, we’re focused on one pillar, one reframe, and one action

In our own words

Tony talks through why this program exists in episode 907, “This is Bigger Than Us”. If you want to hear the reasoning behind the certification straight from us, start there.

Ready to enroll

Couples already come to you. You get the framework Tony and Alisa have used with couples for years, tools to work it in real conversations, and a credential and directory listing that show you did the work. The next cohort’s dates, the enrollment form, and payment are on the program page.

Enroll in the 6 Pillars of Intimacy® Certified Coaching Program

If you have a question the program page doesn’t answer, reach out before you enroll and we’ll talk it through.