Relationship Coaching Intake Questionnaire: Eight Practical Areas

A relationship coaching intake questionnaire helps a coach and prospective clients understand the work being requested, consider suitability, and prepare a useful first conversation. It should clarify expectations and relevant context without pressuring either person to disclose more than the service needs.

The eight areas below include original sample questions, a practical intake process, and a worked example. This is a planning questionnaire rather than a validated relationship assessment, diagnosis, or prediction of whether a couple will stay together.

Set the purpose, participation, and privacy arrangements first

Explain who the client or clients will be, what the service offers, who pays, and how decisions about shared work are made. Establish that each person can ask questions and choose whether to participate. A partner’s enthusiasm does not substitute for the other person’s agreement.

Describe how individual and joint information will be handled before collecting it. Explain the intended audience, relevant staff or technical access, records, retention, disclosure policy, and applicable confidentiality limits. Avoid promising absolute secrecy or inventing a universal “no secrets” rule.

Choose a safe way to communicate and complete the intake. Separate responses can offer useful individual perspectives, but separate links do not guarantee that someone has a private device, account, email, or setting. Ask whether the proposed route is appropriate before sending sensitive questions.

Coaching and couples therapy are not separated simply by future versus past. Therapy can address present goals and relationship concerns as well as clinical needs. Describe your actual competence and scope, and refer when the work requires another professional. The therapy and coaching boundaries guide develops that distinction.

Eight areas for a proportionate relationship intake

1. Understand the context without forcing fondness

Ask what is relevant about the relationship now: a change in work, household responsibilities, distance, a transition, or a question about the future. People may define their relationship and family in different ways. Use their language rather than assume marriage, cohabitation, gender roles, or children.

An account of what has worked can be useful when the person wishes to share it. It should not be used to make someone override a current concern or produce gratitude before being heard.

• Original prompt: What would help me understand your relationship and the situation bringing you to coaching now?
• Original prompt: Is there a past way of working together that you would like to understand or use again, if appropriate?

2. Identify a current concern through an ordinary example

Invite one situation and its effect rather than an exhaustive history of conflict. Distinguish what happened, what the person understood, and what they want help deciding. Different accounts can identify different experiences without establishing that one person is dishonest.

A repeated disagreement may involve competing needs, resources, expectations, or authority. Do not label it permanently unsolvable from an intake answer or apply a research percentage to this particular couple.

• Original prompt: Which current situation would you most like support with?
• Original prompt: What happened in a recent ordinary example, and what remains unresolved for you?

3. Describe communication patterns without scoring the couple

Ask how conversations begin, how each person gets a turn, and what happens when they disagree. An observable sequence is more useful than immediately sorting someone into an attachment style or a “Four Horsemen” category.

A pause, quiet response, question, or disagreement can have many meanings. Check the person’s account. A self-designed form cannot predict divorce with a stated accuracy simply because it mentions a research-based framework.

• Original prompt: In a discussion that goes reasonably well, what helps each of you understand the other?
• Original prompt: When a discussion becomes difficult, what usually happens next, and what would you like to change?

4. Let the person choose what connection to discuss

Connection may mean time together, practical support, affection, conversation, or another form of closeness. Ask what the person wants the coach to understand, with a clear option to leave sensitive areas for an appropriate conversation.

Physical or sexual contact must remain voluntary. An intake should not prescribe touch, require sexual disclosure, or make one partner responsible for providing access to their body to improve a score. Clinical or specialist concerns need the appropriate professional role.

• Original prompt: What kind of connection, if any, would you like us to discuss within the coaching scope?
• Original prompt: Are there topics you prefer not to record in a form, or an access arrangement you would like to discuss first?

5. Explore values through actual decisions

Identify the practical choices that need attention: spending, time, care, household work, a move, parenting, or another decision. Ask what matters to each person and what constraints apply. Shared meaning does not require identical beliefs or one agreed life vision.

Keep the scope appropriate. Financial, legal, parenting, or health questions can require qualified advice. Coaching may help clarify a conversation while remaining distinct from deciding rights, treatment, or investments.

• Original prompt: Which shared decision or responsibility needs clearer discussion?
• Original prompt: What matters to you in that decision, and what constraints should be understood?

6. Invite a chosen personal action without assigning equal blame

A person may want to change how they make a request, listen, plan, or follow through. Invite a specific choice rather than demand a confession or a promise to improve the relationship by a numerical percentage.

Responsibility for abusive or coercive behavior belongs to the person using it. Do not use a mutual-accountability exercise to suggest that someone caused or could prevent another person’s abuse by communicating better.

• Original prompt: Is there a response or habit of your own that you would like help examining?
• Original prompt: What support or practical change would make a useful next step more feasible?

7. Treat safety as a competent process, not a form score

Assess whether the requested joint work can be undertaken appropriately and safely. Concerns about fear, coercion, threats, violence, or retaliation require suitable specialist judgment and support. They should not be treated as ordinary mutual communication problems.

Do not send detailed safety questions through an ordinary shared or potentially monitored form and assume that a private answer box makes disclosure safe. Use an appropriately trained process, a suitable private setting, and a clear response route. If those conditions cannot be established, change the intake method and seek relevant specialist support.

WHO guidance for healthcare responses to partner violence emphasizes private consultation, listening without pressure, and attention to safety and support. Its clinical context does not qualify a coach to deliver healthcare or independently assess whether a violence-related couples intervention is suitable.

Explain confidentiality limits and any reporting duties that actually apply. Do not confront a partner with another person’s disclosure or organize joint disclosure as a routine coaching exercise. An immediate danger or medical concern needs an appropriate urgent response.

This section deliberately does not provide a scored abuse screen. Use the referral guide to plan a proportionate professional route while obtaining the specialist competence the situation requires.

8. Agree a useful goal and service arrangement

Ask what each person hopes to gain and whether those aims can be served together. A goal may concern a particular discussion, responsibilities, or clarifying next choices. Coaching should not assume that reconciliation or staying together is the only acceptable outcome.

Explain format, duration, fees, support, access, preparation, cancellation, and how the service can end. Review what happens if only one person wishes to continue; an existing joint role can create conflicts that require a new decision rather than an automatic private engagement.

• Original prompt: What would make the first part of this work useful to you?
• Original prompt: What questions do you have about the service, participation, information sharing, or practical arrangements before deciding?

Use the questionnaire in a clear four-stage process

• Explain: Describe scope, participation, privacy, safe contact, and how responses will be used before collection.
• Collect proportionately: Offer an appropriate format, accessible alternatives, and a manageable amount of relevant information.
• Review suitability: Identify service fit, different goals, missing information, and any need for specialist support before assuming a joint session should proceed.
• Agree the next conversation: Confirm what may be discussed together, what remains private under the agreement, the initial focus, and any unresolved arrangements.

If someone does not want to complete a form, ask whether a different suitable format would help. Do not assume skepticism, require a fixed 20-minute persuasion call, or invite them into a process they do not want.

Worked example: different answers clarify the first task

This original fictional example concerns partners who both freely want help organizing household responsibilities. One describes the problem as unequal work; the other describes uncertainty about what is expected. The coach first confirms that the proposed joint conversation is suitable and that both agree to discuss those summaries.

The initial focus becomes one recurring task: planning the following week’s meals. They describe the steps, choose who owns which decision, and agree how to raise a constraint. The coach does not use the differing answers to identify a hidden attachment diagnosis or decide who is the better partner.

At review, they can discuss whether the arrangement was understood and usable. The example shows how an intake creates a specific starting point. It does not demonstrate that a form resolves inequality, establishes safety, or guarantees relationship improvement.

Set up original intake material in Coachful deliberately

Use an original form or worksheet for the agreed purpose and send it to the intended recipient through the appropriate route. Review actual access, response visibility, notifications, and downloads before asking for sensitive information. A form assigned to a group or shared account can have a different audience from an individual record.

Keep joint summaries separate from information that should not be shared under the agreement. Describe the actual permissions and technical access without promising that only one named coach can ever see the data. Collect and retain only what the work and applicable obligations require.

An original Coachful questionnaire is distinct from the licensed Gottman Relationship Checkup and its clinical assessment process. Use protected assessments only through their authorized route and within the applicable competence and terms; do not copy items or scoring into a branded form.

Frequently asked questions

Is this an evidence-based diagnostic questionnaire?

It is an original planning template. It can organize a conversation, but it has not been validated to diagnose a condition, score safety, or predict relationship outcomes.

Should partners always complete forms separately?

Separate perspectives can help, but the communication and completion route must actually be appropriate and safe. Explain information sharing first and provide suitable alternatives.

Must every coach use a no-secrets policy?

No universal policy fits every role and jurisdiction. Establish an appropriate clear disclosure agreement before collecting information, with qualified advice where needed.

Can a questionnaire show that joint coaching is safe?

No score or form can establish that by itself. Concerns about coercion, fear, violence, or retaliation require appropriate specialist judgment and support.

What if the partners want different outcomes?

Clarify whether the proposed work can serve both appropriately. Do not assume one must accept the other’s goal or that a joint engagement should proceed.

Use intake to support an informed, respectful decision about the work. Explore Coachful’s coaching features for appropriately organized forms, client records, and delivery.

Primary references: ICF Code of Ethics; WHO, Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence Against Women (2013), and the 2014 clinical handbook; The Gottman Institute’s description of its therapy assessment and Relationship Checkup. The sample prompts and workflow are original, not copied assessment items.