The Miracle Question for Your Marriage: A Solution-Focused Approach to a New Year of Connection

The New Year is a time when many of us are using self-reflection to guide yearly goals. The Miracle Question is a Solution-Focused Therapy intervention you can use to guide some of your New Year relationship goals and gain some positive change in marriage communication. The Miracle Question in marriage is meant to deepen your emotional connection, understanding, and communication with your partner. Solution-Focused Therapy for couples focuses on short, concrete steps you can take to envision the marriage you want to have this upcoming year. First, let’s check out what exactly the miracle question looks like and where it comes from.

What Is “The Miracle Question?”

The Miracle Question is a Solution-Focused Therapy intervention meant to help imagine your best hopes for a given situation. In the context of relationship solutions for couples, The Miracle Question can be used for envisioning a healthy marriage in The New Year. You might start by sitting down with your partner and asking, “If a miracle happened tonight and our relationship was exactly how you wanted it to be, what would be different?” See if you can come from a place of curiosity, noting specifics of your best hopes for the relationship, and truly listening to your partner’s best hopes. Can you note any areas of shared hopes for the relationship?

Solution-Focused Therapy for relationships shifts the focus from past struggles and current issues to recognizing strengths that already exist between you and your partner. Through emphasizing what is already working, you can use these strengths to build a shared vision for the future. You and your partner can identify strengths of your relationship through recognizing how some of your past hopes for the relationship have already come to fruition. You can also recognize personality traits and characterizations of one another which can help your best hopes come true in the New Year.

Here are some prompts to get you started in using “The Miracle Question” for your relationship:

• “If a miracle happened tonight and our relationship was exactly how you wanted it to be, what would be different?”
• “If this miracle came true, what would be the first thing you would notice about our relationship being different?”
• “What traits do we each have that could contribute to our best hopes for the relationship?”
• “When have we used our strengths as a couple in the past year?”
• “What are the places and spaces where we notice the least amount of conflict in our relationship?”
• “What are the small steps we can take now to get to our best hopes for the relationship?”
• “How would our daily or weekly routine change to support these small steps?”
• “How will we know we’ve reached our best hopes for the New Year?”