meet mark & gail smallcombe

Growing up, we're taught a lot of things that we never end up using, yet it seems no one really teaches us the one thing that most greatly determines our level of success and happiness in life... and that is “how to do relationships well.” 

At 18 years of age when I met and fell in love with the girl I was to marry 3 years later, I guessed everything would ‘just work’ in marriage. I knew how to express love and passion but extremely little about how to love my wife in the way she deserved to be loved and related to. While we had a good marriage and a deep commitment to each other, there were glaring differences we didn’t know how to resolve or reconcile. In my dual careers as a paramedic, and pastor, I knew how to mend lives physically and spiritually but I wanted to help people and my own marriage, relationally. After two years of intensive training in couple and relational therapy, I earned the qualifications as a marriage and family counselor, but just as important, I gained the understanding, empathy and skills required to build a healthy, vitalized and richly satisfying marriage with Gail. 43 years later, we are even more in love and are enjoying the fruit of oneness and a richly satisfying love.

God has given us a great love for people, a deep interest in their wellbeing, and a wisdom to offer guidance and support to them. We just believe in people and believe that their relationships can flourish, overcome obstacles and last the distance. My joy is to help couples experience the oneness, commitment, security and happiness that God has for them, even more than we’ve enjoyed in our own journey. Mark and I have discovered that our sweet spot is helping other couples learn skills and develop the tools to build new and fulfilling ways of relating and loving. I look forward to meeting you and serving you in every way we can.

We help good marriages become great marriages! We help conflicted relationships become healthy and harmonious! We help revive and revitalize, devitalized marriages.

OUR QUALIFICATIONS

Marriage Counseling and Couple Therapy 

• In 1991, Mark graduated with honors after two years and 200 hours of Couple and Family Mediation training, under the Family Law Act of Australia, focusing in Transactional Analysis, Gestalt, Sex therapy and Systemic Theory in Couple Counseling. 

Certified Prepare/Enrich Facilitators and Practitioners

• For the last 25 years, Mark and Gail as relationship coaches, have worked with dating, engaged and married couples – equipping couples and families with evidence-based skills and insights to foster healthy relationships. 
• The Prepare/Enrich assessment helps us as coaches to quickly understand couples at the dyadic and individual level using a non-judgmental approach to the complexity of their relationship. With the objective feedback that the Prepare/Enrich assessment provides, Mark and Gail help couples identify their relationship strengths, gain understanding of the underlying dynamics that influence their communication, and them help couples develop skills to improve their growth areas. Mark and Gail work with couples in facilitator/couple relationships, small groups, retreats, marriage mentor programs and other settings 

Refocusing Therapy

• Mark and Gail also offer “refocusing therapy,” a counseling theory and practice to help people achieve a holistic way of living and move from a problem focused perspective to a solution focused perspective.

Real Life Credentials

• Perhaps Mark and Gail’s greatest credential is their proven track record (over 4 decades) of a loving, healthy and happy marriage, and many years of high-level relationship wisdom, experience and success in helping others