Couples Intensives in Colorado: When Your Relationship Needs More Than Weekly Therapy

Some relationship problems are difficult to address an hour at a time.

You may have been fighting about the same issues for years. Resentment has accumulated. One of you has withdrawn. Trust may have been damaged. Conversations quickly become defensive or angry. Perhaps you’ve already tried couples counseling and understand your problems better—but the relationship itself hasn’t changed enough.

Or you may have reached a more serious point, where one or both of you are questioning whether the relationship can survive.

A couples intensive gives us something that ordinary weekly therapy often cannot: enough uninterrupted time to understand what has gone wrong and work directly on changing it.

At Colorado Marriage Retreats, I work privately with one couple at a time for 5–6 hours a day over 2–5 consecutive days.

There are no groups, workshops or other couples participating in your therapy.

For those days, our attention is entirely on your relationship.

What Is a Couples Intensive?

A couples intensive is concentrated couples therapy conducted over several consecutive days rather than spread across months of weekly appointments.

The difference isn’t simply that the sessions are longer.

The continuity changes what we’re able to do.

In a typical 50-minute couples therapy appointment, it can take considerable time just to understand what has happened since the previous session. Then, just as you reach the heart of something important, the appointment may end.

During an intensive, we don’t have to stop there.

We can stay with a difficult issue long enough to understand what is actually happening beneath it. We can work through emotional reactions while they are occurring. And the following day, we can continue building on what we accomplished the day before.

For couples who have been stuck for a long time, that concentrated time can be extremely valuable.

When Should a Couple Consider an Intensive?

A couples intensive isn’t necessary for every relationship. Many couples can be helped very effectively with weekly therapy.

But an intensive may be worth considering when:

• You keep having the same fights without resolving them.

• Communication has become defensive, angry or hurtful.

• One or both partners have emotionally withdrawn.

• Years of resentment have accumulated.

• You feel more like roommates than intimate partners.

• Trust has been seriously damaged.

• You’ve tried couples counseling but remain stuck.

• One partner is uncertain about staying in the relationship.

• Separation or divorce has become a serious possibility.

• You feel that your relationship is deteriorating faster than weekly therapy can address it.

Sometimes couples come because they want to repair their relationship.

Sometimes they come because they’re no longer certain it can be repaired.

Both are legitimate reasons to consider an intensive.

Why Do We Keep Having the Same Problems?

Most distressed couples aren’t suffering from a lack of effort.

They’ve usually tried many times to solve their problems.

The difficulty is that attempts to solve the problem often activate the very pattern that keeps the couple stuck.

One person raises a concern. The other hears criticism and becomes defensive. The first partner feels dismissed and pushes harder. The second becomes angry or withdraws. Soon both people are reacting to each other’s reactions, and the original issue disappears.

Or the pattern may be quieter.

One partner stops bringing things up because conversations never go well. The other interprets the silence as indifference. Gradually the relationship becomes emotionally distant.

Understanding these patterns is important.

But understanding them isn’t enough.

During an intensive, we work on changing what happens between the two of you when the pattern actually appears.

What Will We Work On?

There is no standardized program because every couple brings a different history and different problems.

Before the intensive, I want to understand what has happened in your relationship, where you’re stuck and what each of you hopes might change.

During our days together, our work may include:

• Identifying and interrupting destructive patterns of conflict

• Reducing criticism and defensiveness

• Learning how to express difficult feelings without attacking or withdrawing

• Understanding the hurts beneath anger and resentment

• Repairing longstanding emotional injuries

• Rebuilding trust when it has been damaged

• Addressing emotional withdrawal and disconnection

• Learning how to listen without immediately defending yourself

• Resolving issues that have remained unsettled for years

• Rebuilding affection and emotional closeness

• Clarifying what each partner would need in order for the relationship to work

The goal isn’t merely to give you better communication techniques.

It is to help you understand the deeper pattern that has kept the relationship stuck—and begin creating a different way of relating to each other.

What If We’ve Already Tried Couples Therapy?

Many couples who come for an intensive have already been in couples counseling.

Sometimes therapy helped, but not enough.

You may understand each other better than you did before. You may know the terminology. You may even be able to describe your negative cycle perfectly—and still find yourselves repeating it.

That doesn’t necessarily mean couples therapy has failed or that your relationship cannot change.

It may mean you need a different format.

Several consecutive days allow us to stay with important issues instead of repeatedly stopping and starting. We can move from understanding what happens between you to practicing different responses while we’re together.

For couples who have spent months or years feeling stuck, that difference can matter.

What If One of Us Isn’t Sure We Want to Stay Together?

You don’t have to arrive equally committed to saving the relationship.

In fact, some of the couples I work with arrive with one partner wanting very much to repair things and the other uncertain whether too much damage has already been done.

I don’t ask either of you to pretend to feel something you don’t.

Nor is my role to persuade you to remain together regardless of what has happened.

Instead, we examine the relationship honestly:

What happened between you?

What has kept you stuck?

What would genuinely need to change?

Is each partner willing and able to make those changes?

And is there enough remaining between you to build upon?

For some couples, the most important reason for doing an intensive is to be able to answer:

“Before we end this relationship, have we really done everything we can to determine whether it can be repaired?”

This Is Completely Private

Colorado Marriage Retreats is not a group program, workshop or seminar.

There are no other couples in your sessions.

I work with one couple at a time.

You receive approximately 5–6 hours of private couples therapy each day for 2–5 consecutive days.

That means we don’t have to spend time discussing issues that aren’t relevant to you or following a curriculum designed for a group.

Our work is organized around the problems facing your relationship.

Who Will We Work With?

You will work directly with me, Neil Rosenthal.

I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and have worked with individuals and couples for 46 years. I am the author of a #1 bestselling relationship book and more than 1,000 relationship articles published in newspapers around the world.

My practice is devoted to private couples intensives.

Over the years, I have worked with couples dealing with severe conflict, resentment, defensiveness, emotional withdrawal, damaged trust, loss of connection and uncertainty about whether their relationship can survive.

You won’t be assigned to another therapist or handed from one member of a treatment team to another.

When you come here, you work with me.

How Long Is a Couples Intensive?

Couples intensives generally last 2–5 days, with approximately 5–6 hours of private therapy each day.

The appropriate length depends upon the problems you’re facing, how long they have been present and what you hope to accomplish.

Couples come to Colorado from across the United States. During an initial telephone consultation, I can learn about your situation, answer your questions and help you determine what length of intensive might be appropriate.

Can a Few Days Really Make a Difference?

There is no ethical way to promise what will happen in any particular relationship.

An intensive cannot erase years of hurt in several days, and it cannot create commitment where none exists.

What several uninterrupted days can provide is enough time to identify the patterns that have kept you stuck, address important unresolved issues, practice different ways of responding to each other and determine what meaningful repair would actually require.

For a couple who has been going around the same circle for months or years, that can be a very different experience from another 50-minute conversation about the latest argument.

Not Sure if a Couples Intensive Is Right for You?

You don’t have to decide that before contacting me.

I offer a complimentary telephone consultation so I can learn a little about what is happening in your relationship, answer your questions and help you determine whether a private couples intensive is appropriate.

Call Neil Rosenthal at 720-331-5564.

Not ready to call? Send me a private message describing briefly what is happening in your relationship. I will personally respond.