The specifics of your marriage therapy retreat will be hand-crafted to the issues or conflicts in your relationship, and as a result, every retreat is unique. We might work on communication, conflict resolution, trust, affection and romance—to name a few. But a marriage retreat will also include intensive assistance with specific problems or emotions unique to your relationship. The goal is to eliminate or reduce the power of those issues, or to forge agreements between the two of you so that those issues are reduced or extinguished entirely.

Here are some of the activities that are often included:

Day 1

• What brings you two in and what are you wanting to achieve or accomplish?
• What would it take for the two of you to create a new marriage or relationship?
• Each person is invited to bring one issue they want resolved
  • Facilitated dialogue using a new set of “intimacy skills” designed to resolve these issues
  • Learn to use these skills yourself at home so you will hopefully not need a marriage therapist in the future
• Specifically how you could improve as a spouse/partner?
• Listening for the longing in your partner’s complaints
• Here’s how to stop interrupting
• Why communication so often fails in a relationship
• What it takes as an adult to have a good relationship.
• Couple’s reconnecting activity to assist you in warming up to each other again.

Day 2

• Each person is invited to bring a second issue they want resolved, using the state-of-the-art intimacy skillset introduced yesterday
• What is empathy, how to be better at it–or how to do it
• Are you walled off? (self-evaluation)
• Boundaries versus walls
  • Guided visualization to understand and explore your wall
  • How to make your wall more discretionary and optional
• Identifying detachment in your relationship
• Invisible divorce: exploring all the ways you may be withdrawing and disconnecting from your relationship
• Do you go into fight/flight or withdrawal as an autopilot response?
• Communication skills: How to communicate more effectively.
• Anger reduction techniques.
• De-escalating skills.
• Defensiveness. What is it, and how can you control it?
• Who gets your negative energy? Who most needs your positive energy?
• Softening your tone and rhetoric, and making it safe to be in a relationship with you
• Love languages: What languages do you normally offer, and which ones do you wish to receive?
• What periodic repair work consists of.
• Deepening the connection between the two of you.

Day 3

• Each person is invited to bring a third unresolved issue or conflict, using the new set of intimacy skills
• What do you think your spouse/partner is actually fighting about? What are the deeper things the two of you are actually fighting about?
• Forgiveness exercise. Forgiving someone, asking for forgiveness from someone and forgiving yourself.
• Rebuilding trust
• What women really want
• What is romance? How are you doing it, and how you could improve?
• How to romance a woman
• Sexual secrets every woman should know
• Relationship wellness checkup
• How to add more fun to your relationship
• Emotional intelligence
• Romantic intelligence
• Becoming a “student” husband or wife.
• Accepting responsibility for your relationship
• Creating a vision you’re shooting for: Goals for the future of your relationship
• How do great couples make their relationship work so well?
• Choosing peace instead of irritation
• Answer these questions together to create a closer connection.

Day 4

• Forgiving the unforgivable
• Letting go of grievances
• Your safe place
• Are you the seeker or the sought after?
• How jealous are you?
• Do you feel worthy of love?
• Approach/avoidance syndrome
• Are you controlling?
• How critical are you?
• Financial issues and money conflicts
• Deepening the relationship
• Loss of sexual desire
• Improve/restart your sex life
• Early warning signs that your relationship is in trouble
• How to prevent a divorce or a break-up
• 10 ways to improve your relationship immediately
• Heal the wounds of your heart and reopen your heart yet again exercise
• The secrets of compatibility
• That lovin’ feeling requires these behaviors
• Pivoting
• Anything left unfinished from days 1-3

Breaks (including a working lunch) will be taken as needed. At the end of each day, you are free to do what you want. Dine in one of the many exquisite restaurants in the area, take a drive in the mountains, hike, ski, explore or just relax. There are plenty of fun things to do.