Weekend Marriage Counseling: Couples Intensive
What if there was a way to accomplish in 2-3 days what normally takes months of week-to-week marriage counseling? If your schedule makes weekly couple counseling difficult, or if you want to get in a better place quickly, I have good news: SoulCare offers private weekend marriage counseling. It’s called The Couples Intensive. Imagine having a counselor trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy to yourselves for 2-3 days without losing momentum while a week passes until your next session.
What Is A Weekend Marriage Counseling Intensive?
Simply put, a weekend marriage counseling intensive is months of highly effective Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples compressed into one powerful weekend. It’s not a traditional marriage retreat with dozens of couples listening to a speaker learning about communication techniques and conflict management. This is just you two and your EFT therapist alone working on your issues using Emotionally Focused Therapy to repair, recover, and reconnect on a deep emotional level. Research has shown that 92% of couples who complete EFT see significant progress in their relationship. In our weekend EFT intensives, that has been our experience as well. Even couples with deep wounds have seen progress that would have been next to impossible with regular weekly therapy.
Why Is A Weekend Marriage Counseling Intensive So Effective?
The secret of the weekend marriage counseling intensive’s success is two-fold. First, we use the most effective couple counseling model there is: Emotionally Focused Therapy. EFT goes to the heart of your relationship’s problem, emotional disconnection. In the early days of your relationship, you had such a deep connection that even when there was a conflict, you could easily find your way back to friendship, romance, sex, and intimate closeness. But the wear and tear of years of focus on work, raising kids, paying bills, sicknesses, family squabbles, trauma in the relationship, betrayals, loss of trust, abandonment, etc. have wounded or broken that connection and now you find yourself stuck in an endless negative conflict cycle that you don’t know how to break. EFT is basically a map that is designed to identify the unmet needs that are driving that cycle, communicate them in a way that will be received, repair the damage, and reconnect on a deep emotional level again.
The second part of the secret is that we don’t lose momentum. In weekly counseling, often just when you start making headway, your hour is up. During the ensuing week, “life” happens and you either lose the momentum of last week’s therapy or you do further damage that now has to be repaired. Weekly therapy can sometimes feel like running on a treadmill, where stopping means going backwards. That doesn’t happen with the weekend intensive. At the end of the hour, you don’t stop; you keep going. Just the simple fact that you stay with your therapy for a whole weekend, without stopping and without distractions, means that it’s very hard to stay stuck. As I said, even couples with tough issues make progress and leave saying that it was definitely worth it.
What Happens At A Weekend Marriage Counseling Intensive?
The weekend marriage counseling intensive begins on a Friday and ends on Saturday or Sunday at noon (depending on whether you choose a two or three-day retreat). Below is an example of the type of schedule we use. It can be adjusted according to need.
DAY ONE
12:00-1:15 Couple Counseling
1:15-2:00 Break and couple work on "The Demon Dialogues"
2:00-3:15 Couple Counseling
3:15-4:00 Break and couple work on "Finding the Raw Spots"
4:00-5:15 Couple Counseling
5:15-5:30 Wrap-up and evening assignment for "Revisiting A Rocky Moment"
DAY TWO
10:00-11:15 Couple Counseling
11:15-12:30 Lunch and couple work on "Engaging and Connecting"
12:30-1:45 Couple Counseling
1:45-2:30 Break and couple work on "Forgiving Injuries"
2:30-3:30 Couple Counseling
3:30-4:00 Break and couple work on "Bonding Through Sex and Touch"
4:00-5:15 Couple Counseling
5:15-5:30 Wrap-up and assignment for "Keeping Your Love Alive"
Is A Weekend Marriage Counseling Intensive For You?
Before you make the decision to do the intensive, we schedule a free thirty-minute consultation with your potential therapist to go over what we do at the intensive, answer any questions you have, and just make sure it feels right. At that time, the therapist will schedule some private intake sessions to get some background, relationship history, etc. before the weekend. These sessions are covered in the cost of the intensive.
The intensive is not recommended where:
There is an active addiction
There is an ongoing affair
There is abuse going on in the present
Both partners are not committed to working on healing the relationship
If you are struggling in your marriage and want to learn more about the couples intensive counseling retreat, I urge you to read more about couples intensives and then reach out to us for a free thirty-minute consultation.
Dr. Bernis Riley is co-founder and Clinical Director of SoulCare Counseling. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor and a Certified EFT Therapist with a Doctorate in Psychology. She is also trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). She has been leading SoulCare couples counseling intensives for several years.
