Intensive Couples & Marriage Counseling
Our licensed marriage therapists will spend 2-3 days working with you to renew your hope in your relationship, help get you moving away from stuck problems and toward practical solutions.
How do you know if Intensive Couples Therapy is for you and your partner?
- Do you and your spouse feel like you have put a lot of effort into your marriage but still feel stuck?
- Have you come to the ‘end of the rope’ in your relationship?
- Do you want to see change quickly?
- Have you tried traditional couples therapy and feel it did not work the way you wanted it to?
- Are you ready to invest more in your relationship?
- Does resolution to your problems elude you despite your best efforts?
- Are you desperate to see a positive difference in your relationship or marriage?
If you answered YES to any of these questions, then Intensive Couples Therapy might be for you.
Best Value
With Intensive Couples Therapy, you get a bigger bang for your buck. When you go to weekly therapy, change comes at a slower pace. Meaning you pay more over months of therapy for the same changes you could see in days with Intensive Couples Therapy.
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Best Option
Intensive Couples Therapy is proven to be more effective than traditional weekly couples therapy. In fact, it’s been shown to cut your time in therapy in half.
3 days of Intensive Couples Therapy = 3 months of regular weekly therapy!
What You Get
A Deep Dive Pre-Intensive Assessment
Before the Couples Intensive starts, both of you will sit down with your therapist for a one on one session to discuss your hopes for the relationship. You will also complete an in-depth, evidence-based relationship assessment to further help your therapist make the intensive the best it can be.
8-12 Hours of Relationship Changing Therapy
The time spent in therapy will be guided by a qualified, licensed, and experienced couples therapist. They will help you have greater insight and understanding into where you get stuck and give you practical tools to help get you moving.
Customized Post-Intensive Action Plan
You won’t leave the Intensive empty handed. You’ll get our cutomized Relationship ToolKit full of exercises and ideas to keep building your connection + a personalized strategy from your therapist for follow-up care.
Learn how marriage counseling can help you rediscover hope and find the strength to face your challenges as a couple.
Intensive Couples Therapy FAQs
While you might not have all your questions answered here, these are some common ones we get.
Send us your questions not covered here and we’ll get you answers ASAP.
How can we expect to spend our time during the intensive?
Overall, your therapist will use the information gained from your one on one sessions and through your deep-dive relationship assessment to develop a plan for the Intensive. They will develop personalized goals and objectives for the Intensive that they will then share with you to ensure you are all on the same page.
Time during the intensive will be spent developing tools and strategies to help you descalate conflict, improve your communication skills, increase awareness of destructive communication patterns, increase emotional and sexual intimacy, and develop and improve rituals of connection.
Using traditional talk therapy, your therapist will also spend time helping you work through past resentments, increase the sense of safety in your relationship, and grow your friendship with each other.
It is a lot of time to take off from work, cover childcare, etc. Why do we need so much time during the intensive to make changes?
A concentrated amount of time is what makes the intensive different.
By spending 8-12 hours together, your therapist can help you zero in on issues and roadblocks much faster. You get to know your therapist and your therapist gets to know you in a much different way than weekly therapy. Your therapist is able to focus solely on you, without the distraction a normal day of therapy brings.
Often during traditional weekly therapy, issues may arise between sessions that prove to be distracting to the good progress you may have been making. The Intensive decrease the chance for distration. You can focus in on the hour by hour and day to day progress.
The time spend in an intensive also gives you a more hopeful picture going forward. Stacking several hours of therapy together over a short amount of time allows you to clearly see how much progress you’ve made. As you leave the intensive, you can clearly remember where you were in your relationship was when you started, and how different it is at the end.
It is a lot of money to invest in three days. Is it really worth the money?
It is a lot of money!
But you would also spend a lot of money over the course of traditional weekly therapy since it will take longer to see change. You would end up spending more time and money in the long run.
Follow up is cheaper too! Most intensive therapy clients follow up less than 3x per quarter compared to weekly therapy where that number may be closer to 6-8 times per quarter.
And, of course, it is way cheaper than a separation or divorce.
It is an investment in your relationship and your relationship is worth that investment.
Weekly couples therapy already felt intense and difficult. Wouldn't 12 hours of therapy in 3 days be too overwhelming?
We know it can sound overwhelming to consider an intensive. However, we work hard to structure variety into the intensive. At times it is more traditional therapy oriented where you are sharing with your therapist and with each other. At other times you are simply listening to your therapist explain a concept or skill. There are also exercises to complete. Some you complete individually and some as a couple.
While this combination of talk therapy, teaching, and exercises is effective, it also helps you to not feel so overwhelmed during the intensive. In fact, most of our couples are surprised at how fast the time goes.
We also work hard to make sure you feel safe and comfortable throughout our time together. Your therapist will build in breaks, go at your pace, and overall strive to create an atmosphere where you feel confident as you work on your relationship.
Where can we expect our relationship to be after the intensive?
While we cannot make 100% guarantees, most of our couples feel more hopeful about the future of their relationship and feel they gained new skills to address their problem areas. Many tell us they have taken significant steps toward healing of built-up resentments and overall feel a greater sense of emotional safety in their relationships.
Intensives are not a cure all. Instead they are designed to turn your relationship around and give you forward momentum in making the changes you want. Think of a snowball rolling down a steep hill. An Intensive propells you forward so changes in your relationship happen faster and build on themselves so that change leads to more change.
What follow-up steps do most couples take post-intensive?
While every couple is different, most couples schedule follow-up therapy at various intervals. Your therapist will work with you to find a frequency that works for you and meets your needs. Some couples do monthly follow-up sessions while some prefer longer sessions once a quarter. Some come to really like the intensive model and schedule another six months down the road. Any follow up recommendations are discussed at the end of the Intensive and then emailed to you the next day. We also include all various options of how that follow up could look. You then get to choose what works for you.
