Marriage Retreats - Why Choose to Go

Marriage retreats offer a great option for helping your marriage. Many people choose the individualized retreats - just you, your partner, and the therapist - as a way to receive concentrated, focused attention on your concerns. Here are some of the common reasons to choose such a retreat.

You are in the throws of an unfolding marriage affair crisis.

Infidelity usually brings waves of confusion, anger, sadness, fear, interrogations, defensiveness, depression, uncertainty about the future, and an uncertainty about how to bring direction to the marriage. Individualized marriage retreats can help you move forward on these feelings, understand a process and direction towards healing and recovery, identify and learn helpful tools, and clarify areas for each partner to work on.

You want to get moving on an issue quickly, or you want to make quick progress.

Because of their length and concentration, marriage retreats offer a unique way to quickly address marriage concerns and begin to move in a new direction. Their concentrated length enables participants to delve deeply into their concerns and gain new understanding of themselves, their partner, the affair, their marriage, and the path towards healing and improving their relationship.

You want to get your marriage moving in a new direction.

Since individualized retreats are so focused and in depth, they can help identify the past problems, identify the needed changes, introduce and practice new skills, and identify new directions to move in.

You or your partner is hesitant to enter regular counseling.

Surprisingly, many people who hesitate to commit to weekly counseling are willing to go to a marriage retreat because it is so concentrated in time commitment.

One or both of you have an extremely high need for confidentiality.

This need is common among certain professions: politicians; civic leaders; diplomats; prominent business leaders; physicians; and other very public figures. Since most individualized retreats are not local and do not involve insurance billing, privacy is enhanced.

Your schedules prohibit the consistent scheduling needed for regular counseling.

In our highly demanding work and family roles - this is becoming increasingly common. The concentrated time limited nature of marriage retreats make it possible to do some very good relationship work by just blocking out a few days. Many people actually find this easier and more feasible than ongoing appointments.

We find that most couples who have participated in retreats have been very satisfied with their choice. Many couples report that being away from the routines at home helped them focus deeply on their marriage. They also report an appreciation for the depth, focus, and practical skills offered by their retreat experience. Participants find that the relative absence of time pressure of their marriage retreat allowed deeper, less hurried personal work. Others valued the combination of relationship work and connection time afterwards.

All counseling requires a commitment by couples to be effective; and marriage retreats do require a unique commitment of time, money, and energy. Consider the reasons above to help you decide whether a marriage retreat is appropriate and valuable for you.