7 Benefits Of Intensive Marriage Counseling
When you need to focus, strengthen or fix your marriage, intensive marriage counseling is the answer. The terms retreat, a couples-intensive or couples marathon will be used interchangeably. Retreats are a great opportunity to leave the kids, chores, bills, and work at home and dedicate one, two or even three days to save, nurture or rebuild your relationship or marriage.
What Is A Couples’ Retreat?
Many couples’ retreats have approximately 50 or more couples in a getaway location for a few days to learn about ways to improve their relationship.
As a couples therapist, I have found it very useful to plan a couples’ retreat for one specific couple. An individualized plan is developed to explore relationship history, family history and goals. The couple will have an opportunity to have a deeper understanding of their individual strengths and challenges too.
They will also be able to obtain faster results because they dedicated a longer timeframe to discuss their issues. Also, because they dedicated time to such intensive counseling, they can save themselves three or more months of therapy.
Here are 7 Benefits of Intensive Marriage Counseling:
- Faster Results: Devoting time to your relationship without interruption will lead to faster results. The combination of longer sessions over a short span of time (usually a few days) will help jump-start your relationship.
- Uninterrupted: You can focus on your relationship instead of trying to juggle kids, chores or carpools. The longer sessions will keep you focused on your goals. You will learn more skills without having to start and stop your sessions.
- Faster Healing: Because you are dedicating a substantial amount of time over a few days, you can begin the healing process and start improving your relationship. You will have the time to repair the injuries that have created the pain and hurt in your relationship.
- Less Repetition: When you have to wait a week or more between sessions, sometime you can lose traction and start repeating old patterns. During a retreat, you have many opportunities to practice learning the new tools and reduce your arguments, and you aren’t hindered by the pitfalls of extended breaks between sessions.
- Help Now: If you feel like your relationship cannot survive weekly sessions that may take months to see improvement, then intensive marriage counseling will be your best choice. When a betrayal has just occurred or one partner has threatened divorce, this retreat will help you make a decision about your relationship immediately, and you won’t have to remain in uncomfortable limbo for weeks or months on end, which is where you might have found yourself otherwise..
- Connect: Taking time to sit across from your partner and understand your relationship’s strengths and challenges provides an opportunity to connect and become more intimate again. You will learn ways to improve your emotional connection and intimacy and build appreciation and friendship.
- Fall In Love Again: Your intensive marriage counseling sessions will help you slow down the pace of life. This is especially important in today’s world, when the pace of life has accelerated so much. A retreat provides a chance for you to turn off your phones, hold hands again and talk about the love you once had and how you can reignite it. Because of this, retreats provide many couples with a second chance. If you feel like you have “fallen out of love” with your partner, learn what you can do to fall in love again.
Reasons To Attend Intensive Marriage Counseling
Couples may decide to attend a couples retreat to address “sex and intimacy issues, recovery after an affair, empty nest challenges, midlife crisis, communication problems, conflicts, and divorce.” If you are looking for answers to how to rekindle the spark you once had, or if you want to find ways to become unstuck and resolve issues that you keep going around and around about, then a retreat will help you.
Other couples may want to make a major decision in their lives, such as whether or not they should get married or remain married. Frequently, these couples want and need to explore what has brought them to this juncture in their lives and how to move forward.
Retreats can help you save your marriage and create hope on how you can move forward. When you learn the benefits to intensive marriage counseling, you will be able to decide if they are right for you.
Additional reading to support your relationship as you explore options for couples therapy and healing:
How To Discuss Relationship Problems Without Fighting
Why Do We Keep Having The Same Arguments?
How Often Do Couples Fight And Should You Be Concerned?
What Causes Resentment In A Marriage (Plus How You Can Heal Resentment In Yours)
