About Intensive Couples Therapy

In addition to offering weekly 90 minute sessions, we offer intensive (also known as Marathon) couples therapy and couples retreats. Couples intensives and retreats offer a dynamic alternative to traditional weekly or bi-weekly sessions.  They offer couples both the time and space to work on their issues in a deep and understanding way without the time constraints experienced in traditional couples counseling. Intensive Couples Therapy and Private Couples Retreats are ideal for couples who live some distance from one of our offices, couples who have difficulty setting aside time for weekly appointments, highly distressed couples, and couples desiring a more urgent and intensive approach to manage a current crisis or general intimacy or relationship issues. This is an ideal approach for couples experiencing a great deal of distress and want to see positive momentum quickly as it provides a condensed and highly focused approach to your relationship issues.  Such an intensive focus can help you and your partner explore deep relational issues, move quickly through specific areas of difficulty, uncover viable solutions, and learn important new skills in a short period of time. Intensives and retreats are additionally helpful for couples who are seeking to enhance an already great relationship.

Intensive couples therapy can take place in a Marathon session which occurs over the course of 6 hours, 18 hours during the week, or over the course of a 2-3 Day Private Weekend Retreat with you and your partner meeting with a therapist for 6 hours per day. Like the weekly couples therapy offered through our clinic, intensive couples therapy works on restoring and repairing friendship and intimacy as well as strengthening skills in managing and resolving conflicts. Treatment may focus on increasing intimacy and connection, communication and conflict repair, emotional closeness and passion, affair recovery, infidelity disclosure, sexual desire issues, resexualizing relationships, pornography and internet abuse, sexual addiction or compulsion, open marriage/polyamory issues, as well as trauma and PTSD recovery.

We additionally offer Small-Group Couples Retreats. Our exclusive small-group couples retreats provide an opportunity for couples to learn new skills for deepening intimacy, strengthening your friendship, managing conflicts, expanding your understanding of one another, and enhancing the overall tone of your relationship. Participants in small-group couples retreats will learn through lecture, role-plays, discussions, and through private exercises with your partner. Small-group retreats are limited to seven couples.

Intensive Therapy Format

Similar to the format of our weekly couples therapy sessions, the intensive therapy and private couples retreat process involves an initial assessment of your relationship. The assessment, however, differs in that it is focused primarily on your area of crisis.  Using the information gathered through the assessment as a road map for treatment, we dive right in to frequently effective research-based interventions. Intensive therapy and private couples retreat sessions generally include two to three hours of therapy in the morning, a break for lunch, and two to three hours of therapy in the afternoon. Your treatment will be structured according to the issues highlighted by you and your partner, your goals for the therapy, and your emotional needs.

Marathon and Private Couples Retreats are generally held at our Torrance, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Atlanta, Georgia offices or Online.