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.
Risks
Please note, there are some risks involved in participating in intensive couples therapy. Intensive couples therapy is not intended for couples who are not committed to the concentrated nature of this therapeutic process. Because of the fast paced and focused nature of treatment, you and/or your partner may experience uncomfortable feelings like sadness, guild, anxiety, anger, loneliness, and helplessness. You or your partner may also recall unpleasant aspects of your life (with your partner as well as scenarios predating your relationship). There is a chance that difficulties between you and your partner may be temporarily amplified, your family secrets may be disclosed to one another, and, even with our best efforts, therapy may not provide the outcomes you desire. We consequently, can make no guarantees about how your relationship will fare as a result of our work together.
When Couples Intensives
Are Not Appropriate
Intensive couples therapy is not recommended when there is an ongoing or undisclosed affair that either partner is not willing to end or disclose, when there is serious violence in the relationship, if there is active alcohol and/or drug addiction in one or both partners, if one partner is suicidal or homicidal, if either partner is threatening the other with serious violence, if there is fear that a partner may become violent, or if either partner currently has an untreated serious mental illness (i.e.., schizophrenia, recurrent psychotic depression, or bipolar disorder). Individual therapy may better address these issues.
Which Intensive Format is Best For You?
2-Day Private Couples Marathon Therapy
- Best for Couples Who:
✓ Are seeking to build and strengthen their relationship
✓ Are seeking preventative care
✓ Have a solid relationship but have some minor differences to work out
✓ Are able to manage conflict productively but need assistance making a specific decision
✓ Are desiring to enhance intimacy
✓ Are interested in premarital preparation
- Includes:Assessment&One Day of Therapy
- 10-12 Hours of Work
3-Day Private Couples Marathon Therapy
- Best for Couples Who:
✓ Are seeking to make relatively minor repairs in their relationship
✓ Are trying to get a once strong relationship back on track
✓ Have struggled for some time with friendship and/or conflict
✓ Need assistance making a major life decision (e.g., to have children, to make a job change, to relocate, etc.)
✓ Are desiring to enhance intimacy
✓ Feel more like roommates than romantic partners
- Includes:Assessment&Two Days of Therapy
- 15-18 Hours of Work
4-Day Private Couples Marathon Therapy
- Best for Couples Who:
✓ Are needing to repair a major betrayal (e.g., an affair)
✓ Have an underlying trauma that impacts the relationship occasionally or regularly
✓ Need assistance navigating multiple areas of conflict
✓ Desire to improve intimacy but struggle with conflict
✓ Desire to reignite intimacy (e.g., have not been physically intimate in months, not feeling connected)
✓ Feel more like enemies than partners
✓ Have separated but are wanting to reconcile
- Includes:Assessment&Three Days of Therapy
- 20-24 Hours of Work
5-Day Private Couples Marathon Therapy
- Best for Couples Who:
✓ Are needing to rebuild their relationship - the relationship feels as if it has been shattered
✓ Are needing to completely overhaul their relationship
✓ Need assistance navigating significant conflict - conflict system is severely strained
✓ Need assistance navigating significant emotional disconnection
✓ Are attempting to recover from multiple or deep-seated betrayals
✓ Have major trauma(s) that hinder repair and consistent connection
✓ Have not had a physically intimate relationship for years
✓ Have filed for divorce but are wanting to reconcile
- Includes:Assessment&Four Days of Therapy
- 25-30 Hours of Work
To learn more or to schedule an appointment for intensive couples therapy and retreats, please contact our office at 855-878-5325.