The Intensive Marriage Retreats are a unique way for you to escape your daily routine and focus on your relationship. We help you to identify and understand key obstacles to closeness and then work with you to overcome those obstacles.

Marriage Intensive Retreats are goal-oriented marriage retreats; we help you to focus on solutions, rather than dwell on problems. Our counseling is simple, direct, calm and practical. We focus on the present and future rather than the distant past. We work to make the sessions comfortable for both partners and our down-to-earth style will help you quickly feel at ease.

For those traveling here and for Vermonters, our setting, combined with the concentrated nature of the Intensive Retreat format, helps you connect, change and heal. Having time to relax before and after your session gives you a chance to reflect and enjoy each other’s company.

We’ll give you practical skills based on your unique relationship and personalities. We’ll help you work on anger, improve collaboration, resolve conflicts, and create and maintain closeness. Intensives help you gain perspective on yourself and your relationship. Each of you will become more aware of your own contributions to your relationship – both to its problems and its strengths – and be given practical ways to change problem behavior.

The demands of careers and family can make it tough to schedule regular therapy on a weekly basis. The short, concentrated nature of our intensive marriage retreats gives you a convenient and relaxing way to get expert help along with time to practice what you’ve learned.

Retreat sessions are based in Burlington, Vermont, and are a great way to start working on your relationship in a practical, time-efficient way.

Intensive Marriage Retreat Options

Couples seeking our retreats typically fall into one of three categories: Those seeking to get a quick, concentrated start to their marriage counseling or have limited scheduling options, those seeking to overcome extramarital affairs, and those looking to overcome persistent problems.

In all three cases, the concentrated nature of our intensive marriage retreats helps you come away knowing what each partner needs to work on and how to work on it.

Quick Start Marriage Retreats (three-hour sessions)
Couples who decide to seek help or who have experienced an extramarital affair often want to begin working on their marriage immediately. These three-hour retreats give you a quick, efficient, concentrated start.

Our Quick Start Intensive Marriage Retreats give couples a three-hour concentrated dose of marriage help. This allows you to gain understanding and direction to start the healing process as efficiently as possible.

These retreats are very popular with our clients. Couples value the sense of direction and insight gained in a morning or afternoon.

Extramarital Affairs Marriage Retreat (Six- and nine-hour sessions)
An extramarital affair is one of the greatest challenges a couple can face in their relationship. Our goal in these longer, more in-depth couples retreats is to begin the resolution process and bring some order and forward movement to the frequently chaotic feelings, emotions and interactions that follow an affair.

We’ll help you understand the phases of recovery and help you determine where you are in the recovery process. We will also help both partners understand what the other is going through and work to identify why and how the affair happened.

We’ll work to rebuild understanding and trust, and look at the process that both the betrayed and the betrayer need to go through in rebuilding. In addition, we’ll help you sort out how to handle all the complications, including dealing with the “other person”, family, colleagues, and friends. Finally, we’ll help you practice skills that can be used immediately to help you on your road to rebuilding trust and closeness.

To read a more about affairs and our intensive marriage retreats, refer to Affairs.

Persistent Problems Marriage Retreat (Six- and nine-hour sessions)
These six- and nine-hour couples intensive marriage retreats are designed to increase understanding and empathy between partners while resolving persistent problems in your relationship. In these marriage retreats, we’ll address such problems as communication, defensiveness and anger, criticism, respect, conflict, emotional distance between partners, or a lack of collaboration and intimacy.

We’ll help you determine the problems in your relationship as well as your areas of strength. You will understand each partner’s role in your marital troubles and how you can work to resolve them. We’ll identify problematic patterns between you and for each of you; and you’ll gain new specific, practical skills and behaviors to address current and future problems.

The structure of these sessions will give you time after and between meetings to practice the skills you’ve learned.