Any couple striving for greater intimacy and fulfillment can benefit from this program. Intense work is done with couples who have been together for many years, as well as those who are in a new relationship or those contemplating ending their relationship.

The Healing Curriculum

Coupleship is a 4 ½-day program that helps couples learn essential skills for creating or maintaining a healthy relationship. The skills taught include how to share feelings, renew intimacy, and enhance overall communication, commitment, forgiveness and joy. Presentations and exercises address such issues as how the past affects current relationships, sexuality and intimacy, managing conflict, blocks that keep relationships from growing, negotiating, and romance responsibilities. This helpful information is combined with rich sharing, practice, and connection in couples groups. In all, participants gain a clearer picture of their relationships. Couples leave with the essential tools for change.

All of the Coupleship Programs can help you:

• Learn essential relationship skills.
• Be aware of individual responsibilities in the relationship.
• Clarify relationship issues and choices.
• Learn to model healthy relationships.
• Learn and practice communication skills.
• Renew trust.
• Learn to manage conflict.
• Increase intimacy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What can a couple expect from their participation in the Coupleship Program?

This workshop lets couples get away from their busy lives and retreat to focus on their relationship for 4 ½ days without interruptions of daily life. The process combines information, practice, therapy and structure, helping couples get a clear picture of where the relationship stands and learn new skills to enhance the relationship. Because the couples are here for such a concentrated time, and with our active experiential techniques, we are able to show couples what brought them together from their histories, how history impacts the relationship today, and how their current life situations and patterns of interaction interfere and/or enhance the relationship.

Do couples need to be in crisis to attend?

We have couples attend who are in every stage of their relationship. Some couples in a new relationship come with the goal of developing a healthy, positive coupleship, while others are in great pain and have ended or are considering ending their relationship. Most fall somewhere in between. Many couples attend who are in transition and experiencing life changes, who want to rekindle the passion and joy in the relationship, or who need to rebuild trust.

What model of couple’s therapy do you use?

As with our individual therapy programs, we use experiential therapy. This dynamic method combines techniques from psychodrama, gestalt, group process, art, music, and behavioral therapies to allow issues, awareness and feelings to emerge. In addition, couples practice communication and conflict resolution skills throughout the program. The workshops considers the relationship as our client while the couple is here: thus any major individual issues that emerge during the program are referred out for further work at home. We focus only on how these individual issues affect the coupleship. The underlying philosophy is consistent with research, which shows that lasting success in relationships requires a combination of increasing positive regard in relationships, and ability to use repair techniques in conflict.

What skill can couples expect to learn?

During the program, couples are given scores of practical tools to enhance the relationship:

• Tips on specific romance and intimacy building possibilities.
• Communication tools such as mirroring, negotiations, and clarification for use in non-conflict situations.
• De-escalation and repair techniques for conflict situations.
• Ways to approach and receive “hot topics” and manage anger.
• Ways to manage perpetual issues in the relationship that can build respect and trust.

How are addictions/compulsions addressed in the process?

Our philosophy is that it is not possible to have emotional intimacy when active addictions and compulsive behaviors are present in a relationship. These behaviors are confronted in the context of the affect on the coupleship. Recommendations are made for behavioral change, referral for treatment or assessment are encouraged as part of follow up to the program.

In conclusion:

Teaching concepts and raising awareness allows a couple to get unstuck and to intervene on old patterns. Our goal is to have couples more open to examining individual issues affecting the coupleship, see the value of improving the relationship as the focus vs. “fixing” the partner, able to use the communication and conflict resolution skills, see the dysfunctional patterns in the relationship and how to modify them. Most importantly, most couples return with renewed hope and energy to improve the relationship.