The Marriage Quest Philosophy

We Get Results For You

It’s our job to get you results during your retreat. That is why couples invest in a Marriage Quest® program. Our goal is to help you become happier and healthier individuals with a more fulfilling relationship, which hopefully creates a peaceful marriage and family. Unfortunately, sometimes the marriage cannot survive in order for everyone else to live their best life, and we will provide a reality check regarding the likelihood that you can have your ideal marriage or relationship.

Tailored For Each Couple

Every retreat is tailored to meet the goals and unique needs of each couple. Many couples come to us wanting help making a decision about their marriage, and they sometimes have specific relationship qualities they are looking to improve in order to be happy again. Ironically, sometimes having difficult discussions can create profound healing in your marriage.

We have identified 4 relationship pillars that help most couples improve their connection and overall marital satisfaction. However, we also customize the process for every couple based on the goals, personalities, and skill sets of each spouse. In some cases, couples are no longer compatible, and separation must be considered as a possibility for future happiness.

The 4 Pillars Of Our Couples Therapy Retreats

The effectiveness of Marriage Quest Therapy comes from addressing communication, prioritization, regulation, and intimacy. In addition to teaching you the right skills for success, we will also hold you and your partner accountable during the sessions as you apply them. The intensive format has proven valuable to helping couples go deeply into their issues and goals, healing wounds, and making solid plans for a happier future.

The goal of therapy should be to not need therapy in the future. In order for you and your partner to either have a successful relationship or make a decision about your marriage, you will have to learn communication skills. In our experience, many other therapists teach some of these skills, but they do not either provide the full picture or hold the couple accountable to the process during session.

During our sessions, we are going to hold you accountable and guide you through a conversation that is kind, authentic, and effective to help you move your relationship in a positive direction. Many couples question their compatibility, but the truth is they are just stuck in negative patterns.

A trigger is essentially an event that hijacks your nervous system. When you enter into a fight-or-flight response, your ability to think rationally is almost entirely removed. However, shutting down your emotions is also not healthy. It takes practice to balance between states of high and low emotion where the optimal chance for connection exists.

Our job is to help you identify your emotions, regulate your behaviors, and express yourself in a way that builds a stronger connection between you and your spouse. Ideally, your marriage should be a sanctuary where you can both return when you need rebalancing or peace.

By the time they arrive, most couples that attend an intensive couples retreat tell us that they don’t feel like their partner prioritizes their marriage or them. Sometimes this is an issue of misinterpretation, and sometimes the issue is in fact that one or both spouses have just given up hope.

A successful marriage requires regular maintenance, and it’s normal to feel helpless and hopeless if you have been struggling for a long time. The good news is that a private retreat can be the relationship overhaul that will get you both back on track. If you and your spouse are ready to make changes, and you are motivated to at least explore the possibility of improving your marriage, then we’re here to help.

There is a wide range of what is normal in a healthy sex life. Sexual satisfaction is one of the best predictors of long term marital satisfaction, and the path to get there can be bi-directional: some partners need to like and trust each other before jumping in bed, and others feel closer to their partner after a great sexual encounter. In other words, emotional intimacy can lead to sexual intimacy and sexual intimacy can lead to a deeper emotional connection.

We can help you and your partner co-create your ideal sex life or adapt based on life stressors such as careers, kids, aging bodies, and even disabilities. It’s starts by identifying what you want your sex life to look like, having an open conversation with your partner, and then making sure both of you prioritize yourself and each other.

Consider A Marriage Counseling Retreat

If you are ready to fix your troubled marriage or relationship, we can help. A private Marriage Counseling Retreat can help you and your partner enhance your marriage by addressing the underlying issues through a compassionate, direct, and effective process.

When marriage is done right, you get to heal your old wounds through the marital relationship.

The Empirical Foundations Of Marriage Quest Therapy

Our Philosophical Orientation is based on the work of many teachers, trainers, and mentors over the years, and is enhanced by our own marriage and life experiences. Predominantly we draw from Family Systems Therapy of Virginia Satir, Differentiation concepts from Murray Bowen, Rational Emotive (Behavioral)Therapy from Albert Ellis, Relationship Enhancement from Bernard Gurney and Barry Ginsberg, Psychodrama from J. L. Moreno, Gestalt Techniques from Fritz Perls, Strategic and Structural Family Therapy of Salvador Minuchin, Jay Haley, Peggy Papp, and Paul Watzlawick, the co-dependency work of Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse and spiritual perspectives of Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Jack Schwartz.

More recently we have incorporated the wisdom and clinical approaches of: Terry Real with Relational Life Therapy, Richard Schwartz with Internal Family Therapy, Sue Johnson with Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, Hendrick and Hunt with Imago Therapy, Barry McCarthy and Jack Morin on various aspects of sexuality, Esther Perel with her international perspectives on intimacy and eroticism, Robert Sapolsky’s work with the human stress response, Jon Kabat Zinn’s teachings on mindfulness, Rick Hanson’s work in positive psychology, and de Shazer and Berg’s teachings on solution focused brief couples therapy interventions.

Relationship Enhancement

Relationship Enhancement’s emphasis on couples communication is the basis for the Marriage Quest Therapy Process. The paradox is when couples let their guard down and go deeper into their thoughts and feelings. They often become closer even if their thoughts and feelings are filled with hurt and disappointment. This can be the beginning of the rekindling of the marriage, or the realization of an impending separation. Either way it is a success in the integrity of both individuals and of the family system.

Solution Focused

There are three potential outcomes from your retreat: you can keep the status quo, decide to make positive changes to better your marriage, or you can plan for a separation. Most couples are frustrated with the status quo, but their style of communication keeps them suspended in this state. We will focus on repairing your marriage as step one. If marital repair seems unlikely, we will help you discuss a trial separation so that no matter what you and your partner will leave the retreat on a better path for your long term relationship. This is especially important if you both have kids.

Psychodrama

Psychodrama is an experiential process that helps you heal from past traumas and get unstuck from old patterns in your life. We often use psychodramatic tools such as doubling or role playing, the empty chair, inner child work, role reversal, integrated parts work, continuums, sociometry, and re-parenting. Great therapy should combine skill based cognitive education with experiential exercises in session to maximize your success. For example, watching your spouse move through a trauma often creates a deeper sense of connection, empathy, and understanding. Using these exercises during a marriage retreat will help you identify and resolve past traumas and improve your current communication all while being guided along the way.

Systems Theory

As marriage therapists, one of our primary goals is to maintain the health of the entire household. Many therapy approaches attempt to address relationship issues (i.e. marriage, parent/child dynamics, etc) by only bringing one person into therapy. This is often counter productive to achieving your relationship goals. If your marriage needs help, your marriage needs to be in therapy, which requires all partners be present. Our job is to empower you to define your relationship. Unlike other programs, we advocate for the marriage but not at any price. We believe that people have the right to be happy and that the most important issue developmentally for children is to have happy parents whether they remain married, or decide to separate.

Cognitive Behavioral

You are not your thoughts, and thoughts are not facts, but thoughts can influence your feelings and behaviors. In general, you will get more of whatever you focus on, so if you focus on negative things that you do not want you will actually get more of it. We train couples to focus on the positive goal, on what they want and need. Many spouses also make inaccurate assumptions about their partner’s state of mind or intention. Miscommunication often happens when people just simply have different interpretations of a situation or a word that was used. Learning how to clearly express your thoughts is necessary for a healthy relationship. Similarly, backing up your ideas with thoughtful action will create a deeper connection and a feeling that you and your partner are on the same team.

Your Marriage Is Our Client

Unlike conventional therapy we treat your marriage as our primary client. If there are children involved, they too are part of the family system and become part of our consideration. Although the couple, or more commonly one spouse, may have already decided he or she wants a divorce we are always aware that people can change their mind, and this period of introspection leaves the opportunity for change. Unlike other programs, we advocate for marriage but not at any price. When divorce is clearly the couple’s choice, or when the discussion leads them to that decision, our attention then moves to preparation for divorce.

Turning Philosophy Into Action

Our process is two fold: teach you the process of effective couples communication, while we analyze your process and nudge the conversation to be more meaningful and connective. The marriage retreat is where we turn our philosophy into action to help your relationship.

Let's Plan Your Couples Retreat

Contact one of our well trained therapists today to make sure we are a good fit for your relationship and marriage goals. You can send us an email or schedule a free 20-minute phone consultation to answer your questions and provide information on available dates and pricing.