Create a Strong Foundation for a Lifetime of Love
Congratulations on your engagement! During this exciting time of preparation and wedding planning, many couples find it invaluable to take a time-out away from the stresses and demands of daily life to honor the upcoming transition and attend to the relationship that you are committing to, and this person who you’ve chosen to be your life partner.
This is the time to strengthen your foundation so your marriage will be sustainable and strong. A private premarital counseling retreat is a beautiful way to honor your transition into married life, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start strong and inoculate your marriage against many of the challenges life is bound to serve up.
Resolve issues before they become problems. Learn lifelong relationship skills.
For couples who are preparing for the transition to married life and want to lay down a healthy foundation, our premarital counseling can help you:
- Assess and candidly discuss your areas of strength and growth as a couple.
- Discover why the “how” is more important than the “what” when it comes to secure, connected relationships.
- Join together to bring curiosity and compassion to any spots where you might get stuck.
- Develop or refine communication skills that increase your ability to relate in a way that fosters a heathy, connected relationship.
- Address any unresolved hurts.
- Navigate the stresses of wedding planning.
- Learn how to disagree (and be different) with grace and humor.
- Develop greater confidence in revealing (and receiving) vulnerable emotions, as research has proven that this helps foster emotionally secure relationships.
- Create a map of the journey ahead, clarifying intentions and for how you will carry the aspirations of your engagement to the daily experience of married life.
Each couple has a different journey, and the needs in pre-marital counseling will vary and be individualized to your relationship.
Who Should Do a Premarital Couples Retreat?
Any couple with a desire for an intentional process of exploration and connection in the months before your wedding. Any couple committed to having a strong relationship that will be ready for whatever life has to offer. The retreat format is particularly suited to couples who have busy, demanding schedules and want to carve out some special time for each other and for your relationship. It’s a great way to have a getaway together that also helps you prepare for your upcoming wedding and marriage. If that describes you, give us a call at 802-231-2550 or email info@innerwell.org.
InnerWell welcomes (and has a lot of experience working with) couples of all sexual orientations and genders. Our premarital counseling is not religiously oriented or denominational, though sharing and exploring values and expectations about spiritual/religious paths may certainly be an important topic for some couples. Each couple’s journey will be unique.
A Retreat to Fit Your Schedule & Needs
Options range from 1-day mini-marathon premarital counseling intensives to 5-day retreats where we meet in the morning, leaving the afternoons and evenings open for you to enjoy each other and explore all that southern Vermont (or your chosen retreat location) has to offer.
What to Expect
For each couple the process is a little different depending what you’re bringing in, but generally, we’ll work with you to help you identify your strengths and areas of potential challenge as a couple, using particular conversations and exercises to facilitate your being able to communicate in a deeper way about the places you get stuck, in a way that brings you closer together and gives you tools that you’ll be able to carry forward into your life as a married couple. InnerWell’s premarital couples therapists in Brattleboro are all trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy, proven to be the most effective couples therapy approach available. In advance of your premarital counseling, we may suggest some reading for you, and we will ask each of you to complete a relationship assessment.
