You're not in trouble. That's exactly why this works.
A day-and-a-half intensive for couples who want to build this on purpose — before a wedding, before a move, before the first hard year.
Book a fit callEvery couple brings a rulebook to a marriage. Yours was written in your family, mostly before you were ten, and it covers what anger means, what happens when someone needs something, whose job it is to fix a silence, and what a wife or a husband is supposed to do.
Neither of you has read the other's. You will find out what's in it eventually — usually at 2am in the third year, in an argument about something else entirely.
Doing this now, while you like each other and nothing is broken, is the cheapest version of that conversation you will ever get.
Does this sound familiar?
- Everyone tells you how solid you are. You mostly agree. There's one thing you keep circling and neither of you can say why.
- Wedding planning has been the first real test, and it has gone worse than you expected.
- Your families do things very differently, and “we'll figure it out” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
- One of you goes quiet when things get tense. The other cannot let it go. You've noticed.
- You've had the money conversation three times and it ends the same way each time.
- One of you has been married before, or came out of a house you don't want to recreate, and you'd like to be deliberate about it.
- You're not worried. You'd just rather do this well than assume it'll be fine.
Why an intensive, for you specifically
You're not repairing anything, so all of it goes into building
Couples who come in distress spend the first block clearing wreckage. You don't have wreckage. You have a head start, and it means the work goes further.
Your patterns are visible but not yet entrenched
You can already see the shape of how you two handle stress — who pursues, who withdraws, what each of you does with anger. Right now those are habits. Give them fifteen years and a mortgage and they become the architecture. It is much easier to change a habit.
Premarital work is the one place the research is genuinely encouraging
Structured premarital programmes have been studied for decades, and couples who do them tend to do better than couples who don't. This is the intervention with the best odds in the whole field, and it's the one people skip.
You'll build the habits before you need them
The weekly check-in and the monthly dinner are much easier to start now than to institute during your first bad year. In my experience, couples who leave with those two appointments already running are the ones who still have them when it matters.
What you'll leave with
A map of how each of you handles conflict and where it came from. A name for the pattern you two make together, so you can call it out later without it being an accusation. A plan for what each of you needs to stay yourself inside a marriage. Agreements on the things that actually end marriages — money, family boundaries, the division of the invisible work — made now, calmly, instead of later, badly.
How it works
Before — about three weeks
A detailed assessment you each complete on your own. Then a 90-minute individual session each, before the two of you are ever in the room together. By the time you arrive, nobody is spending the first evening getting me up to speed.
The intensive — an evening and a full day
Three blocks of about three hours each.
- Evening. Where your patterns came from, and the cycle the two of you make together — drawn out and named.
- Next morning. Each of you does your own work while the other watches. This is often the block that changes things.
- That afternoon. The two of you as a team, and the plan you'll leave with.
After — six months
A workbook with two standing appointments: twenty minutes weekly, one dinner monthly. A follow-up session four to six weeks out, booked before you leave. And a three-month checkpoint you run yourselves.
Why a day and a half instead of a weekly hour
Weekly couples therapy works, and for many couples it's the right thing. But the hour has a structural problem. Most of it goes to catching up on the week. Something real surfaces at minute forty and has to be shut down, because there isn't time to tend what you'd open. Whatever you built on Tuesday meets a bad night on Thursday. And couples are on their best behaviour for fifty minutes — the pattern that actually runs your relationship shows up in hour six, when nobody is performing any more.
A longer format removes all four problems. Work that can't start in fifteen minutes can start after dinner and still be standing the next morning. The second block begins where the first ended. One of you can have forty-five minutes of individual work with the other watching. And nothing else is happening that day.
Being straight about the evidence: couple therapy has a strong research base, and emotionally focused therapy in particular has decades of trials behind it. Whether an intensive format outperforms weekly sessions has not been settled by head-to-head research, and I won't claim it has. What I will say is that this format solves specific problems the weekly format has — and if weekly work is the better fit for you, I'll tell you that on the call.
When this isn't the right thing
An intensive isn't the right next step if there is violence in the relationship, if either of you is afraid of the other, or if one of you couldn't be honest in a joint session without paying for it afterwards. It isn't right if there's an untreated addiction, if either of you is in acute crisis, or if one of you has privately decided to leave and is here to soften the landing.
None of that means nothing can be done — it means something else needs to happen first. Part of what you're paying for is the judgement to say so. If the assessment shows this isn't right, I'll tell you what I recommend instead and refund you according to the schedule in our agreement.
Common questions
Do we have to be in crisis?
No. The couples who get the most from this usually aren't.
What if only one of us really wants to do it?
More common than you'd think. Say it on the call rather than hiding it — sometimes we proceed with the difference named out loud, and sometimes something shorter is a better first step.
Will we be with other couples?
No. It's the two of you and me, the whole time.
What if we fall apart in the middle?
That's roughly the point. Falling apart with someone whose job is to help you put it back is different from falling apart in your kitchen at midnight.
Is it covered by insurance?
No. The intensive is private pay only, and I don't provide a superbill for it. If using insurance matters to you, weekly couples sessions are the better route and we can talk about that on the call.
What does it cost?
$2,200. That covers the written assessment, a 90-minute individual session for each of you, all three blocks, the workbook, and the follow-up session afterward.
Where do we have to be?
The intensive is in person in Mt. Juliet, just east of Nashville. I'm licensed in Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida.
What happens next
- A free consultation call. I'll tell you honestly whether this is the right next step.
- If it's a fit, you book your dates and I send the assessment.
- Your individual sessions, one each.
- The evening, then the full day.
- The follow-up, booked before you leave.
Or get in touch with a sentence about what's going on.
The intensive is held in person in Mt. Juliet, just east of Nashville. I'm licensed in Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida. $2,200· private pay only.