Virtual Retreats Give Better Results

As one of the early pioneers of the marriage intensive approach, I have been conducting couples retreats for over 35 years.

For 30 of those, I assumed the power of a retreat came from couples getting away from home and working in person with me.

When covid hit I had to start working virtually. And, naturally, I assumed it would not be as effective as meeting in-person. I was wrong. I was shocked to find that it was just the opposite! Virtual retreats just as effective, and often more so.

I did not immediately understand why. But it kept happening. And my wife Suzan was experiencing the same thing in the retreats she conducted. About six months later, I came to realize what was really going on. More on that below…

I do understand it is normal to think that a retreat in person works best. But, over the past five years we found our form of virtual work produces better results, more quickly, and integrates more deeply into couples lives. They’re also more flexible to set up, more convenient, and more comfortable for all. So, we continue to work virtually.

There is nothing the prevents travel, by the way. You can freely choose where you want to do your retreat, whether at home or somewhere else.

So, despite what you might have thought, the help you’ll get from us in a virtual retreat will be every bit as effective as you’d receive in person. Most likely it will be better!

Best-in-Class Help When You Need It

We know that part of the attraction of a retreat is to get away from home and stay in a beautiful travel destination. Of course, you can still travel and get away from home for a virtual retreat. Many of our couples do travel to special places for their retreats.

But the main point is that most couples seek a retreat because their marriage is in serious trouble. They mainly want an intensive approach that provides top-level help that can make a real difference. That’s what we deliver.

We’ve been effectively working with couples for thirty-five years using the intensive retreat approach. Our work and reputation is top-rated. And we are able to deliver results even more powerfully via Zoom.

We help partners heal infidelity and betrayal, being stuck in long term conflicts and upsets, suffering emotional disconnection or walls. Most of our couples come to us on the verge of divorce, working with us as a last ditch effort.

We successfully help these couples virtually, every bit as much as we have for decades in our in-person retreats. The majority of our virtual work has actually been even more effective than our in-person work!

Why Is Our Virtual Work Better?

At first, we were quite puzzled by this result. It was completely counter-intuitive. Why did it happen? Over time, we came to recognize why our virtual work was so powerful, even better than in-person work.

It mainly has to do with several unique qualities of our approach that get amplified in the virtual setting. Here are some of the ways our specific approach to empower couples works even better virtually.

A Tool-Based Approach. First, our approach is tool-based. We have found that couples do not need “therapy” as much as they need effective communication tools.

So we teach the tools that enable couples to communicate and get productive results.

We teach partners tools to emotionally repair upsets, wounds, and disconnects. To overcome reactive cycles, triggering, and distress. To truly understand each other, collaborate better, and get win-win results.

We offer a new and powerful model for building a secure, strong foundation in marriage that leads to increased resilience, joy and satisfaction over time.

To achieve these outcomes, we have developed a robust and engaging psycho-educational component as part of our program. We have found that this component has grown stronger and has more positive impact when presented virtually.

As a result, we see couples come to understand and use these tools more rapidly in our virtual retreats. And thereby we see partners more quickly repair relationship wounds, collaborate better, and renew their positive feelings and sense of connection.

A Coaching Model. Another ingredient gets strengthened when we work virtually. It has to do with our coaching model, where we aim to coach from the sidelines.

Why do we strive to coach from the sidelines? Because couples want to communicate better with each other (not with us). And effective communication is a face-to-face process.

Thus, improving communication can only truly happen if partners are facing each other. So, the more we can coach from the sidelines, the more partners directly face each other, improving communication, resolving issues and reconnecting emotionally.

Using Zoom also strengthens this strategic feature of our approach. When we’re on a screen rather than in the room, partners more quickly get comfortable staying face-to-face. Doing so, they more rapidly improve communication, understanding and connection.

Empowering the Couple. People assume it is better to be in the same room with a therapist. Our orientation is to empower the couple rather than foster dependency on us.

Virtual work actually is a stronger context for that to happen. This parallels our tool-based approach: teach people how to fish rather than feeding them a fish.

We are very aware of the dichotomy between dependency on the therapist versus empowering the couple. When we are in the room, there is typically much more facing and referencing towards us than when happens we are on a screen.

In typical counseling (intensive or not) partners initially tend to reference toward the therapist as the “safe” third, the adult in the room, the Dear Abby, or the judge and jury. This triangulation is not a part of our model.

We find that referencing towards us impedes a couple’s ability to acquire and use the face-to-face tools that empower them to take charge of their relationship and change how they operate in it. So our approach is to educate and coach a couple to use the tools to solve their issues. Again, teach them to catch their own fish. Working virtually strengthens this approach.

More Comfort & Productivity. Virtual work has also turned out to be more productive as well as more comfortable for all parties, including us.

We have found that compared to in-person work, virtual retreats are far more efficient in the use of time and the ability to stay on a positive track.

We encounter far less of what makes traditional couples therapy so unappealing, which is the way partners can get stirred up emotionally and fall into reactive patterns that turn sessions into nightmares.

Given that our approach is based on training partners in new communication tools and coaching them to use these to repair past wounds and resolve issues, we like to minimize reactivity and focus on making positive progress.

All parties, both us and the couples we work with, would rather engage in getting productive results. In our virtual retreats, we have found it even easier to quickly reroute any reactive patterns into proactive learning experiences.

Getting Away from Home. But what about going somewhere nice and getting away from home? Isn’t that what a retreat is supposed to be all about?

Short answer: You can still get away if you want. And, yes, we are often asked if we recommend that a couple stay at home or go somewhere else for their virtual retreat.

There is no single one-size-fits-all answer. It’s entirely your choice as to do whatever you feel would work better for you. You have even more choices with virtual work.

Certainly there can be a benefit for some couples to get away from the home front and feel more relaxed in a vacation-like location. Many couples do that for their virtual retreats, going to a second “lake” home or other desirable travel destination.

Other couples who chose to stay at home for their retreat reported an advantage that their issues got handled in their home environment, directly where those issues live. So the progress they made integrated more rapidly into their daily lives. They said that was far better than going somewhere magical then returning home and trying to remember or apply what they learned.

Some commented on how the safety and comfort of being on their home ground helped them learn faster. Others mentioned that using the tools at home felt very real and relevant, more so than if they were saying in an unfamiliar place. Still others appreciate the increased flexibility of scheduling virtual sessions.