Premarital Therapy
Learn from over 40 years of research about what makes love last. You and your partner will practice skills to build friendship, manage conflict, dream life dreams, and strengthen trust and commitment.
Counseling is based on your unique union and begins with assessment of what brought you together and the story of your relationship. This story is told in the first 45-minute session. Each partner then completes the Relationship Checkup. This questionnaire is sent directly from, and scored by, the Gottman Institute and consists of 480 questions about friendship, intimacy, emotions, conflict, values, and trust, as well as parenting, housework, finances, individual areas of concern, and more. This relationship assessment relies on intensive, detailed, and evidence-based information on why relationships succeed or fail. This information is used for a 45-minute feedback session that reviews the current strengths and challenges of the relationship.
Couples then spend one 45-minute session discussing their friendship system, including how they continue getting to know each other, express fondness, experience admiration, and create moments of connection. They are given tools to keep their awareness and fondness of each other alive and strengthen connections across time.
The next session focuses on how to manage conflict to increase emotional intimacy. Couples bring in one issue they have struggled to resolve, and a 90-minute session is dedicated to creating deeper understanding of each partner’s perspective and build skills to experience fully being heard. Some couples benefit from additional sessions to deepen conversations, resolve emotional triggers, and learn how to validate their partner.
The couple then engages in a 90-minute session and practices tools to reach a compromise that honors the core needs for each partner. They learn the difference between solvable problems and perpetual problems and effective compromise for each. At the end of this session, the couple writes out the compromise that meets both of their needs.
The final 45-minute session explores creating rituals of connection. Couples create unique rituals for both a formal and an informal event. Some examples are creating the celebration of a holiday, how to care for each other when they are sick, initiation of love making, celebration of a job promotion, and how to grieve a loss together. Couples take home tools to build friendship, manage conflict and create a shared meaning of “us.” Prices are calculated based on the level of education and experience of the provider. Please contact us for more information.