When your relationship needs more than an hour a week

Some couples reach a point where the relationship needs concentrated attention.

You may still be committed to one another, but feel that important issues have been left unresolved for too long. The same conflicts keep returning. Trust has been damaged. Emotional or sexual connection has faded. Or you may simply know that continuing to drift is no longer acceptable.

For some couples, weekly therapy is the right format.

For others, the gaps between sessions can make it difficult to build momentum or stay with the deeper work long enough to understand what is really happening.

A Couples Intensive creates a different kind of space.

One or two days are devoted entirely to your relationship, allowing us to slow things down, work beneath the surface and give sustained attention to the patterns, wounds and decisions that matter most.

It offers the depth and focus of several months of weekly therapy in a concentrated format.

Who a Couples Intensive Is For

A Couples Intensive may be appropriate if:

• You are both willing to work seriously on the relationship and want a more concentrated process than weekly counselling.
• You have become emotionally or sexually disconnected and want to understand what lies beneath that distance
• The same conflicts return despite repeated attempts to resolve them
• An affair, betrayal or secrecy has significantly disrupted trust
• You are facing a significant turning point and do not want to continue drifting
• You want to understand long-standing relational patterns at greater depth
• You have demanding professional or personal lives and want to create protected time for the relationship
• You have reached a significant point in your relationship and need enough time and space to understand what is happening between you

The Intensive is not designed to force a particular outcome or promise a quick resolution.

It creates protected time to step outside the usual cycle of conflict, distance or day-to-day demands and look more deeply at what is happening between you.

For some couples, this creates renewed connection and a clearer understanding of how they want to move forward together. For others, it brings difficult but important realities to light and clarifies what would need to change.

The aim is not to manufacture a breakthrough. It is to create the depth, time and focus for something more honest to become possible between you.

A Different Kind of Therapeutic Space

In ordinary weekly counselling, important insights can emerge just as the session is ending.

You then return to work, children, responsibilities and the habits of everyday life.

An Intensive gives us more room.

There is time to follow important material without immediately stopping.

Time to notice what happens between you in the room.

Time to understand the emotional logic beneath recurring conflict.

And time to move beyond intellectual insight into a different experience of one another.

This is why the Intensive is not simply “more therapy in fewer days.”

The extended format changes what becomes possible.

What We May Explore

Every Intensive is tailored to the couple rather than delivered as a fixed programme.

The work may include:

• The patterns that repeatedly create conflict or distance between you
• Emotional and sexual disconnection
• Betrayal, affairs or loss of trust
• The assumptions and projections you make about one another
• How your personal histories are shaping the present relationship
• The ways each of you protects yourselves from vulnerability
• The individual contribution each partner makes to recurring dynamics
• What each of you longs for but may struggle to express
• Whether meaningful repair is possible and what it would require
• What a more conscious and satisfying relationship might look like

There is conversation, reflection and experiential work, alongside carefully chosen exercises where they are useful.

You will also have opportunities to speak with me individually during the process.

My Approach

My work with couples is informed by depth psychology, Integrative Psychosynthesis, relational practice and the Couples Institute’s differentiation model.

I am interested not only in what you are doing to one another, but in what lies underneath those interactions.

What does a particular conflict mean to each of you?

Why does one person’s withdrawal create such anxiety in the other?

Why does a familiar criticism land with disproportionate force?

What is being projected onto your partner?

What old protection is being activated?

And what happens when each of you becomes more able to recognise your own contribution rather than waiting for the other person to become different?

The shifts that matter most are often not simply about doing something differently.

They begin with seeing something differently — about yourself, your partner and the relationship you have created together.

That change in perspective can make genuinely different behaviour possible.

Before the Intensive

You will complete detailed questionnaires and preparatory material so that I can understand the relationship, its history and the concerns each of you brings.

We also have an assessment conversation before the Intensive.

I then use this material to shape the work around your particular relationship rather than applying a standardised programme.

This preparation is an important part of the process.

It allows us to use the Intensive itself for deeper therapeutic work rather than spending much of the first day simply gathering background information.

What Happens During the Intensive

There is no identical timetable for every couple, but the process generally includes:

• Time together exploring the relationship and the central difficulties bringing you to the Intensive
• Individual time with each partner where appropriate
• Exploration of deeper relational and emotional patterns
• Experiential and reflective exercises
• Time to integrate what has emerged
• Consideration of what the relationship needs after the Intensive

The work can be challenging.

It is not designed to avoid difficult truths.

But it is not intended to manufacture confrontation or push either of you toward a predetermined conclusion.

The purpose is to create enough safety, time and depth for the important things to be faced.

What You May Leave With

Every couple’s outcome is different.

The Intensive may help you leave with:

• a deeper understanding of relationship patterns;
• a greater emotional connection;
• improved ability to have difficult conversations;
• renewed commitment to the relationship;
• practical understanding of what needs attention.

For some couples, the Intensive is sufficient on its own.

For others, it becomes the beginning of ongoing couples counselling.

Intensive Formats

The work can be structured in several ways depending on the needs of the relationship.

One-Day Intensive — £3,500

A concentrated day of therapeutic work for couples with a clearly defined area they want to explore.

Two-Day Intensive — £5,500

The most immersive format, offering greater time to explore complex or longstanding relationship dynamics in depth.

The appropriate format is discussed during the assessment process.

Location

One- and two-day Intensives are held in person in Pimlico, central London.

Is an Intensive the Right Starting Point?

An Intensive is most appropriate when both partners are willing to engage seriously with the work.

If one of you wants to work on the relationship while the other is seriously considering leaving, Discernment Counselling is likely the more appropriate starting point.

If you both want ongoing, medium- to long-term relationship work without the concentrated format, Couples Counselling may be a better fit.

If you are exploring the future of your relationship individually because your partner is unwilling or unable to participate, my 1:1 Coaching Programme, Sacred Crossroads, may be more appropriate.

Begin With a Relationship Assessment

All new Intensive clients begin with a Relationship Assessment.

This allows me to understand what has brought you to this point, whether an Intensive is the most appropriate format, and, if so, whether a one-day or two-day structure is likely to serve you best.