Weekly couples therapy can be enormously helpful. For many couples, it is exactly the right way to work.
But it isn’t the right format for every relationship.
A significant number of couples who come to me for intensive couples therapy are already in quite high levels of distress. Their relationship may be approaching breaking point, they may be caught in high-conflict dynamics, there may have been an affair or significant betrayal, or they may have become deeply emotionally disconnected. Sometimes one person is already thinking about leaving.
Quite often, they have tried weekly couples therapy before.
Some found it helpful but didn’t get far enough. Others understood their problems better but still couldn’t change what happened between them. And some found that therapy itself began to feel like another difficult part of the relationship.
For these couples, working intensively can feel like a breath of fresh air.
What is the difference between weekly and intensive couples therapy?
The obvious difference is time, but I don’t think that’s the most important difference.
Two days doesn’t mean two days to fix a relationship. It means having enough uninterrupted time to understand it properly.
In weekly couples therapy, you arrive and naturally spend some time talking about the week. Perhaps there has been another argument or something significant has happened since the previous appointment. We begin working with that, and eventually we touch into something underneath it. Something important begins to emerge.
And then we’re looking at the clock.
For plenty of couples, that rhythm works well. There is something useful about going home, living your life, trying things differently and returning the following week.
For a highly distressed couple, though, it can be incredibly frustrating. We get somewhere and have to stop. The following week something else may have happened and we find ourselves dealing with the latest crisis before returning to where we left off.
Intensive work gives us a different kind of continuity.
It isn’t really about having more hours
People sometimes assume that the benefit of a two-day intensive is simply that twelve hours of therapy must accomplish more than one hour.
I don’t think about it that way.
For me, the value is in depth and continuity.
We have enough time to get underneath the presenting argument. If a couple has six recurring arguments, I’m interested in whether there is actually something very similar happening underneath all six of them.
And we have time to stay there when we find it.
Sometimes a conversation doesn’t go particularly well. Somebody becomes defensive. Somebody shuts down. We lose each other. That’s okay. We can stop and look at what just happened rather than rushing to produce something useful before the appointment ends.
We can try it again.
That’s a very different experience of therapy.
Who is intensive couples therapy particularly suited to?
The couples who come to work intensively with me are rarely experiencing mild relationship dissatisfaction. Usually something has reached a point where it really does need to change.
I often work intensively with couples who are caught in persistent or escalating conflict, approaching separation, recovering from an affair or significant betrayal, or who have become deeply emotionally disconnected. Sometimes they have already tried weekly couples therapy and remain stuck.
There are also couples for whom there is a genuine time boundary around the work. A baby is coming. They’re approaching a marriage they suddenly feel uncertain about. A decision about the future of the relationship can no longer be put off.
Waiting six months to see whether weekly appointments gradually shift something may not feel realistic.
That doesn’t make intensive therapy inherently better. It means there are relationships where the level of distress, complexity or urgency makes having more room particularly valuable.
What if we’ve already tried weekly couples therapy?
This is extremely common.
I don’t interpret previous unsuccessful couples therapy as evidence that a relationship cannot change. Sometimes it simply didn’t get to the heart of what was happening between the couple.
I’ve also met couples who have begun to associate going to couples therapy with feeling bad about their relationship. Every week they arrive, talk about what’s gone wrong, touch the pain, perhaps leave feeling distressed, and then come back the following week and do it again.
After a while, therapy itself can become associated with the distress and dysfunction in the relationship.
For those couples, working intensively can feel like a breath of fresh air. We finally have enough time to get to the heart of something and stay there.
That doesn’t mean weekly therapy has failed them, or that weekly couples therapy doesn’t work. But having tried it before gives me useful information about what happened, where they became stuck and what we might need to do differently this time.
Getting underneath the argument
Most couples already know what they argue about.
Money, sex, parenting, household responsibilities, work, in-laws, phones, affection, how much time they spend together.
I’m interested in the argument, but I’m usually more interested in what is happening underneath it.
Often there is a recognisable dance running through apparently different conflicts. One person moves towards while the other moves away. Somebody becomes louder because they don’t feel heard; their partner withdraws because they feel overwhelmed. The withdrawal makes the first person push harder, and around they go.
When we have enough time to slow this down, something that previously felt chaotic can begin to make sense.
The work isn’t simply about helping people communicate more politely. It’s about understanding why they keep ending up in the same place despite both of them wanting something different.
Is intensive couples therapy more effective than weekly couples therapy?
I don’t think it’s responsible to say that intensive couples therapy is simply more effective than weekly couples therapy.
They are different ways of working, and weekly therapy can be enormously helpful for many couples.
What I can say from my own clinical experience is that for some highly distressed or complex couples, having uninterrupted time allows us to do work that has proved extremely difficult to do one hour at a time.
We can stay with an important conversation. We can see a pattern happening rather than only talking about it afterwards. There is time to understand an old injury properly and begin working with it. And when something goes wrong between the couple in the room, we don’t necessarily have to leave it there until next week.
That’s where I see the value of the intensive format.
What can two days realistically achieve?
Two days cannot fix a relationship that has been struggling for ten or twenty years, and I wouldn’t pretend that they can.
What two concentrated days can give us is enough uninterrupted time to understand the relationship properly. We can begin to see patterns that may have been operating for years, work with important injuries and give each person an opportunity to have a somewhat different experience of their partner.
Sometimes quite a lot begins to move.
Sometimes what becomes clearer is just how much would actually have to change for the relationship to survive.
Both can be important.
What happens when the work is allowed to settle overnight?
There is another part of the intensive that I have come to value enormously.
Day one doesn’t simply end when a couple leaves my office.
For couples travelling to Galway, they may go back to a nice hotel, have something to eat, take a walk or spend some quiet time together. They don’t have children to put to bed or the usual work and household demands waiting for them.
The nervous system gets a chance to settle. The work gets a chance to settle too.
Sometimes couples talk about the day over dinner. Sometimes they don’t particularly need to. They might just have a meal together, walk around Galway or go back to their hotel and notice that something between them feels a little different.
I often find couples come back on the second morning softer. There can be more openness, a little more connection and sometimes more curiosity about the person sitting beside them.
For some couples, it is the first time in years that they have gone away together without the children. Occasionally, it is the first time they have ever done it.
I’m not suggesting that a nice hotel and dinner repairs a distressed relationship. It doesn’t. But there is something valuable about taking the relationship out of its ordinary environment, doing a substantial piece of work and then allowing that work to breathe overnight.
Then we come back the following morning and continue.
Is weekly couples therapy sometimes the better choice?
Absolutely.
A couple doesn’t need an intensive simply because intensive therapy exists. Weekly work may make much more sense when there isn’t an immediate crisis, when there is no particular urgency and when having time between sessions to practise something and return to it is therapeutically useful.
There are also circumstances where an intensive isn’t appropriate and something else needs to happen first.
So for me, this isn’t really a competition between weekly couples therapy and intensive couples therapy.
It’s about what this particular couple needs at this particular point in their relationship.
How do we know which is right for us?
You don’t necessarily need to know before contacting me.
If your relationship is highly distressed, you’ve tried couples therapy before without making the progress you hoped for, you’re approaching an important decision or life transition, or you have a sense that an hour at a time simply isn’t getting underneath what is happening, intensive work may be worth considering.
The first consultation gives us a chance to look at where the relationship is, what you have already tried and whether concentrated work makes sense for the two of you.
Two days isn’t about trying to squeeze months of therapy into a weekend. It’s about having enough uninterrupted time to get somewhere we haven’t been able to get before.
Considering Intensive Couples Therapy?
I offer private two-day Intensive Couples Therapy in Galway, Ireland, with approximately twelve hours of specialist couples therapy alongside assessment and preparation before we meet.
Couples travel to Galway from across Ireland and internationally, including couples who have previously tried weekly couples therapy and remain stuck.