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COUPLE’S RETREAT & WORKSHOP ON FEBRUARY 14 & 15, 2020

Enrollment limited to 15 couples.
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A 2-Day course to bring you closer to your partner and
create happiness in your relationship.

FRIDAY, February 14:

11:30am – Check-In and Lunch
12:00pm – 2:00pm Session One – “Happy Couples & The Need for Belonging”
2:00pm – 3:00pm Afternoon Break/Guided Meditation
3:00pm – 5:00pm Session Two – “Attachment & Bonding”
Planned Dinner Date (optional) including:
Dinner at Edith’s French Bistro at 6:00pm, 6:30pm, or 7:30pm
Hotel stay at Hilton Watter’s Creek (discounted rate for our group)
Conversation starters

SATURDAY, February 15:

8:30am – 9:00am – Breakfast is Served
9:00am – 12:00am – Session One – “TEA & Psychological Self-Soothing”
12:00am – 12:30pm – Lunch is Served
12:30pm – 1:00pm – Nature Walk (on your own)
1:00pm – 3:00pm – Session Two – “CALM Connecting”
3:00pm – 3:30pm – Restorative Yoga
3:30pm – 5:00pm – Session Three – “The Hard Stuff & Forgiveness”

WIRED FOR CONNECTION

You were born to love and be loved. You came out of the womb wanting to be held, and if we’re being honest, being held doesn’t sound so bad right now…or anytime.

But to feel emotionally connected, you have to understand what the heck is happening in this relationship to make everyone feel so off-kilter. When you know the core reasons you have less touchy-touchy time, more yelly-withdraw time, and unproductive talkie-talkie, you can co-create a new pattern of behaving. You’ll feel more respect, appreciation, and greater affection for one another. 

“Some people can’t believe in themselves until someone else believes in them first.” – Sean Maguire, Good Will Hunting

You can only really know what is happening in your relationship when you can remove yourself momentarily, take a step back, and examine your alliance from a different perspective. 

Individuals thrive when they are connected to others whom they feel a deep sense of belonging. As human beings, we are in constant pursuit of love and affection because without the feeling of emotional connection, we become lonely, unhappy, depressed, and can even suffer physical illness.  

Emotional connection means feeling valued and understood. You and your partner are in a constant pursuit of love and affection, even in the midst of the withdrawing, silence, hostility, and volitility. No anger behavior should be deemed better than another. All anger behavior should be seen as an interpersonal reaction to unmet emotional needs. Couples engage in pursuit, but withdraw when they become afraid of emotional connection. 

Emotional connection in marriage is challenged when you:

• Get caught up in the “business” of life with your partner – you busy yourself with the logistics of life rather than spending quality time tuning into one another on a regular basis. 

• Feel consistently unhappy, unloved, disrespected, and unheard when in conversation with your partner. 

• Have more conflict that normal, but even worse, don’t know how to repair the disagreements once you’re in them. Problems are swept under a rug until the next time you engage in the exact same argument with the exact same resolution (which is nothing, really). 

• Don’t have as much intimacy as you want and desire, and the quality is poor (to put it bluntly). 

• Engage in more negative thinking patterns, feel generally unsupported, and encounter more personal and professional obstacles throughout your whole life. 

This 2-day couple’s retreat is meant to do one major thing:
Reconnect you and your partner emotionally.

Take a deep-dive into each other’s inner life so you understand how and why you and your partner behave the way you do with one another. It isn’t because you are so different that you can never see eye-to-eye. It isn’t because of different value systems. It’s because you’ve stopped tuning into each other. In this workshop, you’ll have some deep conversations. (Don’t worry, we’ll be there to guide you through it.)

By all means, do not register for this course if you aren’t ready to go full-body into the hard stuff. 

WHAT DOES EMOTIONALLY CONNECTED MEAN?

This attachment skill-based couple’s curriculum was developed by Jennifer Slingerland Ryan, M.Ed., LPC-S as a result of the desire to fill a need to strengthen couples and families. The training has since been used both one-on-one and in the community to help couples with relationship building, communication skill development, and conflict management. This training is based on a family systems model, which means that when one part of the “system” is not working well (you or your partnership, for example), the entire system stops functioning optimally. When one person is off, everyone is off.

“Lucy, you got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do!” – Ricky, Ricardo, I Love Lucy

Human beings rely heavily upon intimate partnerships as a psychological buffer to outside stressors. The strength of your family depends on your healthy relationshiop. This retreat gives you the tools to help you thrive both in your marriage and in your home.

YOU AND YOUR PARTNER WILL LEARN:

• What is happening in your relationship, then you’ll be shown a new process of behaving.

• Why your individual attachment styles impact your entire family’s emotional system. 

• How interdependence, attunement, and attachment to your partner is not only encouraged, but imperative. 

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

This 2-day couple’s training will help you have more emotionally connected communication, increased intimacy and rockstar resolution skills. You will learn how to be a better partner and how to receive your partner’s love. (Because, believe it or not, many times we are getting loved. It’s just that we’re so afraid of being rejected again that we’re gun shy to trust the love coming our way. Plus, your partner may be speaking French, but you only speak Spanish. We’ll teach you how to trust, and your partner how to speak Spanish, figuratively speaking).

You’ll both learn how to step out of the incredibly dramatic production you’ve grown accustomed to, and rewrite your entire script. It’s going to be MAHVELOUS, DAHLING!

All couples are welcome to attend this training. We’ve trained couples who were married 3 to 35 years, from various ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, of different socio-economic statuses, of various gender combinations, in various stages of family and life, and from a large range of education level. Love is love, and we’re teaching about love. So come on.

Couples will experience several things during this short, but powerful 2-day retreat, including:

• Emotional Reconnection

• Renewed Trust and Intimacy

• Deeper Understanding

• Helping your partner see your inner world

• Healthier, more productive conversations with attuned listening skills

• A Greater Feeling of Belonging

• Acts of Forgiveness

• Process Intense Emotions Through More Productive Conversations

• Self-Love Activities like Yoga and Meditation

• Two Months of Intensive Training in Two Days

This retreat offers you and your partner a supportive, powerful forum to acquire new skills, get unstuck, resolve issues, and heal past wounds. In two days, and beyond in the private online support group, you will reconnect emotionally, strengthen communication, deepen intimacy, and learn how to be the audience of your own life play so you can stop your negative, reactive cycles.

“Book ’em Dano.” – Steve McGarrett, Hawaii, Five-O

INVESTMENT: $1949

The cost of not getting your marriage back on track will equal months of emotional pain and thousands of dollars in legal fees. The investment of this 2-day retreat which includes 12 retreat session hours at the beautiful Oak Point Retreat Center, pre-retreat assessments, a personalized assessment report, a customized retreat workbook for each participant, breakfast one day, lunch two days, self-love activities, and ongoing online support. Space is limited to 15 couples. 

CANCELLATION:

The full cost of your registration will be refunded 45 days prior to the event. Half the cost will be refunded 30 days prior to the event. No refunds will be made 15 days or less before the event.

QUESTIONS:

Still have questions? Don’t hesitate to email jennifer(at)ichoosechange.com to get all of your questions answered!