Private, personalized Marriage counseling Intensives

Our customized three day intensives are ideal options for couples who:

Are struggling to find a path forward after infidelity (sexual, emotional or financial)
Continuously experience cycles of conflict that they can’t find their way out of
Feel stuck after a significant loss or trauma
Have grown apart and are assessing how to create the next chapter
Have years of hurts and resentments that have built a wall between them
Are considering separation or divorce
Need to make significant changes in their relationship and don’t have months to wait

Three Day Marriage Intensives INCLUDEs:

Pre-Coaching Questionnaire assessing strengths and growth opportunities in the 5 Key Relationship Elements

Attachment Assessment to increase awareness of behavior patterns under stress and conflict

Day 1:
- 3 hour morning session: focused on understanding your marriage story; exploring the 5 elements of a healthy relationship to conceptualize strengths, challenges, vulnerabilities, needs and expectations.
- 3 hour afternoon session: Exploration of attachment, clarifying protective patterns, exploring how your protective patterns can increase vulnerability and defensiveness for each other, and tools to minimize protective tendencies and increase centered and authentic communication and connection.
Day 2:
- 60 minute individual sessions in morning: What would you most want your partner to know? Exploring stories and lenses about your partner and the relationship, What is the work you are willing to do, and rooting that work in clearly defined motivation
- 3 hour afternoon session: Creating bridges to unify you as a couple, identifying areas of shared vulnerability, enhancing mutual understanding and shared compassion. Exploring frameworks for healthy communication and effective conflict resolution.
Day 3:
- 3 hour morning session: Processing lingering conflicts that have urgency for resolution, identifying and sharing personal accountability and commitments to make to one another and the relationship, creating a shared vision for the future of the relationship that is rooted in values and has delineated goals and clear expectations.

Written customized "Connection Plan"

Optional follow-up coaching for additional investment

Three Day Intensive Fee: $8500

Location Options:

In Aspen, CO: Clients’ travel, lodging and meals are not included.

Outside of Aspen: Lori and Jeff are available to travel to clients’ location. Cost of coaches’ travel and accommodations are in addition to cost of weekend intensive.

The ARI Marriage Intensive Model

A Couple-to-Couple approach

Lori Kret and Jeffrey Cole are both licensed therapists, board certified coaches and Co-Founders of Aspen relationship Institute. As a married couple, we live and breathe the awareness, tools and skills that we teach our clients. Every marriage intensive is co-facilitated to ensure that both partners of the couple feel heard, supported, and validated. Research has shown that one of the main reasons for why couples counseling is unsuccessful is the triangulation that occurs when two partners are vying for the support of one therapist. This dynamic often leaves one partner feeling unheard, invalidated or ganged up on. For couples work to be successful, both partners need to feel emotionally safe and to know that their felt experiences and needs matter. Our couple-to-couple model provides more balance, breadth and depth to the exploration of gender roles and expectations, masculine and feminine energy, gender socialization, attachment styles and protective patterns, and differences in communication, emotional expression, sexuality, and financial perspectives.

Building awareness and developing skills

Every couple is a unique mosaic of strengths, challenges, histories, patterns and needs. ARI intensives are private and personalized to ensure you receive the maximum benefit from our work together. Our approach is not religious or faith-based, but rather are centered on clarifying each partner’s values, wants, needs and goals. Change begins with awareness. While many couples are anxious to learn tools, without awareness of why we do what we do, those tools are often ineffective. Our work begins with building a deeper understanding of each partner’s relational patterns, attachment style, fears, vulnerabilities, and stories and how they interplay in the relationship. With this foundation of awareness, partners are able to experience greater compassion, emotional intimacy, and patience. Many partners experience a shift from blaming one another for their hurt to recognizing how they have as a couple spiraled in cycles of self-protection. With clarity of the underlying patterns and dynamics, skills and tools are taught specific to the couples needs. ARI uses a process of two parallel tracks to support couples in healing: decreasing the intensity and duration of conflict and proactively building trust and connection. While we are motivated to support relationships, our primary goal is to support each partner in gaining clarity of their authentic needs and truths, and supporting the client in making the choices that are informed and intentional.

Schedule a free consultation

Resources for Couples Considering a weekend Marriage INtensive

interview with Marriage Intensive Facilitators Jeffrey Cole and Lori Kret

Divorce at Altitude Podcast: When to consider divorce (Click Image to listen)

Key Points From This Episode:

The number one problem that partners face within their marriages. What contributes to living parallel lives. How the felt experience of being in love changes for most couples. Behaviors and circumstances which are insurmountable or extremely difficult to overcome, even in therapy. The pattern-oriented nature of our relational selves. How Lori and Jeff navigated their protective patterns when they first met. The biggest takeaway from relationship therapy. Why no healing is possible without self-awareness. Creating a new relationship using information from the past. Identifying what you want from your life and what you want from a partner to identify a roadmap forward. Navigating moving past a significant transgression such as infidelity and how to decide to repair or end the marriage.