What Is A Couples Immersion?

A Couples Immersion is a more powerful and unique therapeutic approach for couples therapy than traditional hourly sessions. You will work privately with Trevor Warren, seasoned relationship & sexual intimacy therapist, who has been offering Couples Immersions since 2009.  Immersions are private, extended therapy sessions that take place over three consecutive days, six hours a day, and are generally hosted in your home or hotel suite if travelling from out of town.  If you're looking for more immediate and powerful results, this is a good choice. In the 3-day Couples Immersion, you will be progressively guided to uncover the roots of disconnection, cultivate powerful communication skills, and be challenged to stretch into the kind of vulnerability that rebuilds foundational connection and trust. You’ll be supported to re-architect your relationship into one that is soundly based on the essential principles of healthy thriving, passionate intimacy.

"Our relationship was on very rocky ground even on the first day.  By the second day of our immersion I was not only hopeful but excited about our future."  - T.R.

Who Are The Immersions For?

Whether you’ve been together 2 years or 62 years, you know relationships can be hard and, they can be amazing.  The slow, silent erosion of your connection can have you feeling distant, isolated, or estranged from your partner with whom you’ve envisioned a beautiful life. Maybe the breakdown of communication and resulting disconnection has become so entrenched you don’t remember what it was like to ‘be on the same team’.  Maybe affection and sexual intimacy feel strained or distant. Or maybe the stalemate of ongoing conflict seem irresolvable. And possibly, you’ve even become so disconnected that one of you is seeking sexual or emotional fulfillment elsewhere. The bottom line is this is not the relationship you’ve dreamt of and you cannot continue this way.

You are ready for more!  More emotional safety, more understanding, more honesty, more trust, more harmony, more affection, more intimacy, more SEX!  Ultimately, you desire a deeper, loving connection with your partner. You’d love to tackle life’s challenges as a team and truly see and value what each of you brings to your partnership.  You want to be filled with gratitude for how far you’ve come and what you’ve created together in intimate relationship, family, work and life. You yearn to be so deeply connected to support the dream of each of you living your life’s fullest passions, together.

We invest tens of thousands of dollars in businesses, university degrees, exotic vacations, and renovating our homes. We engage experts and we learn new skills. Now it’s time to invest, engage and learn for the enrichment of your most precious intimate relationship!

Why Should I Consider A Couples Immersion?

While weekly therapy sessions can be effective for some couples, our professional experience over the last twenty years has taught us that in order for most couples to authentically and sustainably shift out of their rigid negative painful patterns, they simply need more than a session every week or two.  Our old habits have way more traction than our new intentions. Couples Immersions offers the depth and focus to support dislodging those old dysfunctional patterns and integrating new ones. This is a very unique and therapeutically advanced approach to relationship counselling that has evolved out of more than 2 decades of direct couple’s counselling and workshop facilitation experience.  The Couples Counselling Immersions are specifically designed to help break through these stubborn patterns and help you integrate new effective habits of healthy, thriving relationships.

What Is The Investment?

Couples Immersions are $3,900 plus 5% GST for 18 hours of private in-person counselling with Trevor over 3 days.

When Are They Scheduled?

Couples Immersions are 18 hours of therapy over 3 consecutive days and are scheduled at your convenience during weekday daytime hours.

Where Do The Couples Immersions Take Place?

The Couples Immersions generally take place on Vancouver Island either in Victoria, Duncan or Nanaimo. I can travel off-island to meet you at your location for additional travel and accommodation costs. The Couples Immersions can take place in your own home or hotel room (for out-of-town clients).

More On Couples Therapy Immersions

If you're struggling with a breakdown in communication, feeling distant from your partner, unable to resolve ongoing conflict, feeling sexually unfulfilled, or even dealing with the devastating impact of an affair, then a 3-Day Relationship Immersion is an excellent choice for you.  Changing rigid and long-standing problematic patterns with couples most often requires a more intensive approach than weekly sessions can offer. Learning and embodying the essential skills of effective communication and connection is the difference between relationships that are barely surviving and those that are authentically thriving, and that's exactly what the Relationship Immersions are designed to do.

Our Marriage Retreat Immersions are a unique and therapeutically advanced approach that offers couples one-on-one extended private psychotherapy sessions. The Immersions typically take place over three days and generally runs six hours each day. They are ideal for couples who are in crisis, who are struggling with rigid destructive patterns, and/or those who want more immediate, more powerful results in their therapy.  

The distinct advantage the Immersion format has over regular weekly sessions is that it does not allow the time for our old habits, which typically have way more traction than our new intentions, to re-establish in between more traditional weekly sessions.  Sometimes with a serious crisis or long-standing rigid dysfunctional relationship pattern, weekly sessions just don't carry enough momentum to legitimately create the shifts that couples are needing. Relationship Immersions are also ideal for people who may be traveling from out of town, find it difficult to make it to weekly sessions, or are seeking more powerful and timely results.

Clients who begin therapy with a Couples Immersion, especially couples in crisis, progress significantly more quickly, and the changes made are more sustainable than those participating in traditional hourly/weekly counselling sessions.  Immersions have the powerful advantage of cutting quickly and deeply to the core issues that drive the problematic and rigid patterns that couples find so difficult to emancipate from.

In-Home School-Hour Immersions

One of the most popular scheduling formats is our In-Home 3-Day/6-hour Immersions that run from 9-3pm each day, which allows for the sessions to occur while the kids are in school, in the convenience of your own home.  This allows for 18 hours of intensive therapy over three days which will ensure a rapid and powerful transformation of the way you think, feel, and behave in your relationship.

Like a couples workshop, we actively explore new ways and teach you the skills to increase the connection and intimacy in your relationship, significantly improve communication skills, work through infidelity, resolve conflict effectively, and work through shame, guilt, and anger in your partnership. We offer solid marriage advice to some of the most common and challenging marriage problems.  These marriage retreat/immersion can take place in our offices or at your home.

During a typical three-day Immersion, couples can expect to get the same degree of benefit from a day of therapy than they would receive from a whole weekend in a couples workshop, creating dramatic and long-lasting shifts in their relationship.

Couples who typically come to a Couples or Marriage Immersion are:

  • Caught up in ineffective, destructive, or bitter communication patterns.
  • Feeling hurt by an affair or infidelity of some kind.
  • Yearning for a deeper connection with their partner and desire more closeness and intimacy.
  • On the verge of divorce or separation.
  • Struggling to balance the demands of both work and family life and keep their partnership strong.
  • Seeking an opportunity to rebuild their relationships with new knowledge and practical skills.
  • Wanting premarital counselling to set up a strong foundation for their relationship.

Trevor developed and lead the highly successful Relationship Revolution Workshop for Couples, and is now offering 3-Day Immersions for couples who want the same great benefit that so many couples have received from the marriage workshop, but in a format that offers dedicated one-on-one time tailored to meet the specific needs of the couple.  We offer relationship advice to tackle some of the most difficult relationship problems.

Some of the benefits you will receive from a 3-Day Couples Immersion are:

  • Discover and Live the Proven “7 Essentials” that our work with over a thousand couples over the last 10 years, supported by many of the top clinicians in the field of relationship therapy, say keep intimate relationships thriving.
  • Learn the #1 Key Foundation above all else that research shows keep intimate relationships ALIVE...it's not what you think!
  • Develop the skills to get your partner to fully LISTEN and fully GET you...every time.
  • Learn the "SMART" process for turning around any negative cycle pattern and set your communication up for success.
  • Learn the 3 underlying causes of most all relationship problems AND how to reverse them.
  • Architect your dream relationship in literally 15 minutes a day.
  • Incorporate EASY, QUICK, and EFFECTIVE "MICRO-PRACTICES" of the “7 Essentials” that actually work in the reality of your busy life.
  • Receive one-on-one coaching from trained Workshop Assistants to guide you successfully through the exercises.
  • Take home the "Relationship Revolution Playbook" - a complete guide to the practices you learned in the workshop with step by step instructions and secret tricks & tips for best practices.
  • Take home the "Relationship Revolution Manual" - detailing the "7 Essentials" necessary to ensure you stay on track.
  • Cultivate and sustain a deeper connection with your partner on a level that is richer than you have ever experienced previously.

Is a Couples Immersion right for you?

  • Do you and your partner often get stuck in the same rigid patterns or fights time and time again?
  • Does your communication with your partner tend to break down?
  • Is your relationship doing okay but you want it to really thrive?
  • Are you left feeling frustrated having trouble getting your partner to really hear what you are trying to say?
  • Does this breakdown usually happen because one or both of you is getting reactive or cutting off?
  • Are you playing the "blame game" with each other with dismal results?
  • Are you feeling disconnected and alone with your partner?
  • Are you searching for ways to get over the hurt your partner has caused you or you have caused them?
  • Do you long to reclaim the passion you once had in your relationship or may never have had?
  • Does it seem no matter what you try, things never seem to get better?

Well, you're not alone.  These are some of the most common challenges in intimate relationships and the ONLY reason they are common problems is that we simply haven't been given the right information and the right skills. Most of us were never taught how to make it in the intimate relationship arena, and if we were, most likely we were taught by people who weren't very good at it. The first critical element in winning the relationship game is knowing the key fundamentals of what keeps couples communicating and connected.

What I've Learned Along The Way

As an expert in marriage and couples therapy for the last 20 years, and having helped over a thousand couples achieve greater intimacy, Trevor has come to understand a few things very well about intimate relationships.

  • All couples inevitably and necessarily encounter some form of struggle.
  • These struggles often evolve into very rigid patterns over time and take considerable time and effort to redirect.
  • These entrenched cycles are very difficult to escape from for most couples.
  • Even when provided with the right information to help change these destructive patterns most couples are rarely able to apply the information to make effective changes.
  • Even when couples have experienced some degree of success in shifting negative patterns, the chances of the couple eventually reverting back to these old habits is extremely likely.

There is a lot of "great" information out there about how to make a relationship better but the problem is that all these "great" solutions, all too often, just don't yield the results.  So couples are left frustrated and disheartened thinking things may never get better. This challenge has inspired and driven our team to find the differences that really make the difference in cultivating and sustaining passionate intimate relationships.  Through his years of direct in-the-room experience with intimate partners and with the extensive training Trevor has received from some of the most profound teachers and therapists in the field of intimate relationships, he has come to identify "7 Essentials" that make relationships work.  And that when these "7 Essentials" are learned and integrated by couples, they produce significant and sustainable changes that consistently strengthen authentic communication and deepen the connection between partners. And it's these "7 Essentials" that we teach during the Marriage Counselling Immersion.

Even more exciting, and to our surprise, is that these "7 Essentials" not only reliably create positive change for couples, they are also...SIMPLE!  That means everyone can learn and use these relationship keys to immediately benefit from. That means you're much closer than you think to a relationship that can thrive instead of just survive.  

"I feel like I can be more open to discuss issues because I've learned some tools to deal with them. Before, I held things in to avoid conflict." - D.D.

What Creates Real, Sustainable Change

The Right Information - While there is a lot of information available to couples for how to improve their relationships, as it turns out, much of it just doesn't work. Outcome research on couples therapy tells us that there are many myths about just what makes for a healthy and happy relationship. It's important to stick with what actually works based on evidence, not just your hope or hunch.

Experiential Learning - Experiential learning embeds corrective emotional experiences into the central nervous system. Information is basically useless until it is integrated. And so by actually participating in the new information, you take the learning to a much deeper level that is much more sustainable. It's the difference between just reading the menu at the restaurant and actually eating the food.

Intimate Professional Coaching - Many real solutions are counter-intuitive, meaning they may be the last thing you think of or they might just seem outright wrong. Having a professional show and help you navigate your way into the hidden pearls of wisdom can make all the difference. Our experience has told us that the effectiveness of new information and tools is directly related to understanding the nuances - the small differences that make all the difference with the information.

Disciplined Application - "Insight without action is a daydream". New information must be practiced on an ongoing basis in order for it to be learned and integrated as a new way of thinking or behaving. Practice, practice, practice.

How Trevor Created The Couples Retreats

Based on the proven principles of effective evidenced-based change outlined above, Trevor set out to design a workshop for couples that actually works in the real-life world of intimate relationships.

The Right Information - Trevor sifted through a wealth of education, training, and experience in relationship therapy and distilled down the 7 most proven, powerful and simple evidenced-based essentials of healthy, passionate relationships. He’s drawn information from some of the most contemporary clinicians in the field of intimate relationships including John Gottman - "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work", Sue Johnson - Emotionally Focused Therapy, Marshall Rosenberg - Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Harvel Hendrix - Imago Therapy, Marianne Williamson - "Enchanted Love", David Schnarch - "Passionate Marriage", "The Work" of Byron Katie, and David Deida - "Intimate Communion".

Experiential Learning - All of the information that we offer in our couples retreats is backed up by experiential exercises that will give you a deeper understanding of the theory and its application to real life relationship issues. This will integrate the ideas from the head and into the heart of your practices.

Intimate Professional Coaching - A Couples Immersion will give you the one-on-one time with Trevor so that you can get the specialized attention you deserve.  We'll help to coach you through the nuances of each experiential process to ensure a clear understanding and integration of the work.

Disciplined Application - A 3-Day relationship workshop immersion is only the beginning of the change process. Ongoing commitment to the learnings and practices is a must to create and sustain change. In addition to the full course training, we offer each participant a materials binder with all the information and exercises so that you can continue the learning and practice at home. Couples can also opt into "maintenance sessions" which are powerful after-support sessions that follow the 3-Day Marriage Retreat.  These are aimed at supporting you in continuing with the practices you learned in the Couples Immersion to help you to work even more deeply with the "7 Essentials" and get support on any challenges you may be having. This will ensure that the gains you've made actually stick instead of you slipping back into old patterns. This will avoid the "rubberband effect" so common after a workshop high.

Our Couples Immersion Therapy Retreats can be modified to suit your personal needs in terms of length and content.  Just give us a call to discuss at 604.980.2673

"I came to the Immersion quite skeptical and unsure and am leaving confident and positive that our relationship can and will improve." - A.S.

Call Trevor directly to book a Couples Immersion: 604-980-2673