3 Key Factors of Best Marriage Retreats

3 Key Factors of Best Marriage Retreats

Searching for a marriage retreat that’s right for you can be a challenge; after all, you do have options. To help you on your way to success with your partner, take into account these three key factors of best marriage retreats. 3 factors of best marriage retreats

  1. Location and accommodations: You are planning to spend a few precious days with your spouse without kids, work, or other normal life distractions, so you should choose a location that will enhance the time you have together. Many marriage retreats are held in hotel meeting rooms or similar charmless locations that do nothing to add to the experience you are looking for. Choose a marriage retreat that offers natural beauty and harmony, conducive to learning, healing, and change. Whether you lean towards beaches, mountains, or rolling hills, select the site best for you. And don’t forget about accommodations. The best marriage retreats are all inclusive, so you can focus on your relationship, not on all the details of where to stay and eat. You need to feel comfortable as you work toward a more fulfilling relationship. The best marriage retreats will offer 5 star accommodations no matter where you go.
  2. One-on-one counseling and real progress: Most marriage retreats will have group activities for all of the participating couples at a retreat. The best retreats will work with very small groups and also offer one-on-one private counseling sessions for you and your spouse. Privacy is key as you work through the issues of your relationship. Your counselor should have the experience to guide you toward success and progress in your marriage, at any stage you might be.
  3. Follow-up: Since marriage retreats are considered a concentrated road to success in your marriage, it is important to continue using the tools and strategies you learned when you return home from the retreat. The best marriage retreats offer follow-up support with the counselors with whom you worked at the retreat, helping you to ensure lasting positive growth and change.

There are many wonderful benefits to be found at the best marriage retreats, however, these three factors can help you select the right program and set you on the course for the best possible experience.

LIFE Marriage Retreats offers each of the three key factors of best marriage retreats, including four sublime locations, one-on-one counseling by caring professionals, and a carefully developed AfterCare post-retreat program. Let us guide you in your journey to a better marriage and a happier life together. Contact us or learn more about our marriage retreats on our website.

Balanced Relationships

A key element of any LIFE Marriage Retreat is helping couples to build a balanced relationship. Recently at a private marriage Retreat the couple found what they considered the perfect symbol for their future relationship. Along the San Diego beach Retreat location we sometimes see awesome columns of intricately balanced rocks that seem to defy the laws of physics. This couple felt drawn to one of these works of nature art as inspiration in building balanced lives and a balanced marriage relationship.  Balanced Rocks

Within any healthy relationships you will find numerous examples of balance in areas large and small. A few examples of such balance include (by the way, balance does not infer equal amounts of time in all areas):

  • A mutual recognition that their partner has needs to balance in physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual areas
  • Together time balanced with solitary time
  • Appropriate time for both family and couple time and activities
  • A balance between work and recreation
  • Respect of individual styles in relationship management such as resolving conflict

One of the best types of balance in a marriage is actually unbalanced when looked at like a ledger sheet. Research indicates that the happiest marriages focus on the positives rather than negatives. Certainly negatives are not ignored, but for every complaint or accusation there should be at least 5 heartfelt expressions of acknowledgment and love.  This will always lead to a positive emotional bank account.

So find a balanced relationship and personal life and build something even more remarkable than rock art!

A Beautiful Paradox

How long did it take you to realize that your marriage or committed relationship was not going to entirely be a bed of roses? A few months? Or did the honeymoon phase last for a full year?

The so-called honeymoon phase is a wonderful time for a couple and helps us create some cherished shared memories and strong bonds to help us weather future trials. But it is not meant to last. While romance and hormones can and should continue to play their parts in our maturing relationship, they should primarily be a bridge leading us to the warm, intimate, and fulfilling companionship that marks the happiest lasting marriages. The relationship fires still burn, but their warmth is constant and glowing in contrast to the relatively brief and meteoric heat of early romance.

This is as it should be. Those who mourn the perceived decline in romantic fires have not yet grasped what lies next in a healthy and well-managed relationship. They can look forward to growing trust, a deeper emotional connection, and a clarity of relationship vision and goals. They can also look forward to the attainment of relationship Wisdom. This wisdom helps us keep our marriage pointing “True North” even in the midst of the occasional fogs and storms that might temporarily obscure the sun and guiding landmarks.  Marriage Paradox

A crucial part of that wisdom is the understanding that our partner will never be “perfect.” There will always be some percentage of their behaviors or ways of being that we might find irritating or exasperating, and that we might change if we could tap them with a magic wand. Thank heaven we don’t have such a magic wand, as that would destroy one of the major purposes of marriage. Our deepest and most committed relationship is where we will experience the greatest refining of our hearts and souls. Marriage is the great classroom of the Universe that best tutors us in the highest laws of kindness, patience, accountability, and charity.

So next time you find yourself irritated over something your partner has said or done, rather than fuming about how to solve this “problem,” it might be more healthy to simply accept it as a fact of life. From there you can better learn how to focus on their best traits and enjoy the many strengths and gifts they bring into the relationship.

Some habits and behaviors MUST be dealt with and changed in healthy ways. Some lines such as civility and fidelity must not be crossed. But it is our experience at LIFE Couples Retreats in working with couples that many of the complaints partners have about one another can be charitably overlooked and the person accepted as they are.

Here is the payoff: Research shows that as we love and accept our partner for who and what they are we free them and invite them to change in more positive ways than we ever can through complaints and demands. This is the beautiful paradox of marriage–the more we love and accept one another the way we are, the more positive change we experience in ourselves and our partner.

LIFE Training is here

Welcome to LIFE Trainings and Adventure’s blog. We are pleased and excited to be part of the “blogosphere” and hope you find the content here useful and interesting. At LIFE, we are dedicated to serving families, couples and youth through providing the training, support, tools, and resources to help set their direction and make the course corrections that will result in a stronger, happier family, a Family of Excellence. We use a completely unique and highly effective process to achieve this objective, one that will fully involve and thrill every member of your family.We will use this blog to post information, tips, answers to common questions and anything else that we feel will be useful or meaningful to people who are committed to making their familial relationships stronger and more meaningful.We’re glad you’ve found us, and hope you come back often. Please always feel free to ask questions, leave comments, or suggest possible topics that may be of interest to you and our other readers.