Marriage Retreats For When Your Marriage Hits Rough Ground

Sometimes even the best of marriages hit some rough ground. If that happens and you and your partner want some help to work things out, a very sound option is to find  marriage retreats in your area.

Marriage retreats can come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more formal than others, some incorporate many couples and others are smaller and more intimate.

The most important thing is that you and your partner find a retreat that you will feel comfortable attending.

For example, if you are not a religious person, you may not feel comfortable attending a retreat that is sponsored by a church.

If you are quite shy, you probably won't want to attend a retreat that is going to require a lot of group activities.

None of these things should be a problem since there are retreats that are geared to couples of all types.

Most of the common topics that will be covered in many retreats are these:

1. Learning better ways of communicating. Any couple who has been together for a while has at least a little baggage.

Even strong, compatible couples will have built up some resentments and misunderstandings if they've been together for a long time.

Most of these misunderstandings are simply a result of lack of communication skills.

You hear about it all the time, but what does lack of communication skills really mean?

Well, in the context of a marriage it means that one or both partners are not good at expressing themselves and/ or truly objectively listening to what their partner is saying.

This is a huge problem. You may have noticed that men and women communicate differently.

Men have the tendency to want to "fix" things. Women often just want to feel like they are understood.

So when a wife tries to tell her husband about the jerk she has to deal with at the office, he often hears "I need to help, fix it".

In his mind when he tells her "just ignore them" he is helping. But in her mind he is being dismissive and unsympathetic.

That is what can make it so tough. And that is why pretty much any couple can benefit from learning how to see things from the others perspective.

2. How to let go. This too is huge. Again, if you and your partner have baggage from past misunderstandings, the only way you can go on to have a loving and fulfilling relationship is to move past them.

This can be easier said than done since most of us will bury the hurt and frustration so far down that we aren't even consciously aware of it.

That means that first you will need to "dig it up" and then you will need to heal it. And, many of us don't want to do that since that hurts.

In a lot of cases we are more comfortable keeping it buried. The problem is that it is buried but it is far from gone. It can come back and  cause problems when you least expect it.

So, if you and your partner want to shore up your marriage and learn better ways of dealing with your issues, and each other, marriage retreats can offer a viable option.