Intensive couples therapy in Melbourne and on the Mornington Peninsula
Three or five consecutive days with one couple and one therapist, rather than an hour a week.
Tumee Hugginson
Psychotherapist and couples therapist. MA Clinical Psychology. Gottman Method, Level 3.
Most couples who find this page have already worked something out for themselves: that an hour a week is not going to be enough.
Three consecutive days, A$5,800. Five days, A$7,800. In Mornington or online.
Couples often search for a retreat when what they mean is uninterrupted time, carefully held, away from the week that keeps interrupting them. This is that: three or five consecutive days on the Mornington Peninsula, an hour from Melbourne, or online wherever you are.
By the time you have both arrived, taken your coats off and found your way back into the conversation, half the hour has gone. Whatever was opened has to be closed again and carried home unfinished. Six days then pass in which the ordinary life of the relationship carries on — the school run, the difficult message, the silence at dinner, the argument on Thursday that neither of you mentions — and a good deal of the next session is spent re-establishing where you had got to.
A couples intensive removes that interruption.
What a couples intensive is
Intensive couples therapy means three consecutive days, or five. Roughly five hours of therapy each day. One couple at a time, in Mornington, in Melbourne, or online.
You will see this format described elsewhere in Australia as marathon couples therapy, intensive marriage counselling, or a couples retreat. The words differ; the shape is the same — consecutive days with one couple, rather than an hour a week for a year. This practice calls it a Couples Intensive, and avoids the word marathon deliberately, because endurance is not the mechanism. Nothing useful happens because two exhausted people were kept talking past their limit. What makes the format work is continuity, which is a quieter thing than a marathon.
Why consecutive days work differently
Something surfaces on the first afternoon and is still available on the second morning. A pattern named on Tuesday can be watched happening in the room on Wednesday, in real time — a very different experience from being told about it. There is room for the conversation neither of you has managed at home, because for the first time no clock is forcing it closed and no evening is waiting on the other side of it.
There is a second thing, less often said. Three days away from your own kitchen is three days away from every habit the two of you perform in it. Couples are often surprised by how differently they speak to one another in a room that belongs to neither of them.
This is not a claim that the format is superior to weekly work. It is not. It is a claim that it is different, and that for some couples at some moments the difference is decisive. For many couples, weekly ninety-minute sessions remain the better and more proportionate choice.
Write a few lines and I will reply personally. A limited number of intensives are held each year, and dates are arranged privately — including weekends where possible.
Who this format tends to suit
It tends to suit couples for whom weekly therapy has stalled, or has begun to feel like maintenance of a problem rather than movement through it. It suits couples in acute crisis, where an hour a week is too thin a thread. And it suits couples working through betrayal — the disclosure conversation in particular does not belong in a fifty-minute hour with a waiting room beyond the door.
carrying entrenched conflict, emotional distance, or repeated rupture
navigating an affair, betrayal, secrecy, or a serious loss of trust — see couples therapy after an affair
facing a major transition, decision, or relational turning point
feeling that too much remains unspoken, unresolved, or difficult to contain
wanting to make meaningful use of a limited period of time
travelling from interstate or overseas for care
seeking a more immersive and private therapeutic experience
Is an intensive right for you?
An intensive is demanding, and it is not right for every couple. Before recommending one, we consider whether intensive conjoint work is safe, appropriate and genuinely chosen by both partners. We may recommend a different form of support where there is current violence, intimidation or coercive control; where participation is not meaningfully voluntary; where acute mental-health or substance-use difficulties make sustained intensive work inappropriate; or where important relationship information, such as an ongoing affair, is being actively withheld.
You do not need to arrive certain that the relationship can or should continue. Uncertainty about whether to stay together can itself be part of the work — and where that uncertainty is the central question, discernment counselling may be the more appropriate first step.
We do not promise reconciliation, and we do not promise a particular outcome.
The work is designed to help you understand the relationship more clearly: the patterns you become caught in, what sits underneath them, what each of you needs, and what would have to change for the relationship to move forward.
For some couples, the work strengthens a decision to remain together and gives them a clearer way forward. For others, it may bring greater clarity about whether the relationship should continue. The purpose is not to steer you toward staying or separating, but to help you engage honestly and carefully with the relationship you actually have.
What we can commit to is the quality and integrity of the process: careful assessment, a clearly structured intensive, transparent fees, and an honest recommendation if an intensive does not appear appropriate for you.
How it works
Before
Every intensive begins before the first day.
Both partners complete a Gottman relationship assessment online, one of the most extensively validated instruments in couples therapy. It is read before the first day, so the work can be shaped around what is actually happening between you, and so that we can say before you travel if an intensive does not look like the right format.
There is no separate consultation to attend beforehand. The first morning opens with the three of us talking properly before any structured work begins, and if what emerges there says the shape should be different — more about parting well than about repair — then that is what the days become. Anyone considering an intensive is welcome to fifteen minutes on the telephone first, at no charge, to ask whatever they need to.
During
Five hours a day, dedicated to one couple. Your intensive is private and individually structured; there are no group sessions or overlapping couples-therapy appointments.
Days combine joint work with individual time where it is clinically useful. There are breaks, and there is space between sessions to absorb what has happened — the integration is part of the method, not an interval in it. Lunch, refreshments, tea and coffee are provided.
The work is Gottman-trained — integrated with depth psychology and attachment theory: the structure and evidence base of Gottman, applied to the material underneath the argument rather than only to the argument.
After
An intensive that ends at the door has not finished.
Every couple leaves with a personalised integration booklet built from their own work — not a handout. Two follow-up sessions are included, scheduled after the intensive, to hold the work while it settles into ordinary life.
Couples who wish to continue may do so in weekly therapy.
Weekend and retreat formats
A limited number of intensives are offered each year, and dates are arranged privately. Weekend intensives can sometimes be accommodated where the diary allows.
For couples wanting something longer and more immersive — five to seven days, away from home, in Australia, Japan or a destination arranged privately — the practice also offers retreat intensives. That format is shaped individually, and the fee is quoted on enquiry according to duration and setting.
Psychotherapy services are GST-free, and couples therapy is not covered by Medicare in Australia. Every fee is published in full on the fees page.
The shape of the three days
Couples ask what actually happens across three days, and it is a fair question to ask before committing to something this concentrated.
There is no fixed timetable. The hours are arranged around you — around how you travel, how you tire, and what the work turns out to need — and they are generally five a day. No two intensives run identically, and the material decides a good deal of it. What follows is the shape the days usually take.
The first day is for understanding what is really happening.
The first morning opens with the three of us talking properly, and because the Gottman assessment has already been read, that conversation moves quickly to the pattern itself: what happens between you, in what order, and what each of you does when it starts. Most couples can describe their argument. Fewer have seen its architecture — the move, the counter-move, the point at which one of you goes quiet and the other goes louder.
After lunch there is usually individual time, where it is clinically useful. This is not information-gathering behind a partner’s back, and nothing said in it is carried into the joint room without agreement. It exists because some things are easier to say first on your own, and because what sits underneath a position is often not what is being argued about.
The first day tends to end earlier than couples expect, and quietly. There is no homework.
The second day is the depth of it.
This is where the work moves beneath the pattern to what drives it: the histories each of you brought, the attachment each of you learned before you ever met, and the meanings you have been assigning to one another’s behaviour without knowing it. Where there has been betrayal or a significant rupture, the second day is usually where it is faced properly, with enough time around it to be held rather than opened and abandoned.
It is the most demanding of the three, and couples are often tired by the middle of the afternoon. That is expected. The breaks are real breaks, and the space between sessions is part of the method rather than an interval in it — a good deal happens in the walk, the cup of tea, the hour when neither of you is being asked anything.
The third day is for what you will take with you.
The final day turns towards the practical: what has changed in how you each understand the pattern, what to do when it begins again, and how to repair when it has already gone wrong, which it will. Couples rehearse this rather than discuss it, because knowing how a repair should go is not the same as being able to make one at the time.
The day ends with the integration booklet, built from your own work across the three days rather than handed to you from a drawer, and with the two follow-up sessions arranged. Those sessions matter more than they sound: the fortnight after an intensive is when ordinary life tests what was built, and it is better not to meet that alone.
What the three days are not.
They are not a retreat, and they are not restorative in the sense of a rest. The days are long and the material is close to the surface throughout. Couples who come expecting to be looked after find it more strenuous than they imagined; couples who come expecting to work usually find the format a relief, because there is finally enough time.
Nor is an intensive a guarantee of anything. It buys concentration and continuity, which weekly therapy structurally cannot — six days between sessions, and a good part of each one spent recovering the thread. What you do with that concentration is still the work of two people.
Questions couples ask about intensives
What does a couples intensive cost?
A three-day intensive is AUD 5,800 and a five-day intensive is AUD 7,800. Both include the Gottman relationship assessment beforehand, five hours of therapy on each day, lunch and refreshments, a written integration document, and two follow-up sessions. Every fee is published in full on the fees page; nothing is added afterwards.
Three days or five — how do we choose?
Most couples begin with three. Five suits couples working through something that needs more room than three days can hold — an affair still being disclosed, a decision about the future of the relationship, or a pattern that has outlasted every attempt to talk about it. We decide together when you enquire, from the assessment and a short conversation, and it is not unusual to recommend three when a couple arrives expecting five.
Is intensive marriage counselling the same thing as intensive couples therapy?
Yes. The words differ by who is describing it; the shape is the same — consecutive days with one couple and one therapist, rather than an hour a week. At Therapy Atelier it is called a Couples Intensive, and it is open to married and unmarried couples alike.
Can we do an intensive online?
Yes. Intensives run in Mornington, in Melbourne, or online by secure video for couples who are interstate, overseas, or simply cannot travel. The structure is the same; the days are planned around your time zone.
How is this different from weekly therapy?
Weekly therapy has a structural limit that has nothing to do with quality: six days pass between sessions, and a good deal of each hour is spent re-establishing where you had got to. Consecutive days remove that interruption. Something surfaces on the first afternoon and is still available on the second morning. It is not a claim that the format is better — for many couples, weekly ninety-minute sessions remain the better and more proportionate choice.
What happens afterwards?
An intensive that ends at the door has not finished. You leave with a written integration document built from your own work, and two follow-up sessions are included and scheduled after the intensive. Couples who wish to continue may do so in weekly therapy.