Intensive Couples Therapy
MESSY RELATIONSHIP? YOU’RE WELCOME HERE.
You’re here because you want to save your relationship.
But you’re ready to admit you have no idea how… despite your endless, compulsive research and trying.
INTENSIVE COUPLE THERAPY
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INTENSIVE COUPLE THERAPY
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INTENSIVE COUPLE THERAPY ꩜ INTENSIVE COUPLE THERAPY ꩜
The truth?
Even if your relationship feels messy and intense…even if it’s stuck in toxic cycles…you can still deeply desire to learn a better way to love.
If that’s where you’re finding yourself?
I want to intro you to possibly the only thing you haven’t tried yet.
Intensive Couples Therapy with
Dr. Marina Rosenthal
A deep dive of couples therapy designed to meet messy relationships where they are and reserve the time, effort, and expertise needed to jump start the healing process.
Give me one weekend (or two to three consecutive weekdays, you get the idea).
I’ll help you go from spinning in circles around and into each other to holding tangible tools you can use alone and together that will change the landscape of your relationship long term.
Yes, even YOUR relationship can be helped if that’s what you want.
Nobody seems to be saying it…
INTENSE RELATIONSHIPS REQUIRE INTENSE SOLUTIONS
You’ve tried it all already, so I’ll just TELL you why it hasn’t worked.
You’ve read everything the Gottmans have ever spoken, written, morse-coded.
You’ve listened to 100 “secret to a happy marriage” podcast episodes.
You’ve had serious convos about things that need to change.
But you always end up back in the same place with your partner:
꩜ round and round communication
꩜ intense & messy fights
꩜ endless differences that seem insurmountable
… is it just naive of you to keep trying?
On the surface, you just want to stop fighting like this.
But if you’re honest, here’s what you really want:
Healthy love
To feel safe and cared for in your relationship
To bring out the best in each other most of the time
Maybe not a fantasy fairytale (you know that’s not actual life), but that real world big love you always dreamed about
To stop acting like someone you don’t want to be simply because it’s a pattern you can’t stop spiraling into
I don’t believe that’s too much to ask. Even inside of partnerships with built-in intensity, complexity, or messiness.
INTENSIVE COUPLE THERAPY
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INTENSIVE COUPLE THERAPY
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INTENSIVE COUPLE THERAPY ꩜ INTENSIVE COUPLE THERAPY ꩜
You’re not doomed to either settle for your current dynamic or throw your relationship out altogether.
You can get support to break down what feels insurmountable into solvable problems you can chip away at together.
Healthy love isn’t built in grand gestures or begrudged ultimatums.
It’s built by stacking bricks for the relationship you DO want more often than the one you don’t.
I can help you build the foundation and even purchase the bricks and mortar (figuratively speaking, because you don’t want me as your contractor).
WHAT’S AN INTENSIVE, EXACTLY?
An intensive is a large, targeted dose of therapy.
The weekends I offer couples equate to 8-12 weeks of weekly therapy.
BUT I’ve found time and again that they’re even MORE effective than the equivalent dose of weekly therapy because:
Sessions don’t get bogged down by your fight of the week.
We can discuss, diagnose, and do more with more overarching, complex problems in your relationship.
In other words, we get more done because there’s less room for bullshit.
My unique approach ensures that you won’t leave with more questions than answers.
I love answers. I love assignments. And I think you do, too.
So let’s get down to the nitty gritty and nail down an actual plan (the kind you’ve never been able to find or stick to before).
Wondering if you’d be a good fit? Let’s chat.
If Dr. House was a couples therapist? That would be me.
I'm Dr. Marina Rosenthal, licensed psychologist dedicated to serving couples with high-conflict, messy relationships.
I call myself a “pragmatic romantic.” I love love, but I’m also a realist. My clients find this refreshingly helpful.
I like to say I’m the Dr. House of Couples Therapy.
My unique talent is taking in information that every other therapist and expert has seen, that you have mulled over and researched for years, and I draw different, more actionable conclusions.
Big problems don’t intimidate me. My goal is to break them down into smaller, solvable problems that help you move on the path toward healthier love together.
In addition to being a licensed psychologist, I’m also an author (watch out in 2027 for my forthcoming book We Have To Stop Fighting Like This, published by Penguin Random House).
Because I believe more couples are fighting through messy relationships than the world lets on.
I want to provide as many resources as possible to help them find a way to a healthy relationship that was likely never modeled to them.
WHAT HAPPENS INSIDE AN INTENSIVE?
Our Intensive Agenda depends on what your relationship needs.
Yes, I will actually tell you.
No, I won’t make you guess or “feel into it.”
I’ve worked with countless couples who are extremely smart, very high functioning in every area of their lives, but somehow still feel like they can’t stop failing in their relationship.
If that’s you, too?
You don’t need another sweeping, reductive diagnostic.
You also don’t need a Weekly Supervised Bitching Session.
You need someone to deeply and compassionately assess your relationship in all its nuance.
Someone who knows all the psychological frameworks and jargon, but wields them in ways that actually help, not just to give you a label.
Someone to give you tools you can use alone and together to move your relationship in a new direction.
What we can work on inside an intensive:
꩜ Complete a full couples therapy intake and feedback, learn two new skills, practice and receive targeted coaching on the skills, and plan how you’ll maintain them.
꩜ Thoroughly assess why conflict keeps getting so messy, develop a highly specific action-plan for what you’ll do instead, learn and practice multiple skills, and create a schedule for practicing your new skills.
꩜ Dive deep into processing a painful topic that you have generally avoided dealing with in day-to-day life because it’s depressing. We can give a hard issue the space and attention it needs so that you can move forward together.
꩜ Identify the blocks in the way of an emotionally intimate relationship, process past hurts preventing present-day connection, and create a comprehensive plan for true connection.
Details & Investment
Healthy Love can be on your horizon
1-Day Relationship Assessment
$2500
Includes…
In-depth assessment
Targeted feedback
Treatment recommendations
Coordination of care
2-Day Couples Intensive
$5000
Most popular option! Equivalent to 8 weeks of weekly therapy. Includes:
In-depth assessment
Targeted feedback
Specific instruction
Guided practice of 2-3 actionable skills you can apply together at home
3-Day Couples Intensive
$7500
Equivalent of 12 weeks of weekly therapy. Includes:
In-depth assessment
Targeted feedback
Specific instruction
Guided practice of 4-6 actionable skills you can apply together at home
AT THIS POINT, YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT
You could keep trying to intellectualize or force your way to a fix.
But you’re too smart and probably too damn tired for...
continuing to try and find more magical, but somehow still surface-level solutions won’t make your never-ending fights budge.
reading yet another book or listening to yet another podcast is just going to leave you seething with everything your partner is doing wrong and won’t fix.
enduring another fight without tools will further fracture your own self-trust and make you wonder if it’s just easier to quit trying and start over.
Newsflash: You don’t need to hold the burden to figure this out and fix things alone anymore.
A couples therapy Intensive may feel intense, but what if it could be the one thing you try that ACTUALLY works?
I’ve seen it happen for so many of my clients who felt like you do, and I believe you can experience the same shifts that finally stick.
In case you need someone to say it:
You’re allowed to fight for your messy relationship.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
My clients love to have all the info.
Here are some answers to questions you might already have.
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At this time, I work with couples mostly through intensives. Intensives can actually replace regular couples therapy in many cases (with even better results). If desired, as part of your intensive I can set you up with the right ongoing therapist for you and/or your partner in the event that you need or want that moving forward. But…when our time together goes really well, sometimes I do continue with a couple to help them maintain their gains in the form of monthly or quarterly booster sessions. I’ll give you more info for this after your intensive!
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We will have 4 hours of active therapy time each day. I ask when you participate in an intensive that you clear your schedule (even for virtual intensives), so you can tend to yourself and process the work. When we’re not together, I’ll be conceptualizing your relationship, developing my feedback and recommendations, and writing up a comprehensive report for you to take home outlining every aspect of our time together. I’ve found four hours is the maximum amount of active therapy time we can do without burning you out and deteriorating your results (yes, there is such a thing as too much therapy).
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Not necessarily, and often the answer to this is “not now” for my clients. Intensives are a full episode of treatment, just smushed into one very effective weekend.
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Healthy relationships, high conflict relationships, and abusive relationships all exist on a spectrum. For that reason, some verbal aggression or low level physical aggression is common for high conflict couples. But there must be no dynamics of coercion or control. If you don’t knowwhether what you’re experiencing is high conflict or veering into abuse, I suggest you take a look at my completely free resource, Red Flags & Red Lines: Understanding High Conflict vs. Abuse, before pursuing an intensive.
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Intensives take place in-person in Portland, Oregon or can be virtual if you both currently reside in CA, OR, or MN. You must both be physically located in one of those three states at the time of the intensive for me to work with you virtually. In other words, if you do not CURRENTLY LIVE in OR, CA, or MN, you must be willing to travel to Portland, OR for your intensive before we book.
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Intensive couples therapy is therapy, not coaching. You get the full benefit of my psychological training and licensure, and as such I can only work with clients in my license states: CA, OR, and MN. If you don’t live in one of those states, you’re welcome to travel to Portland for our time together (it’s a great city to spend a weekend).