DO YOU NEED A RELATIONSHIP MOT?
A one-day retreat promises to reconnect couples and equip them with the tools they need to last the distance. Alison Perry, 38, and her husband put it to the test…
What happens when a married couple go on a one-day retreat to refocus their relationship
It isn’t that my marriage is unhappy – far from it – but like so many couples, my husband Mark, 40, and I have lost focus of what’s important in our relationship. As a writer and blogger (me) and a primary school teacher (him), our busy schedules, endless family admin and love of a Netflix box set means that the three hours a day that we see each other are usually spent staring at the TV or our phones.
We rarely talk – you know really talk – and we’re more likely to make a passive-aggressive gesture (because wet towels have been left on the bed) than a romantic one. After 17 years together, we’re solid. But in all honesty, we’re just coasting together, reacting to what life throws at us, instead of living our relationship in a meaningful way. We’re happy... but could we be happier?
To find out, we book onto a one-day couples’ workshop. One:retreat is designed to be an MOT for your relationship – a chance to spend a whole day focused on each other’s needs, desires, values and dreams. Former nurse Susannah Baker set up the retreat to allow couples to reconnect. “In particular,” says Baker, “we look at the way our personalities are wired and fit together; the values we hold that shape who we are individually and as a couple; and how we experience desire in our relationship.”
I’m totally on board. But on our journey there, I start to wonder whether Mark is. We’re sitting on a busy Saturday morning train, clutching takeaway coffees and I unfold a piece of paper with a list of questions for us to answer. Mark looks tense as he quietly answers them. Something tells me he’d rather be going anywhere else right now, than a relationship workshop.
Nevertheless, we gather along with nine other apprehensive-looking couples in an industrial-chic work space to find out what the day holds. Looking around, it’s clear that this isn’t a retreat for people with big relationship issues – everyone looks happy; keen to rediscover a connection with the person they love. “We often bumble along, feeling like we are doing okay,” says Baker. “But as soon as we hit a stumbling block, like having children, the wheels can fall off. A regular MOT
“IT’S LIFE AFFIRMING TO KNOW WE HAVE A SHARED VISION OF HAPPINESS”
means we can be great in the good times and have a deeper understanding of each other in trickier times.”
According to Baker, the average time a couple – postchildren – spends talking to each other each day is 20 minutes. This shocked me, but then I realise that it’s fairly reflective of our own relationship.
Baker introduces communications coach Ruth Adams and life coach Richard Elliott, who run One:retreat with her, and things kick off with an ice breaker. Mark glances at me and I know his eyes are screaming: “Please, no!” But, thankfully, it’s painless, with each couple taking one minute to share how they met. Phew.
The rest of the morning is spent looking at our personality profiles – we’ve all taken a pre-workshop P.E.P (Path Elements Profile) test to discover more about ourselves and our relationships. It all feels like an office team-building day, but the theory is that our personality type is either Fire, Water, Wind or Earth and with that knowledge comes a wealth of insight for us as a couple.
I’m a Fire-wind, which means I’m bold, assertive and visionary but also impulsive, controlling and a bad listener. I immediately feel sorry for
Mark, who, as a Water-fire, is sensitive, steady and loyal but also complacent and timid. We’re asked to discuss the results between ourselves (there’s no group sharing) and think about how we can bring out the best in each other. Already, I feel like we are relaxing into the day, and digging into the issues we struggle with in our relationship (Me: DIY and big jobs at home progressing slowly; Mark: not feeling listened to). We discuss stuff that we’ve always known, but never talk about. I can feel a small weight lift.
After lunch, we delve into desire. Baker asks us all to discuss what turns our desire off and on. The first part is easy: we’re just so busy and tired all of the time. Are we relying on a non-existent moment to appear, when spontaneous sex will just happen? Thinking about it, we realise that when we go on holiday, and have space and time to relax and reconnect, that desire is at its strongest. I resist the urge to write “sex” in my diary a few nights a week (well, my Fire personality means I’m a planner) and instead decide that planning more date nights is the answer. I mean, who doesn’t feel more amorous after a great meal, a shared bottle of wine and laughter?
When Elliott announces that the next stage involves a game, I have visions of role play and feel queasy. To my relief, the game simply involves each couple quickly flicking through 52 cards, each with a value written on it (such as friendship, humour, creativity) and deciding, on gut instinct, which ones are important to us. We’re encouraged to choose as many as we like, then pick three priority values as a couple, and one priority value as individuals. This allows us to pinpoint our shared and different values, and then work out ways to fully express them in our life together. “Our values are the most important factor that we create for our relationship,” says Elliott. “Common values provide a shared focus on those aspects of life that both partners are committed to. This draws us together to invest time and energy in shared priorities. However, it’s essential that in doing this we don’t overlook our distinct individual values.” We identify three shared values (family, humour and balance) and our individual ones (mine is creativity; Mark’s is simplicity), making action points as we go – for our shared ones, we agree to plan more fun family activities, make time for date nights and have phone-free evenings.
After all of the intense thinking, it’s time for meditation. Adams leads us through an exercise where we visualise our futures – where we live, who is around us, what our jobs are, how we spend our time. After sketching or scribbling down our plans, we compare notes and Mark and I discover we’ve got a fairly identical idea of the future: it involves a dog, laughter, lots of family time and a relaxed approach to work.
It’s a life-affirming moment to realise that we share a vision of happiness.
At the end of the day comes the only moment that we’re asked: “What’s the main thing you’ve learned today?” To my surprise, Mark is the first to raise his hand. “For us, it’s the importance of planning, balance and devoting more time to our family,” he tells the room. It strikes me how incredible it is that he feels happy to share these fairly intimate discoveries with people we’ve just met – a far cry from the tense, unsure husband I travelled here with. Perhaps that’s the magic of what Baker, Adams and Elliott are doing here.
In the week that follows, we start to make small changes. I show Mark kindness (something that Water personalities need) by ironing his work shirts – a job he dislikes. And we plan phone-free evenings, where we chat, have dinner and listen to music. Already, I can see a shift towards focusing more on each other and our family, rather than coasting along. Will we keep it up? Time will tell. But if we slip back into our bad habits, I know where to go for a relationship MOT.