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The reason why

Why are we necessary?

Life moves pretty fast, as someone once said. And the older you get, the more you realise that everything and everyone in your life is just passing through: houses, friends, cars, clothes, holidays, jobs, pastimes, experiences, even your children. They’re all just along for some of the ride.

With one exception.

If you’re really, really lucky, you’ll spend most of your life with just one other person. It’s not always easy though, is it? There will be bumps in the road. A few potholes, even. So it makes sense to look after one another along the way, and maybe even know how to change a tyre or two if you end up by the side of the road.

Marina Fogle (a brilliant business woman in her own right; married to Ben Fogle – all round fabulous adventurer and TV presenter) talks eloquently about marriage counselling as ‘an MOT’ for her and Ben’s relationship, read it here. It’s a fantastic article that captures the very thing we’re trying to achieve with One:Retreat.

Too many couples turn to counselling only as a last resort.

When a couple do separate, the results can be devastating. It deeply affects you as an individual, your children (if you have them), and your wider family. Its effects ripple through friends, work colleagues and all those around you. 100,000 children under 16 experience their parents’ break up every year in the UK, and even with the gentlest of break-ups, the impact on children can be immense.

As it says in Marina’s article, too many couples turn to counselling only as a last resort, by which time it can already be too late.

Andrew G Marshall (best-selling marital therapist) says “there are 2 big truths: no relationship is ever perfect, and every relationship requires hard work to survive… the more we understand each-other, the less likely we are to have a car crash.”

So it makes sense to look after one another before things ever get that bad. To invest in what you have together. To check in from time to time to see how each of you is doing.

We know that’s easier said than done in a busy life when there are so demands on our time. That’s why we came up with One:Retreat, a chance to step out of the daily grind for a precious few hours, a day or few days and recharge and renew what you have together.

At One:Retreat we ask you to fill in a simple but extremely effective online personality profile.We do this because often one or both partners get the chance to take their personality profile in a work context, but when we come home and close the front door behind us, we can often resort to ‘old scripts’. Life with our partner is the most important ‘private’ relationship we have, and yet we can often let this come second to the ‘public’ world of our relationships.

“When you have been with your partner for so many years, they become the glove compartment map that you’ve worn dog-eared and white-creased, the trail you recognise so well you could draw it by heart and for this very reason keep it with you on journeys at all times. And yet, when you least expect it, one day you open your eyes and there is an unfamiliar turnoff, a vantage point that wasn’t there before, and you have to stop and wonder if maybe this landmark isn’t new at all, but rather something you have missed all along.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper.

We want to give couples the chance to ‘MOT’ their relationship in a beautiful setting full of good food, private time, adventure and rest – even if you’re doing the course online at home!

Sound good?

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