Twelve Weeks Before · One More After
Learning how to say what is true to each other, and how to catch it when it comes back. In person, in a room in Melbourne.
Two Ways To Do It
Six couples, twelve weeks, in a room together. You do the work alongside five other couples who want the same marriage you do — and by week three you will know them.
$2,800a couple
The same twelve weeks, semi-private. Four of you in the room and nobody else — close enough to say anything, and another couple walking it beside you.
$6,000a couple
The same twelve weeks, held privately, for one couple at a time.
$10,000a couple
Six to twelve months after the wedding, the two of you come back for one more week — the only part that happens when the day is already a memory and the marriage is the thing you are living in.
What The Two Of You Will Be Able To Do
Say what is true, gently, and have it land.
Listen without preparing your reply.
Apologise so that it actually repairs.
Stay in the room when it is hard.
Ask for what you need, in words your person can hear.
Find the way back to each other, on purpose.
And Words For The Rest Of Your Lives
English leaves you to explain yourself at eleven at night.
These are for the moments when explaining is the hardest part.
Stay beside me. Not words, not solutions. Nearness.
Understand me. Real comprehension, rather than the surface of what was said.
Be gentle with me. Named precisely, in the moment it is needed.
Give me quiet. I need calm. Honest self-knowledge rather than rejection.
To lean in rather than away. Staying close through the hard part, when leaning away would have been easier.
To receive fully. To catch and hold what somebody offers you — their feelings, their truth, their vulnerability.