Improve Your Relationship With Weekly Marriage Meetings
March 4, 2023
One thing you’ll learn from couples therapy is “accountability”. Meaning your therapist holds both you and your partner accountable for participating and doing the necessary work to restore your relationship. But that work doesn’t stop once therapy is over.
Even when couples graduate from therapy, they must stay accountable for the relationship. You can easily do this by having weekly marriage meetings, where you and your partner discuss your feelings openly without judgment to prevent resentments from creeping back up.
What are Weekly Marriage Meetings?
Weekly marriage meetings are when you and your partner schedule regular discussions to align the priorities in your lives and weekly relationship check-in questions, including finances, chores, and weekly calendars.
There are three primary goals of weekly marriage meetings:
- To increase awareness
- To bring more peace and harmony into your relationship
To build deeper connection, communication, and understanding
What to do During Weekly Marriage Meetings
All relationships are unique, so what works for some may not work for others. Therefore, be creative where necessary and adjust the following weekly marriage meeting guidelines when required:
- Attendance is mandatory: This is non-negotiable. Consistency is crucial to enhancing your relationship and making the weekly marriage meetings work. Eventually, you both should look forward to having this emotionally intimate time together.
- Physically connect with your partner: Hold hands, look into each other’s eyes, ask each other how you’re feeling, and thank one another for committing to the meeting. These small gestures let your partner know you’re participating in big ways. Be emotionally and physically present at all times.
- Discuss the positive first: Begin your session by discussing all the positive things that have happened since your previous meeting. Then, when transitioning to challenging areas, share feelings as well as tasks.
- Choose a comfortable environment for both of you: Create a safe space to meet with your partner where you both feel equal. Peaceful settings like an outdoor patio, the coziest space in the house, or even somewhere meaningful to the both of you away from home work best.
- Encourage full participation: Always keep the basic rules of communication in mind: the listener listens while the speaker speaks without being accusatory or defensive.
Partner With a Licensed Couples Therapist in Calgary to Improve Your Relationship
If you and your spouse have work to do before you can even think about having amicable weekly marriage meetings, speaking with a licensed couples therapist can help you get there.
Get in touch with your Calgary local relationship counsellor
Register for our Newsletter and receive a Free Love Chat Package
This Package Includes
- The 5 Steps to a Better Relationship
- Ongoing Monthly Relationship Tips
- If you want more love in your life, our relationship Love Chat Package is an easy cost-free first step.
Anger rarely begins where we think it does. We may notice the sharp tone, the clenched jaw, the criticism, the silent treatment, or the sudden need to prove that we are right. But beneath the visible anger is often a deeper question: Who taught you that anger was the safest way to protect yourself?
Weighing whether to stay together for the kids? Explore what a Relational Life Therapy approach reveals about love, conflict, and your children's wellbeing.
Some men enter relationships with confidence, charm, ambition, and an impressive ability to take up space. They may be charismatic, persuasive, successful, or deeply certain that their way of seeing things is the right way. At first, this confidence can feel attractive. A partner may experience him as decisive, protective, passionate, and exciting. But over time, what initially looked like confidence can begin to feel like entitlement. Conversations become competitions. Feedback feels like an attack. His needs dominate the relationship, while his partner’s experience is minimized, corrected, or ignored.
Relational Life Therapy (RLT) is known for its directness, its focus on accountability, and its commitment to helping couples move out of stalemate and into real change. But one of the most overlooked skills that makes all of that possible is something quieter, subtler, and profoundly powerful: relational mindfulness. Relational mindfulness is not just about being calm or present. It is the capacity to stay aware of yourself, your partner, and the dynamic between you in real time, especially when things get hard. This is where the transformation lives.
Is your relationship feeling distant or polite? Discover how Relational Life Therapy brings truth and healing. Explore couples therapy in Calgary today.
A healthy relationship is not built by accident. It develops through repeated patterns of connection, repair, and mutual care. One of the most useful questions a couple can ask is not only, “How are we doing?” but also, “What kind of relationship are we trying to create
together?”
Here is the hard truth: talking about the problem is not the same as changing the pattern. In Relational Life Therapy (RLT), we recognize that insight is cheap; change is what matters.
In Relational Life Therapy , growth is not treated as a finish line. Relationships are living systems, which means they are always changing, always asking for attention, and always inviting us to learn something new about ourselves and each other. The idea that a couple can “arrive” at a permanently easy, conflict-free place is one of the most common myths about love. In reality, healthy relationships are not built on perfection; they are built on ongoing awareness, accountability, and repair. RLT emphasizes directness, personal responsibility, and lasting change rather than the fantasy of getting everything right once and for all. A relationship is not a problem to solve and then file away. It is a practice, and like any meaningful practice, it deepens over time. Partners will keep meeting new versions of each other as life changes, stress rises and falls, and old patterns get triggered in fresh ways. That is why RLT focuses on identifying repeating “dances” between partners, such as pursuing and distancing, criticizing and defending, or over-functioning and under-functioning. These patterns do not disappear because a couple has been together for a long time; they simply become more visible when life places pressure on the bond.
Healthy communication is the foundation of every lasting relationship. Yet many couples find themselves feeling misunderstood or stuck in recurring arguments, not because they lack love, but because they haven’t learned the “rules of engagement” that make conversations effective. At my couples therapy practice in Calgary, I often describe communication as a shared journey: much like driving a car together. When both partners understand the “rules of the road,” they navigate challenges with greater ease, awareness, and respect.
There are many highlights with the 2026 Olympics in Milan this winter. One of my favourites is the Ice Dancing Pairs. Watching them pursue the Olympic gold as a couple is breathtaking to watch. They are two people gliding across the ice as if they share one heartbeat. Every lift, every turn, every daring leap relies on
