Couples Alive

Couples Alive:
Foundation

October 16 – 20, 2026
With Susan Clarke and CrisMarie Campbell

Couples Alive:
Igniting Passion and Aliveness

October 21-25, 2027
With Susan Clarke and CrisMarie Campbell

Couples Alive:
Living and Loving

October 21 – 25, 2026
With Susan Clarke and CrisMarie Campbell

Couples Alive: Foundation

Couples Alive is our renowned 4-day program for couples.

If you’re wanting more out of your primary relationship and are prepared to go beyond the familiar to find it, Couples Alive is for you!

Couples Alive is our core offering for people in a primary relationship. Much of what makes Come Alive (our core program for individuals) so unique and transformative is the foundation of these programs, but with a distinctly couples focus. With support and guidance from highly skilled leaders, you will learn and practice The Haven’s models for communicating and relating with your partner and learn from the diversity of experience around you. All couples meet together during the day and into the evenings, with breaks for relaxation, connection, or adventure in between. In addition to group activities, experiential learning, and discussion, there will be opportunities for the program leaders to support each couple with coaching and feedback.

Couples Alive program highlights:

  • 4 focused days together improving, revitalizing, and expanding your relationship
  • A chance to get away and visit Gabriola, one of BC’s most accessible gulf islands
  • In-depth exploration and application of Haven’s tried-and-tested Communication Model from a distinctly couples perspective
  • Many years of continued success with hundreds of diverse couples
  • A truly unique approach to relationships developed – and lived – by our founders, Dr. Ben Wong and Dr. Jock McKeen
  • A variety of breathing and body-awareness experiences that you can take home to continue nurturing your connection and growth
  • Discovery of your boundaries and development of skills to express your wishes, wants and needs with each other
  • Opportunities for self-care and/or quality time together with our oceanfront hot tub, onsite bodyworkers, gym, meditation room, forest trails
  • The magic of being with a diverse group of couples and the rich opportunity to learn from and relate to each other in this setting
  • Something different from your traditional couples counseling sessions – couples often report accelerated outcomes compared to individual sessions (though we believe there’s a place for both)
  • Coaching and feedback from experienced and professional leadership who are highly trained both at The Haven and in their own professions
  • A program that offers opportunities to continue to learn and grow together…
  • We welcome all people in a primary relationship, whether the individuals identify as male, female, or non-binary
  • Participants will be invited, but not required, to share what’s going on for them and their relationship in the larger group. As with all Haven programs, how you participate is your choice

Couples Alive: Igniting Passion and Aliveness

When we first meet someone, and increasingly as the stakes go up, we do our best to be seen in a positive light. It is in these exciting, and often-uneasy, times that we begin to establish the range of who and how we are in our relationship.

If we suppress ourselves to make our relationship work, we are likely to experience resentment, distance, distrust and anxiety. Alternatively, each person’s fully acknowledged and expressed presence can become the foundation of a solid, loving relationship. Through this process we begin to build the faith in ourselves and each other to relate at an edge of aliveness and discovery.

Passionate expression and healthy power-struggle can help establish growth and acceptance – as individuals and as a couple. In this program couples work to identify and share personal characteristics, beliefs and behaviours;  go beyond ‘good-bad’ judgments, and explore how these traits can be embraced to enhance relationship.

This program is for couples that want to:

  • Experience more energy, pleasure and edge
  • Develop a healthy approach to power struggles
  • Learn ways to create personal safety and location
  • Build solid ground for relating through risk, compassion and curiosity
  • Broaden and deepen their range of intimacy
  • Create an open and accepting environment for each person

Couples Alive: Living and Loving

Special 2026 $500 discount code offer per couple for those who have attended Couples Alive: Foundation – CoA500

When we imagine falling in love, we often picture excitement, passion, discovery and great sex. And often, in the beginning, that’s exactly what we get.

But over time, the thrill of falling can quietly give way to familiarity. Life fills in—work, kids, schedules, responsibilities—and love can start to feel more predictable, even flat. Not because anything is wrong… but because something vital has gone unattended. 

Somewhere along the way, we miss the invitation to grow from falling in love to living love.

So how do we reclaim aliveness in the midst of real life?

How do we keep loving vibrant when routines take over and energy gets thin?

In Couples Alive: Living & Loving, couples explore how to reawaken passion and presence by:

  • Expressing desire instead of assuming it
  • Risking honesty, play, and adventure
  • Renewing embodied contact—touch, charge, and felt connection
  • Letting everyday moments become doorways to intimacy

This program opens the door to the richness already available in your shared life. In a thoughtful, caring, and engaging setting, couples learn how to gently shake the familiar and welcome the unexpected.

Starting with common relationship challenges—and then going deeper—partners co-create a shared ground that is real, alive, and uniquely theirs. From there, new ways of loving emerge through work and play, tenderness and edge, challenge and pleasure.

This program is for couples who want to:

  • Uncover the deeper richness already present in their partnership
  • Bring more edge, vitality, and authenticity to daily contact
  • Create an atmosphere of kindness, generosity, and curiosity
  • Use their “tough stuff” as fuel for growth rather than distance
  • Transform familiarity into novelty and freshness
  • Rekindle spark in fun, touch, charge, and sex
  • Discover how ordinary moments can lead to the new and unexpected

Living and loving don’t have to be separate.

When couples learn to meet each other fully—again and again—love becomes something you don’t just fall into, but something you live.

Investment:

Package pricing starts at $3470 per couple, includes tuition, basic room and meals, in the low season.

You can find our cancellation policy here

Schedule:

Your program begins with dinner at 5:45pm, followed by your first session at 7:00pm

Daily schedule:

  • Cold Breakfast 7:00am – 8:00am
  • Hot Breakfast 8:00am – 8:45am
  • Morning session 9:00am to 12:00pm
  • Lunch 12:00pm to 12:45pm
  • Afternoon session 2:45pm – 5:45pm
  • Dinner 5:45pm – 6:30pm
  • Evening session 7:00 pm- 9:00pm

Afternoon and evening sessions can vary.  Your program finishes with lunch on the last day

Transportation:

If you are travelling to Gabriola as a foot passenger on the Gabriola Ferry a shuttle to The Haven can be requested.  Information on this option will be included in your pre-arrival email.

Recommended Resources:

Here are book titles that can complement and enhance your learning in this program. You can purchase when you are at Haven, or email info@haven.ca to order in advance. Click to learn more: