The New Birth Couples Restoration Retreat
Six couples. Four days.
Space to begin again.
An intentionally small, immersive relationship experience in San Diego.
Not a conference. Not group therapy in a ballroom. Not a romantic vacation pretending the hard parts aren't there. A carefully structured experience that weaves evidence-informed couples work, private relationship work, restoration, experiential connection, and intentional aftercare into four unhurried days by the water.
couples. No more.
Small on purpose. It's the whole point.
Most retreats fill a room and call it intimacy. We cap the inaugural experience at six couples because everything that makes this work, privacy, real clinician access, emotional safety, depends on staying small.
With only six couples, no one is a face in a crowd. Your work stays close and protected.
Direct, unhurried access to Dr. Ransom and the clinical team, not a distant figure at the front of a hall.
A small circle is a safe circle. Trust builds when the room is intimate and known.
Fewer couples means each of you is genuinely seen, and the experience can shape itself around you.
One arc, unhurried
Four days that move with intention, from seeing each other clearly to protecting what you rebuild. Not a schedule to survive, a path to walk together.
Foundation
Arrive, settle, and begin with the strengths and history you already share, and the patterns underneath them.
Repair
Move below the recurring conflict to the emotional cycle and the attachment needs that keep it alive.
Rebuild
Turn insight into new ways of reaching for each other, agreements and rituals you can actually live in.
Stabilize
Give the change room to settle, and close by the water, so what shifted here comes home with you.
Together, and private when it matters
The heart of this retreat is a simple promise: you're part of a small, warm community, and your most tender work is never on display. Here is exactly how the days move between the two.
In the circle
Teaching, selected exercises, meals, wellness experiences, and the quiet camaraderie of a few couples doing brave work near one another.
Just the two of you
Private exercises, reflection, and relationship work you do together, in your own space, at your own pace.
Supported breakout work
Guided, clinician-supported time when your work needs a steady hand in the room with just the two of you.
Yours alone
Sensitive, couple-specific material stays entirely private. It is never processed in front of the group.
At night, you each have room to breathe.
This is one of the things that makes the experience unlike anything else: each partner has their own private sleeping room.
After an emotionally meaningful day, no one should feel obligated to keep a hard conversation running until 1 a.m. Separate rooms give each of you space to decompress, regulate, reflect, journal, and truly rest, so you return to the next day restored instead of raw.
The separation is intentional and temporary. It is not distance, and it is not a sign that anything is ending. It's how the work is protected overnight, so it can hold.
Your retreat begins before you arrive
Before you travel, each partner separately completes our proprietary ROOTED Pre-Assessment, a reflective questionnaire, not a test or a diagnosis. It lets the clinical team understand each relationship before it walks in the door, so your first day begins in the deep end instead of on paperwork.
Complete it privately
Each partner reflects on their own, before arrival. Separate, honest, unhurried.
We prepare for you
The clinical team reads each relationship in advance and shapes the days around what's really there.
It follows you home
ROOTED continues through experiential work at the retreat and into your personalized aftercare.
ROOTED is a preparation and experiential tool, completed individually and held in confidence. It is not shared with the group.
The work isn't only in the chairs
Restoration matters as much as insight. The days move between focused work and experiences designed to help your nervous systems settle and your connection breathe, in a setting made for it.
Movement
Gentle, grounding movement to bring the body back into the work, not a workout, an invitation to arrive fully.
Experiential connection
Guided experiences that let you feel closeness rather than only talk about it.
Shared meals
Some meals are simply for nourishment, rest, and easy connection, no agenda, no processing.
Cooking, together
One experience gathers you around a shared table to prepare a meal together. It isn't about culinary skill. It's a quiet, real-life window into how the two of you move as a team, how you share the load, ask for help, accept each other's influence, and repair when something small goes sideways. The rest, we'll let you discover in the moment.
Your nervous system gets cared for, too
Woven into the retreat is restorative bodywork, brought to you by visiting wellness professionals, and placed to support real nervous-system decompression after the tender stretches of the work. The body has been carrying what the heart has been doing. This is where it gets to set some of it down.
A quiet closing, by the water
The retreat culminates in an intimate closing at a private, controlled-access stretch of the San Diego coast. Each couple has their own space, their own moment, their own words. A chance to set down what you've chosen not to carry home, and to hold on to what you're carrying forward, marked by a small keepsake that stays with you.
The group may travel together to the water, but this is not a public ceremony. What passes between the two of you belongs only to you. We keep the rest a gentle surprise.
Not a worksheet. Your roadmap.
Most retreats send you home with a folder of generic handouts. You'll leave with a personalized Aftercare Blueprint, written from what actually emerged in your days here: your patterns, your agreements, and the specific things that will try to pull you back.
It names what to watch for, what to practice, and how to reach for each other when the old cycle returns. It's the difference between remembering a beautiful few days and actually keeping what you built.
We don't send you home and hope it sticks.
The weeks right after are when the work either takes hold or quietly fades. So the retreat includes four weekly follow-up sessions in the month after you return, part of the experience, not an add-on. This is where the change gets stabilized into ordinary life.
Land back home and put the first agreements into practice while everything is still fresh.
Notice where the old cycle tries to return, and adjust to real life.
Reinforce what's holding and troubleshoot what isn't, together in session.
Consolidate and set the path forward, on your own or with continued support.
This experience may be a fit for couples…
Every couple completes New Birth's application and screening process before enrollment is confirmed. This is a considered fit, not open enrollment, and not every applicant will be the right fit.
Just as importantly, what it isn't
If you and your partner are in crisis or either of you is unsafe, please reach out for immediate support first. We're glad to help you find the right care.
Private intensive, or small-group retreat
Both draw on the same New Birth method. The difference is who's in the room, and the kind of experience you're looking for.
- One couple, start to finish
- Highly individualized, private pacing
- 2, 3, or 4 days
- Scheduled around you
- Held in our Mission Valley office
- Six couples
- 4 days / 3 nights
- Separate private bedrooms
- Shared and private experiences
- December 4–7, 2026 · enrollment open
Prefer a completely private experience?
Explore private couples intensivesOne price. Everything that matters, included.
Your retreat is designed to include
Apply for the December 4–7, 2026 retreat
The inaugural New Birth Couples Restoration Retreat is December 4–7, 2026, limited to six couples. Tell us about you below to begin, and we’ll follow up to complete your application and reserve your place.
Thank you — your request is in.
We’ll be in touch soon to complete your application and reserve your place for December 4–7, 2026.
Submitting this form does not reserve a retreat space. Couples complete New Birth’s application and screening process before enrollment is confirmed.
Before you join the list
Six couples. Four days.
One intentional reset.
The inaugural New Birth Couples Restoration Retreat is December 4–7, 2026, limited to six couples. Apply now to begin.