PROTECTING YOUR PRIVACY ON A COUPLES' RETREAT

You may want to learn some tantra with your partner, but have a fear of all of your most private issues being shared in front of everyone if you join.

And this is a perfectly valid fear.

I remember one time my beloved and I joined a Couples' Tantra retreat. The format was set up so that as soon as the genders were split up, each was encouraged to spill the beans about what challenges them about the other. Then when the partners returned, the facilitator invited an open sharing about what was said.

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Now, I totally understand how getting things out in the open can be tremendously healing. However, at the same time I believe it has to be balanced with protecting the privacy of the other. In fact, whilst it is healing to expose our OWN vulnerability, it is actually violating to expose someone else's without their permission.

So this creates a delicate situation in a couples' retreat, because what you share is bound to expose something in your partner.

It needs a different degree of space holding, and a different set of agreements. Not only agreements, but also understanding. It is all too easy to blame our parter for an issue in our relationship, and this may come out in the words that we share.

We completely understand the need to maintain some privacy in your intimate life, and therefore we create a space that respects that. We also believe that a couples' retreat needs a different set of agreements than an individual's tantra group in order to honor this. It is our belief that when our heart feels safe, it opens. Therefore, this safety needs to be built in to the structure of the retreat.

The agreements that we offer for our Couples' Retreats is as follows:
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1. If you as a couple don't want to share anything about your personal issues, you are welcome to just come along and enjoy the meditations and practices.
2. If you wish to share confidentially with a facilitator, you can do so via writing (via the intake form or an email  prior to the group). Or you can take a moment to chat with one of us during the retreat.
3. You may have the desire to share openly with the other couples on the retreat (for that feeling of getting it out of the shadows). We will all create a confidential space together for that purpose. 
4. There are also separate men and women's sharing circles on the longer retreats. Te same honoring of your partner is carried into these.
5. We ask that each partner deeply respects what is vulnerable for their partner. Thus, we will invite you to share what is vulnerable for you, but not to share what is vulnerable for your partner (as that can feel uncomfortably exposing).
6. If there is an issue that is delicate between you, we ask you to discuss this privately together and decide if you want to share or not (or decide how much feels comfortable to share).

This space needs to feel completely safe for everyone, and so it is important that everyone feels they can make their own boundaries around what is revealed, and has the right to protect their own privacy.

In this way, each couple can create the experience that works for them. We want you to know before you sign up for one of our retreats, that you will be in full choice together of the level of sharing you wish to chose.

Click here to find out more about our up-coming retreats for couples.

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