You and your spouse have a disagreement that quickly escalates. Things cool down but tension and a feeling of distance remains. After time, you reconcile on the surface and move on, but neither of you feels truly understood and the issue does not feel actually resolved. Over months, years, or even decades, the cycle is repeated and resentment builds. It becomes increasingly difficult to discuss hard topics or “hot topics” without escalation.
At Hopeful Tomorrows, we’ve seen this scenario many times and are equipped to help save your marriage. Hopeful Tomorrows is an intensive weekend retreat for couples in need of a breakthrough in their marriage. We make it our mission to ease communication, establish empathy, and create an understanding between couples – even when emotions are high and situations are complicated. We give you effective tools that you can apply to your marriage after the retreat weekend is over. We also offer continued support to help you integrate these skills into your everyday life.
What We Do
Our Hopeful Tomorrows retreat offers a refreshing integration of faith and research-based methods to provide thorough and comprehensive help for your marriage. When a couple is really hurting, they need more than a scripture band-aid. They need to know what to do and how to do it, in a way consistent with God’s word. Over the weekend you will learn practical tools to help you heal past hurts, communicate effectively and get and stay connected.
Outcome
Our retreat is extremely effective. After attending our Hopeful Tomorrows retreat, over 80% of couples recommit to their marriage. This includes couples who have already filed for divorce or are working through significant issues such as infidelity or betrayal, as well as couples who are generally stuck in a negative feedback loop. The Hopeful Tomorrows weekend consistently helps couples find hope and desire at the same time by giving them the tools they need to make their marriage work. We give couples hope for the future of their marriage, desire to make it work, and the tools to better their relationship.
Hopeful Tomorrows Retreat vs. Traditional Marriage Counseling
Compared to traditional marriage counseling alone, Hopeful Tomorrows retreats are considerably more effective. Our program places 20+ hours of therapeutic work into a single, intensive weekend, with the option of follow-up counseling to help keep improvements in the relationship in place.
For a couple in crisis, traditional marriage counseling often consists of one hour per week to work on the marriage, but then couples go home and accumulate more damage. When the couple in crisis returns to marriage counseling the following week, untangling disagreements that occurred since their last meeting could take up an entire session, and no progress is made. As time goes on, the couple is still hurting and now even more frustrated because what was supposed to help isn’t working.
Sometimes with traditional marriage counseling for a couple in crisis, it’s easy for the couple to conclude in their frustration that divorce is their only remaining option while telling themselves, “We did everything we could. We even tried counseling.” The weekend retreat provides the opportunity to set aside the distractions of life and focus solely on your relationship. At Hopeful Tomorrows, we give you the hope that your marriage can be fixed by repairing trust and strengthening your commitment to each other.
Our Founding Story
In 2013, Derek and Missy launched Better Together, a community initiative to unite churches to improve the lives of children by improving the marriages of their parents. Derek and Missy focused on enriching couples’ relationships through workshops and classes that equipped them with the skills every couple needs to feel appreciated, loved, and understood. Hundreds of people attended their Better Together classes.
As their success grew, their hearts were drawn to the couples most in need, those in crisis and even on the brink of divorce. They knew it was a huge problem and that many marriages could be saved and flourish if couples could learn the skills needed for their marriage to thrive.
Derek, a Board Certified Pastoral Counselor, and Missy, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, became aware of the weekend-intensive model. They were impressed with its incredibly high success rate and the glowing testimonies of the transformative experiences of thousands of couples.
They knew this approach could transform lives and marriages. After years of experience helping hundreds of couples achieve healing and resolution using this model, they decided to apply their expertise to designing their own unique program.
Using proven methods, clinically-based research, and scriptural truths, Hopeful Tomorrows delivers a breakthrough experience for Christian couples.
For 20 years, Derek and Missy Irvin have worked with couples to help build stronger marriages through couples’ counseling, interactive workshops, and faith and community initiatives. Derek is a Board Certified Pastoral Counselor and Marriage Coach, and Missy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Together they bring an authentic, Christ-centered approach with practical research-based strategies that work. Click the links below to learn more about Derek & Missy’s stories.