Private 3-Day Virtual Marriage Intensive
From Barely Surviving
to Thriving
The affair. The fights that go nowhere. The silence that’s worse than the fights. The word “divorce” hanging in the air. If your marriage is in crisis, you don’t have months of weekly sessions to slowly find your way — you need real help, focused and deep, now.
Fifteen hours. Three days. Just the two of you and me — rebuilding safety, speaking your truth, and beginning a better “we.”
With Debbie Rivera — Gottman & EFT trained · Imago Certified · Inner Harmony Practitioner License (Parts Work) · Decades of walking beside couples in crisis
Is This You?
You Don’t Have to Say It Out Loud. I Already Know.
- You found out about the affair — and you can’t stop the movie playing in your head.
- Or you’re the one who strayed — and you’d give anything to undo the pain in your partner’s eyes.
- You have the same fight on repeat, or worse — you’ve stopped fighting because you’ve stopped hoping.
- You’re living like polite roommates in a house that used to be a home.
- One of you has a foot out the door. Maybe both. And the word “divorce” has entered the room.
- You’ve tried talking, tried a book, maybe tried counseling — and an hour a week barely scratches the surface before the timer runs out.
And one more thing, because shame keeps too many couples suffering in silence: depending on the research and how infidelity is defined, estimates range from roughly one in five marriages to more than half. Whatever the true number — if this happened to you, you are not broken and you are not alone.
Here is what I want you to know before anything else: couples come back from this. I have watched marriages that looked finished become more honest, more tender, and more alive than they ever were before the crisis. Not by pretending it didn’t happen — by walking through it, together, with the right guide.
Why an Intensive?
Why an Hour a Week Isn’t Enough for a Marriage in Crisis
Weekly sessions are wonderful for maintenance. But when a marriage is bleeding, fifty minutes barely gets past “how was your week” before it’s time to stop — and then you go home and undo the progress in the car. A crisis needs concentrated care.
Weekly Sessions
- 50 minutes, then back to life mid-conversation
- Months to build enough safety to reach the real issues
- Progress interrupted by the week’s new conflicts
- Easy to stay in the shallow end forever
The 3-Day Intensive
- 15 focused hours — the equivalent of months of sessions in one weekend
- Enough time and safety to reach what’s really underneath
- Momentum that builds instead of resetting
- From your own home — no travel, no waiting rooms, no months on a waitlist
- You leave with new skills, real repair, and a plan — not just insight
The Journey
Three Days That Can Change Everything
The structure is intentional. We begin gently, go deep when you’re ready, and end with your future in hand. And the intensive is bigger than three days — it begins before we ever meet, and it doesn’t end when we say goodbye.
We Begin Before We Begin
“I walk into Day 1 already knowing your story.”
Before the intensive, you’ll complete the Gottman Relationship Checkup — a thorough, research-based online assessment developed by The Gottman Institute — along with my own in-depth couples questionnaire, and we’ll meet together for a pre-intensive session. I review everything before we begin, because no two marriages are alike: your intensive is structured specifically around your story, your wounds, and your hopes — never a one-size-fits-all program. From the first minute of Day 1, we’re already working.
Safety & Your Story
“We can stop the bleeding.”
We begin softly. Each of you is heard — fully, without interruption, perhaps for the first time in years. We map how you got here (it’s never just the affair or the fights — those are symptoms), establish ground rules that make the next two days safe for both of you, and calm the crisis enough that hope can enter the room. You’ll sleep better this night than you have in a long time.
The Deep Work
“The truth, finally — and the parts of you at war.”
With safety established, we go where weekly sessions rarely reach. The honest conversations that have been waiting years to happen. The wounds underneath the wounds. Using parts work, each of you meets the parts inside — the part that rages, the part that still loves, the part that’s terrified to hope, the part that betrayed or shut down — so that healing can finally include all of you. Because betrayal and conflict live in the body, not just the conversation, we work somatically too. Regular breaks keep this deep work humane and doable.
Building the Better “We”
“We create the marriage that serves you now.”
Now we build — and not the marriage you had when you first married, because you were different people then, who needed different things. We discover who you each are now, and you learn from each other what matters most today — so you both feel seen, heard, satisfied, content, understood, and loved. You learn and practice — live, with my coaching in the moment — new ways of speaking your truth without wounding, hearing without defending, repairing after conflict, and turning toward each other instead of away. I also meet briefly with each of you individually, as we close the way we began. We create your shared agreements, your relapse-prevention plan for the hard moments, and your written action plan for the marriage you’re building — not the one you’re saving, the better one.
I Don’t Disappear When the Weekend Ends
“Real change needs support while it takes root.”
The breakthrough happens in the intensive; the transformation happens in the weeks after — and you won’t walk them alone. Your intensive includes two private one-hour follow-up sessions, scheduled together before we say goodbye on Day 3. We reinforce the gains, troubleshoot the wobbles, and make sure your new way of being together becomes your way of life. And for couples who want continued support, ongoing session packages are available — many couples choose to keep building together for six months or a year beyond their intensive.
My Approach
Trained in the Methods That Actually Work
You are trusting me with your marriage — so you deserve to know what stands behind this work. I have devoted decades to training in the most respected, effective approaches in couples work:
Gottman Method — Trained & Certified
The gold-standard, research-based approach built on decades of studying what makes marriages succeed or fail
EFT Certified
Emotionally Focused Therapy approach — reaching the attachment needs underneath the conflict
Imago Relationships Certified
Structured dialogue that transforms how couples hear each other
Encounter-centered Couples Work
Trained in Hedy Schleifer’s method of crossing the bridge into your partner’s world
Inner Harmony Practitioner License
Parts work in the tradition of Richard Schwartz and Frank Anderson
Studies with Esther Perel & Terry Real
Advanced education in infidelity, desire, and relational repair
Somatic Training
Because betrayal trauma lives in the body — not just the conversation
Four-Year Pastoral Ministry Formation
A lifetime of service, and a safe guide for couples of faith — all couples welcome
The Truth Few Coaches Understand: An Affair Is a Grief
An affair is a wound — and it hurts like one. There is grieving: the loss of the marriage you thought you had, the person you thought you knew, the story you believed you were living. Most approaches rush past this straight to “rebuilding trust” — and fail, because you cannot rebuild on an ungrieved loss. I am one of the few coaches in this field who is also a Certified Grief Coach, and it changes everything: first we honor the grieving, then the healing can take place — and then we rebuild trust on something your marriage may never have had before: an honesty deeper than anything that existed until now.
No one would ever choose betrayal as the doorway. But I have watched couples grieve the marriage that was — and build, between the same two people, one that is truer, more awake, and more alive than anything they had before.
What Makes This Intensive Different: All of You Is Welcome
An affair or a crisis creates a war inside each spouse — the part that’s furious, the part that still loves, the part that wants to run, the part desperate to stay. Most approaches talk only to the polite parts. Using parts work, I help each of you understand and heal all the parts — so the recovery is real, not a performance. Combined with somatic work and the proven structures of Gottman, EFT, and Imago, this is healing for the whole of both of you.
The Transformation
Where You Are → Where We’re Headed
Your Guide
Why Couples Trust Me With Their Marriage
I’m Debbie Rivera. I have spent decades in a life of service — as a coach, a lay pastoral minister, and a companion to hearts in their hardest seasons. I have devoted years of training to the question of how love survives its worst moments, studying with the finest teachers in the field.
And I knew a long, deeply romantic marriage myself — I understand from the inside what real partnership asks of us, what it gives, and why it is worth fighting for. When you sit with me, you are not getting techniques from a manual. You are getting someone who believes in marriage, believes in the two of you, and knows the way through.
I don’t just help couples avoid divorce. I help them build a marriage they’re glad they fought for.
The Investment
What Is Your Marriage Worth?
This is not just a weekend — it is a complete transformation arc, from preparation through follow-through. Your intensive includes:
- ✦ The Gottman Relationship Checkup — a thorough, research-based online assessment, with your full results reviewed by me
- ✦ My in-depth couples questionnaire — so your intensive is built around your unique story
- ✦ A private pre-intensive session together, before Day 1
- ✦ 15 hours of private, focused intensive work across 3 days
- ✦ Guided journaling, homework, and materials throughout
- ✦ Two private one-hour follow-up sessions after the intensive
- ✦ Your written action plan for the marriage you’re building
Now let me put my accounting degree to work — yes, really: I hold a B.S. in Accounting, so permit me the ledger. A contested divorce can climb to $40,000 and beyond — and that’s only the first entry. Add the fractured family. The children, affected forever. The savings that become a war chest between two people who once shared everything. And then the sobering line most people never see coming: research shows second marriages fail at even higher rates than first ones — because the patterns and the baggage travel with us, now joined by exes, stepchildren, and blended-family strain.
Against all of that, an investment in healing the marriage you already have — with the two people who already love each other underneath the pain — isn’t an expense. It’s the best financial and human decision on the table.
Investment discussed on your consultation call
Payment plans available · The consultation call is free and commits you to nothing
Book Your Free Consultation CallQuestions Couples Ask Me
Is it too late for us?
If you’re reading this page, something in one of you is still fighting for this marriage — and that is enough to begin. I have watched couples who had signed separation papers rebuild something stronger than what they lost. The consultation call will help us both see honestly where you are.
What if only one of us really wants this?
That’s more common than you’d think — most couples arrive with one leaning in and one leaning out. The intensive is designed for exactly that reality. What I ask is not certainty, just willingness: show up for three days with an open enough heart to see what’s possible.
Does a virtual intensive really work?
Yes — and for many couples, better. You’re in your own home, at ease, without travel costs or logistics. The depth of the work comes from the structure, the safety, and the guidance — not the room. All you need is a private space, a device with a camera, and fifteen hours of protected time.
Is this therapy?
No — I am a coach, not a therapist, and this intensive is coaching: skills, structured healing conversations, and forward movement. Many couples do this work alongside individual therapy beautifully. If your situation needs clinical care, I’ll say so honestly on our call and help you find it.
What about the affair — do we have to relive every detail?
No. Healing from an affair requires truth, but it does not require torture. I guide the truth-telling carefully — what rebuilds trust gets spoken; what merely wounds does not. There is a way through this that leaves you both intact. I know the path.
Is what we share confidential?
Completely. What happens in your intensive stays between the three of us — always.
Your Next Step
Every day you wait, the distance grows a little. Every couple I’ve helped had one thing in common: on some ordinary day, one of them decided to reach out.
The consultation call is free, private, and pressure-free. We’ll talk about where your marriage is, and I’ll tell you honestly whether the intensive is right for you.
Book Your Free Consultation CallLet this be the ordinary day everything started to change.