Then Comes Marriage?

Every year in Ireland over 20,000 couples get married. The wedding is usually planned in great and minute detail. Few put the same effort into planning the marriage itself.

In this series couples planning or pondering a life long commitment to each other road-test their relationship at a retreat in County Carlow’s Lisnavagh House. Over two days their relationship will be poked, prodded and dissected by psychotherapist Dr Ray O Neill and psychologist Allison Keating.

Communication skills, sex and intimacy, attitudes to money and conflict management are all put under the microscope. By the end of the retreat the couples should feel better prepared for a life long commitment to each other – though some might feel less certain. For all there will be bumps along the way as they are challenged to really look hard at every aspect of their relationship.

In each episode three couples attend a retreat together. There, over a series of challenges, therapies and experiments they expose their communication dynamic; hear some truths about their partner’s views on money and personal finance; reveal their attitudes to sex; learn that while arguing is perfectly normal, arguing effectively and healthily is something that all couples need to learn.

Each couple submits themselves to intense therapy sessions with the experts as they seek to better understand their relationship now and into the future. These therapy sessions are held both as individual couples sessions but also as group sessions – so as well as gaining insights into their own relationship behaviour, they’ll get a glimpse at how others manage theirs.

Then Comes Marriage? is a very real, very practical and extremely relatable relationship series in a time of fast love and online hook ups. It has something for all – whether you are in a blossoming relationship or married for 20 years. Long term relationship success is not a matter of luck, nor is failure a matter of mystery – it’s preparation, preparation, preparation.

‘Then Comes Marriage?’ RTÉ Two fact ent format

DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros International Television Distribution