About
Our Mission
Our Approach
Our Approach
At Marriage on the Vine, our mission is to help couples improve their relationships by providing effective skills and training on communication and intimacy. We believe that every couple deserves to have a healthy and happy relationship, and we are committed to helping them achieve that in a Christian Marriage Retreat.
Our Approach
Our Approach
Our Approach
We take an experiential training approach to marriage counseling where the majority of the training is you learning by experiencing activities and lessons and therefore having a more memorable training that will last. Vanessa uses evidence-based techniques to help couples develop better communication skills, resolve conflicts, and strengthen their emotional connection and Intimacy.
Our Team
Our Approach
Our Team
Vanessa Johnson and her staff have experience helping couples overcome a wide variety of marital issues with a Biblical Worldview. They are passionate about what they do and are committed to providing the highest quality training services to their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
INTIMACY TRAINING
Intimacy and Emotional Intelligence Training
Usually when couples begin to feel disconnected from one another, the root issue of the problem is intimacy. When intimacy is absent, relationships become difficult. There are many types of intimacy that support marriages in experiencing profound connection and oneness.
- Spiritual Intimacy
Spiritual intimacy comes from being in the word together, praying for one another, and worshiping together. The word of God is the nourishment of our souls (Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3). When we are on the same spiritual diet, we can expect to grow in similar ways and therefore grow together — not separately.
“If spiritual intimacy is high, then the other types of intimacy will have a natural resiliency.”
The old adage that The family that prays together stays together is true. This doesn’t just mean praying in each other’s presence, but actually making each other a central part of your prayers privately and not just asking God to fix what annoys you about your spouse. Worship is an incredibly intimate act that knits the souls of Jesus’s people closer to each other and Himself. If connectedness is an issue, it is time to focus on the spiritual intimacy between you and your spouse.
- Emotional Intimacy
Emotional Intimacy is a close, emotional bond characterized by mutual understanding, trust, vulnerability, and communication. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Genesis 2:24. Growing relationships require regular investments of emotional energy. Because humans have the capacity for emotional engagement, there is a level of feeling and understanding that machines or animals can never attain. God’s creation—created in His image—is able to engage in intimate encounters. Emotions are meant to move people toward the eternal. Marriage especially demands growing emotional intelligence to thrive and not merely survive. The Lord has created an emotional vacuum within a husband and within a wife that only their spouse can fill. It is folly to seek to meet this very real need with work or the children, for false substitutes only stunt emotional maturity in marriage. One flesh means to forge an alliance and an allegiance between our mind, our will and our emotions.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13:7
- Physical Intimacy
Physical intimacy includes but is not limited to sexual activity. There is also nonsexual physical intimacy such as holding hands, cuddling on the couch, or a hug. Sometimes nonsexual physical intimacy can lead to sex but it doesn’t always have to — and in fact, this is one of the biggest complaints for women. Men often take any physical intimacy as a sign that women want sexual intimacy, when sometimes the they just need to cuddle. When asked to rank how close they feel to their spouse, men typically feel the most connected when physical intimacy is highest. This is no surprise to the Christian, as God instructs man to delight in these activities with his wife (Proverbs 5:18–19). Before sin entered the world, God created sex for marriage between one man and one woman. People distort this gift and tend to see sex as either god or gross. However, the Bible gives six ways in which sex is a gift from God: for pleasure, children, knowledge, protection, comfort, and oneness. When God tells you to be faithful to your spouse, to practice chastity before marriage, to enjoy fidelity within marriage, what he’s saying is, I want the best for you.
- Intellectual Intimacy
Intellectual intimacy is being diligent to understand how your spouse’s mind works. Amos 3:3 says, “Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?“ Since you have agreed to walk together all the rest of your days, see your commitment through by seeking to understand and encourage your spouse.
This kind of intimacy comes from sharing ideas, thoughts, hopes, passions, and fears with each other. It comes from having conversations that go below the surface. It is feeling free to share thoughts and ideas even when you know your spouse may look at things differently. Hebrews 10:24 says, “Let us consider how to stir up one another on love and good works.” God invites us into a life of intentionality as we love, serve, and press on toward all He has for us in our marriage and with Him. As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17
- Recreational Intimacy
Recreational intimacy is the bond that is created and strengthened by doing activities together. God has made us to enjoy life’s activities — especially with our spouses. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love. Ecclesiastes 9:9
Communication Skills Training
Communication is the foundation of any healthy relationship, but it can be difficult to know where to start. We offer communication skills training to help you and your partner learn how to communicate effectively and resolve conflict in a healthy way. When men feel disconnected, they often try to get physical intimacy via the route of recreational intimacy (let’s do something fun together and maybe we will end up in bed together), whereas women, when they feel disconnected, often try to get emotional intimacy via the route of intellectual intimacy (let’s talk about something and maybe we will end up sharing our feelings). Both spouses feel the disconnection but are trying to solve the problem in opposite ways. Further complicating the matter, men often do not feel like talking or sharing their emotions if they do not feel physically intimate. And women often do not want physical intimacy if they do not feel emotionally intimate.
“Shepherding your spouse in these areas is the key to feeling this sort of genuine, robust connection.”
Here couples can easily find themselves in cycles of isolation, more and more demanding that their own intimacy needs be met before they are willing to meet their spouse’s. This is where the Christian commitment to love one another, even when it hurts (John 13:34–35; Galatians 5:13; 6:2; Ephesians 4:2, 32; 1 Peter 4:8–10), can help the couple move from cycles of isolation to cycles of intimacy as they lovingly put each other’s needs before their own. Shepherding our spouse in these areas, even when we ourselves feel out of touch, is the key to feeling this sort of genuine, robust connection. This type of connection does more than give us warm and fuzzy feelings for a moment. It helps ground us in the intimate love of the one in whom our connection is eternal and unfailing: God himself.
Join Us
Help Our Cause
Your contribution will enable Marriage on the Vine to provide scholarships to couples needing a little support in attending an Intimacy training that will be life changing.