Three Evenings Together
Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
A course in the practices that keep love attentive, alive and growing
August 14, 21 & 28, 2026
Your Marriage Deserves More Than Maintenance
A three-evening course in the research-backed practices that rebuild friendship, transform conflict, and deepen connection — taught by two people who know this path from the inside.
Workshop Details:
When: Friday Evenings, August 14, 21 & 28
Time: 6:30-9:00 pm
Where: Chapelwood UMC, The Anchor House at 11110 Greenbay St., Houston, TX
Cost: $100 per couple (materials included)
Capacity: Limited to 15 couples
The Drift is Subtle
Life fills up. Conversations shrink to logistics — kids, schedules, finances. Conflict cycles become familiar. The friendship you built feels thinner than it used to. You still love each other. But something feels asleep.
This is not a crisis. It is drift — quiet, gradual, and extremely common. And it is reversible. Over four decades of research has shown exactly what keeps marriage alive — and it is learnable. The research on this is clear and, in a strange way, encouraging: the couples who stay genuinely close over time are not the ones who never experience distance. They are the ones who know how to return — to friendship, to attention, to one another. These are not gifts you either have or don’t. They are practices. And they can be learned.
“The antidote to drift is not a weekend getaway. It is a quality of attention, offered consistently, returned to again and again.”
What You’ll Experience
Based on more than 40 years of research by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, the Seven Principles framework is the most rigorously tested approach to marriage enrichment available. These three evenings cover all seven principles — and give you practices you can begin using the very same week.
Session 1 - Aug. 14 | The Ground of Friendship
We begin at the foundation: the knowledge of one another. Couples who remain close over time are not conflict-free — they are genuinely curious about each other. We rebuild the Love Map (the interior knowledge of who your partners actually is right now) and recover the practices of fondness and admiration.
Principles 1 & 2 · Love Maps · Fondness & Admiration
Session 2 - Aug. 21 | The Practice of Turning
We turn toward each other in small moments long before conflict arrives. This session addresses the everyday bids for connection — and the patterns that take hold when conflict feels threatening rather than workable.
Principles 3, 4 & 5 · Turning Towards · Accepting Influence · Solve Solvable Problems
Session 3 - Aug. 28 | Shared Meaning & the Life You're Building
The deepest conflicts are rarely about what they appear to be. We close by exploring the dreams and meanings that lie beneath gridlock — and begin to articulate the shared purpose at the center of your marriage.
Principles 6 & 7 · Overcoming Gridlock · Creating Shared Meaning
Your Guides
We are Michael and Rachel Sciretti — ordained pastors who have been married for 27 years. We have three kids. We know how life fills up and can crowd out your relationship. We know what it is to feel the distance as if you are just co-existing.
We have walked the path we are inviting you into. We are doing this same work — in our own marriage and in the couples we have been privileged to accompany. And we have seen, in both, what becomes possible when two people choose to bring genuine attention to the love they share.
• Certified Seven Principles Leaders — The Gottman Institute
• Michael: Certified HeartMath Trainer
• Ordained pastors, Chapelwood United Methodist Church, Houston
Offered in partnership with Chapelwood UMC and The Center for Christian Spirituality.
How It Works
Register
Use the button below to secure your place for $100 per couple. This covers all Gottman workbooks and course materials. Seats are limited to 15 couples.
Show Up for Three Evenings
Join us on August 14, 21, and 28 — Friday evenings from 6:30 to 9:00 pm. Come as you are. Bring your willingness.
Leave with What You Need
Walk away with a shared language, specific practices, and a new way of moving through conflict and connection — beginning the very next week, in the ordinary life you already have.
What Becomes Possible
The Seven Principles are not techniques for a better marriage. They are practices for a more awake one. The couples who benefit most from this work are not in crisis — they are simply paying attention. They have decided to tend, carefully and consistently, to something they do not want to lose.
A stronger friendship
The ability to know and be known again — not just as co-managers of a household, but as companions.
Conflict that moves through rather than stalling
The ability to have a hard conversation and find your way back to each other, with repair that comes more quickly than it used to.
A shared language for your interior life
Simple, precise words for what is happening between you — so you can speak about your marriage, not only within it.
A clearer sense of where you are going
A renewed awareness of the purpose at the center of your shared life — and the beginning of a shared vision for what you want your marriage to become.
Course Schedule
Drift Doesn’t Announce Itself
It simply widens — until the distance feels like the new normal, until the familiar cycles feel like incompatibility rather than fixable patterns, until the marriage becomes something you endure rather than something you inhabit.
You don’t have to wait for a crisis to invest in your marriage. In fact, the couples who benefit most from this kind of work are not in crisis — they’re simply paying attention.
Three evenings. A hundred dollars. A marriage worth tending.