February 11-13, 2005
An enduring intimacy is one of life’s greatest treasures. This treasure is created by knowing how to bring our attention over and over again to each present moment of our being together. Being present, we whole-heartedly immerse ourselves in whatever experience life has to offer us right now. Now we are a “we,” wonderfully, onefully together. And now we are two, a separate “me” and “you,” a kiss or a collision of differences. By turns, our being together may be blissful, funny, sad, tender, hurtful, or healing. It is continuously and kaleidoscopically changing. By staying present while going through all these changes together, our intimacy and our love are enriched.
This retreat for couples is an opportunity to enter deeply into the experience of being present together. This experience is love’s best medicine. It creates a spaciousness ample enough to hold the whole human truth of who we both are—our beauty and our embarrasment, our possibilities and our limitations, our failings and our capacity for forgiveness, as well as all our uniquely sweet ways of giving and receiving love. Being present, we are able to find each other again and renew our love, free from past happenings and hurts and fears about the future. This moment is the only moment we can meet—here, in the preciousness and poignancy of the present—where never-before meets never-again. This moment is the only one when our relationship can change because, in the present, change is always, already happening naturally—if we only allow it.
We will share the heart of what we have learned from our experience of being a couple for 35 years and couple therapists for 30 years. We will share several of the elegantly simple exercises that we use to practice being present with each other. These exercises, when practiced over time, cultivate a profound sense of connectedness and compassion. The workshop, much of which will be spent with partners, includes lots of humor, music and movement as well as talk, demonstrations, and group sharing. Our aim is to create a safe haven for you to renew, deepen, and celebrate your love. The workshop is open to all couples—young or old, married or unmarried, straight or gay—who are eager to learn more about the intimate art of being present together.
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation....So we must not forget, when we love, that we are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love and must learn love; and like all learning, this needs peace, patience, and composure.” —Ranier Maria Rilke
“You who are lovers, welcome! Here is your home. Love is your door. Open your door and walk into this room that makes and melts all forms.” —Jalaluddin Rumi
Antra and Richard Borofsky, have been together as a couple for 35 years. They are the founders and directors of the Center for the Study of Relationship in Cambridge, where they provide therapy, groups, and workshops for couples and individuals on the practice of relationship. Antra has been a Gestalt Therapist and Marriage and Family therapist and Richard has been a clinical psychologist for 30 years. They are contributing authors to On Intimate Ground: A Gestalt Approach to Working with Couples, and in 1995 they were given the Best of Boston award by Boston Magazine for their work with couples. They are longtime friends of Rowe.