Real Connections Counseling serves couples across Des Moines, West Des Moines, Urbandale, Clive, Waukee, and throughout Iowa, Colorado, and Hawaii.
Conversations that once strengthened your relationship now stall, repeat themselves, or end before either of you feels understood. One of you reaches. The other retreats. Frustrations build faster, distance lasts longer, and the same painful patterns return no matter how many times you promise things will be different.
Most couples assume they have a communication problem because communication is where they feel the pain. More often, communication reveals the problem rather than causes it. Grief changes people. Betrayal changes trust. Chronic stress, health concerns, parenting demands, financial pressure, and unresolved hurts alter the way two people experience each other. The struggle eventually appears in conversations, but the roots usually run much deeper.
You have already made the effort. You have talked, tried, forgiven, withdrawn, re-engaged, and promised yourselves things would improve. Effort alone rarely changes a pattern.
Real Connections brings two relationship specialists into the process at the same time. Research consistently shows that teams make better observations, recognize more variables, and reach more accurate conclusions than a single perspective alone. That principle guides our work. While you focus on the conversation, we focus on the relationship underneath it, helping identify grief patterns, protective responses, misunderstandings, and points of disconnection while they are happening rather than weeks later.
Couples leave with more than another explanation of the relationship. They leave with an experience of the relationship becoming different.
Most couples can explain the problem. Far fewer can see the pattern creating it. Two specialists working together provide a broader perspective, helping uncover what years of effort often miss. Many couples discover that the issue creating the conflict is not the issue causing the damage.
More importantly, couples experience the very thing they are trying to build. Teamwork. Connection. Partnership. Real Connections operates as a "together or not at all" practice. Unity is not simply something we teach. It is the way we work. Every session demonstrates what becomes possible when people move toward the same goal rather than against each other.
Schedule your intensive or consultation and take the next step toward rebuilding connection.
The biggest advantage is speed. What typically takes 6-8 months and 18-24 traditional sessions can be achieved in just one intensive session (depending on the depth and length of your intensive). You process through issues completely rather than rehashing the same problems week after week. With two therapists present, both partners get full representation and feel truly heard.
We give you upfront pricing and faster results. Discover why Real Connections provides you a better, more cost-effective experience than you’ll receive with months of traditional therapy.
The Real Connections Intensives Coaching & Counseling System is for those who believe growth doesn’t have to crawl over a year or two. We’re here for those who know your best relationship isn’t for “some day.” Actually, success can happen in a day or two.
Progress comes from courage to dig in and do the work, not time. When love is worth the work, movement matters now.
The Real Connections system is built for couples who see their relationship as sacred and human … not something to fix, but something to fight for. Couples lean in, breathe deep, and push hard into truth, repair, and renewal here. And you join a team that has your back every step of the way.
We’re born for relationship. We’ll do the work. Will you?
Rick and Monique Elgersma, licensed marriage and family therapists and relationship specialists at Real Connections Counseling & Coaching, are opening this exclusive signature experience to individual couples for specific dates!
We created this for the couple who wants more than a crowded retreat, a quick marriage talk, or another conversation filled with fluff. The experience brings expert guidance, privacy, beauty, rest, and focused relational work together inside a luxurious loft designed for comfort, reflection, and reconnection.
Rick and Monique started Real Connections with one thing in mind: The DNA of connection, commitment, communication and contentment would feed through Real Connections for years to come. We have trained couples through relationships for many years.
Each separate signature intensive will allow a fortunate couple to gain the best of their mission. Friendship, communication, emotional connection, strengths, repair, and next steps. Slow down, think clearly, and show up for each other more unified than ever. This is a serious investment for a couple ready to invest seriously in their relationship. Get first in line for updates on our next signature intensive adventure.
🏡 2 nights at a peaceful, beautiful Airbnb
🍽️ All meals provided
💑 Guided relationship work + free time together
Choose from the following dates:
What if your relationship became your greatest investment?
Strong, leadership-minded couples invest.
Seriously, something brought you here.
Betrayal, distance, anger, or a relationship that has settled into something you know it was never meant to be. Living like that doesn’t work for you, and it doesn’t work for us either.
We don’t leave patterns like that untouched.
Our team steps into what’s happening, exposes what keeps breaking down, and rebuilds your relationship with clarity, strength, and connection you can actually live inside of.
Rebuild trust. Restore closeness. Lead your relationship forward.
👉 Contact Real Connections Counseling & Coaching
Couples counseling at Real Connections Counseling & Coaching begins with a need for partnership. Two of us sit with two of you. We model connection, show you what unity looks like, and guide you as you practice it for yourselves.
Couplehood is more than getting through hard moments. Learn to move as one, to listen, trust, and lean into each other. Sure we give the assessments, and homework of different sorts. But couples counseling at Real Connections takes you into a world of connection as a way of being at Real Connections. Grow those muscles of connection, communication, and commitment. Bring them into your daily life.
Think of how a great coach shapes a team or a master teaches a musician. We do the same for your relationship, drawing out strengths already inside you and helping you put them into action. That’s couples counseling at Real Connections Counseling & Coaching … alive, relational, and built for lasting unity.
Couples stop circling the same junk here at Real Connections, because that’s not what teamwork demands. Your efforts work here because we don’t just talk about relationships. We live one in front of you. You see us with our differences and our strengths practicing the same things we ask you to practice. That makes it real.
It works because we don’t let the room stay theoretical. We slow things down, challenge you to stop what isn’t working and to practice something new while it’s happening. You don’t walk out with abstract ideas. You walk out having already started building skills.
Most of all, it works because healing comes from unity. Not from winning, not from being right. When you move toward each other instead of away, connection itself starts to heal. That’s what we build with you at Real Connections
