| My spouse and I were raised as Roman Catholics and were "married
in the church", so we had to attend Pre-Cana classes sponsored by
our church.
My opinion (and David's) is that this was a very valuable experience
for us. The classes (about eight couples, I recall) were led by
a married couple and involving a lot of discussion and
thought-provoking exercises.
What was so interesting to me was that David and I fought through
the entire course! For four (or was it five) weeks of three hour
sessions, we argued and bickered right in front of all these strangers,
who seemed to be in perfect agreement ("but we never fight!").
We ended up hashing out a lot of things that were really worth getting
cleared up -- like how we were going to handle the budget, how soon
we wanted to have children, the amount of time we wanted to spend
with in-laws, etc.
I wonder now about those other couples, who never disagreed. I
know that the Pre-Cana session really helped us to look at the
realities of marriage, those practical details that no one thinks
of when their heads are in the clouds and when they are on their
best behavior with their spouse-to-be. I recommend it highly --
especially to younger couples (we were 26 and 30).
Gloria
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| My husband (of 3 months) and I 'accidently' fell into premarital
counseling.
Neither of us were affiliated with any church, so we went to my
parents church when planning our wedding. The minister required
that we meet with her a few times before the wedding to get to know
us.
During our very first meeting with her (which lasted 3 hours), we
got into an indepth discussion concerning a problem that Richard
and I hadn't been able to solve ourselves. The minister suggested
we return for more meetings to discuss the problem.
It turned out to be very benificial for both of us. I must say,
however, that in order for counseling to work (for us anyway),
we had to first acknowledgge the problem and secondly realize
that help was needed.
She was able to look at our problem from a another angle. We had
been seeing it in just one way. She breathed a fresh, new
perspective into the problem for us - which helped us tremendously.
Dorothy
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| Tom and I went to "Enagaged Encounter", which is similar to "Marriage
Encounter" only it's geared towards engaged couples (i.e. you don't get
to sleep together). It took an entire weekend and was pretty grueling.
It was run by four married couples who would talk about their
experiences with various problems. We were then given questions to
answer in a notebook and were split up (men in one room, women in
another). There we wrote about our feelings and then got together with
our fiancee and read the other's notebook and then discussed the issue
at hand.
Some of the topics were what things about your fiancee annoy you, how do
you feel your children should be brought up, what rules should you use
when arguing, etc. I can't remember all of them. We found out that
it's a very good way to express your feelings, since you don't get
interrupted, and you try not to worry about how it sounds to the other.
Oh, and there was a topic on what things you really like about your
fiancee too. Saturday night, after a long exhausting day, they gave us
some wine and we had a group discussion. I think because we were all
tired, it allowed us to express more feelings and made the group feel
close.
Anyways, I recommend it. We agreed on a lot of issues, and some we
didn't solve, but at least we know that it will be an issue. Not
everyone needs something like this, but it's nice to force yourself to
take the time to really look at your relationship, even if only to
confirm what you already knew. We felt very close after that weekend.
We will probably take "Marriage Encounter" some day just to renew that
feeling (and check if we have any new problems).
Oh, this "Engaged Encounter" was run by the Catholic Church, but was
non-denominational in its approach. I believe most "Marriage
Encounter"'s are run by the Catholic Church too, but sometimes other
churches run them too.
...Karen
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| Marriage Encounter, Engaged Encounter, and the relatively new Family
Encounter are NOT sponsored by any particular denomination. Catholic
churches, with their deep belief in family values, tend to sponsor them
(and may have invented them?) more often than protestant denominations,
but I've seen these encounters sponsored by everything from Baptist
churches to Jewish social organizations.
Some friends of my parents-in-law, in their sixties, attended a
marriage encounter sponsored by their synagogue and came away acting
like a couple of teenagers. It was wonderful to see how much it
recharged their relationship.
The encounters do, however, have a religious flavor to them, so they
tend not to be sponsored by non-religious organizations.
--bonnie
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