For the unmarrieds:
Our son and his girlfriend who were not yet engaged then, attended the Catholic Engaged Encounter (CEE) early last year. This is a 2-day seminar that is accepted by the Catholic Church as a Pre-Cana Seminar. It covers more than the usual topics discussed in the Pre-Cana seminar - it prepares a couple for married life. It helps a yet un-engaged couple to decide whether to get engaged or not (yes our son and his gf decided to get engaged, just last month).
For the marrieds:
Infidelity - committed by my husband - was also one of many hurting actions that caused our marriage to experience hurt and turmoil. It was like going down to hell, and since we had children, bringing them along down there - all of us burning and hurting. Several times we tried to climb out of that abyss where it was all just hurt and hurt-back, but each time, we failed. Until we learned about the
Retrouvaille Program. It was as if God's hand was guiding us, because I read about it in a newspaper, on a day that I opened one - when I don't really like reading the newspaper, because I figured that I had more than enough "bad news" to contend with in my life already and I did not want to have to hear of more.
When I read that it was a program for hurting couples, I mustered enough nerve to request my husband that we go. It was fortunate that he agreed that we should go do the program. I then realized he too, like me, was pining for a loving and harmonious marriage relationship.
We learned a lot of things through the Retrouvaille Program:
- that commitment, love, trust and forgiveness are all decisions one makes each and every day
- that our family is like the domestic church where we practice all the sacraments in our daily life - reconciliation when we forgive each other, confirmation when we affirm and love each other, making firm our vocation of being married as was God's plan for us to be husband and wife
and most of all
- that when we got married, in the presence of our peers and ascendants, and before God, we had promised to love and cherish each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part
and that my husband had given me his body - and I have given him my body - and that meant that my husband can no longer give it to anyone else but to me, and that I too can no longer give my body to anyone else but to my husband...
That last one was the most crucial lesson delivered as it jolted my husband awake and realized that indeed that was true and for him to have done otherwise was not in essence living within the sacrament of marriage.
We have re-discovered each other and our love and commitment for each other have deepened even as we walk together the road of forgiveness, making amends and healing. What is even more beautiful is that we have brought along our children with us through that road of forgiveness, and they are now re-discovering how it is to love and be loved in a committed relationship based on trust.
I can not thank the
Retrouvaille Program enough for the beautiful things that are happening to me and my husband now. Because of this deep sense of gratitude, we have chosen to be active in the Program in disseminating information about it, and have even told our story for publication in a web-based magazine (a sister magazine of Female Network: Smart Parenting feature last Feb. 14) in the hope that couples who are hurting in their marriages will get to know that the Retrouvaille Program is available for them, and can help them if and when they want to be helped and to work the Program so that they too can get to the road of forgiveness, making amends and healing.
The
Retrouvaille Program is NOT a marriage counselling program. It provides couples with methods (called tools) they can choose to use to discover who they really are (self-discovery), understand who their spouse is (relating to one's spouse), and communicate more effectively.
Now to answer the question: does it help?
The Retrouvaille Program will help a couple only if the husband and the wife are each willing to work those methods/tools into their married life. Actually, that is also true with marriage counseling: it will work only if the husband and wife listen to the counsels and advice and adapt these in their lives.
For adults, the adult education approach of getting across life lessons whereby fellow adults share their life and talk about how they have transcended daunting and perplexing problems, guided by specific principles and concepts of a nurturing growth-oriented relationship, is usually much more effective than when lessons are delivered through lectures/presentations and "do-this/don't-do-that" vignets like what is done for child education.
Mommy Fe
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helpyourmarriage@gmail.com>
