there is a lot of sex in Wyoming. Who knew? I'm working on posting some photos in the alternate universe.
LOL!! Lots of sex and you'll be posting photos??? You're supposed to keep those private Sara.
Good to hear you had a great time.
LOL. I caught that too.
Sara, my English class is learning how sometimes sentences can cause you to think something else other than the intended meaning. Mind if I use this one to give my students and example? LOL
Glad you had a wonderful time and welcome back!!!
Originally Posted By: Sara
I must have been sick the day my high school English teacher did that lesson. Certainly Yoyo, I hope your kids can learn from my mistake.
I assure everyone, the photos are rated GSara,
That will be my sentence of the day complements of my dear friend in FL. LOL
I think you missed your decade, you could have been a flower child. I could see you enjoying Woodstock!
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. -- Bernice Johnson Reagon
I didn't miss the decade at all. I was 16 when they held Woodstock, and if they hadn't closed the road in, I had a ride. Of course, my parents would have killed me.
I replied on your thread. My life is just keeping on. My H and I just got back from a great trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Pictures are posted on facebook. Email me, and I'll send you a link.
It's New Year's Day, time to renew the thread. The next Retrouvaille in Tampa should be soon. They will have to inform me as I have all the supplies in my closet. I am now the person who shleps it all to the site and sets out notebooks and pens on each chair (and tissue boxes underneath). It's not that big of a job, but it is important. I have nightmares about getting the weekend wrong and not having the stuff there on time.
Several people have expressed interest in knowing more about the Retrouvaille program. My husband and I are Retrouvaille graduates, and proud of it. As you may or may not know, the web address is http://www.helpourmarriage.org. The website gives dates and locations of the weekends available around the world. However, it doesn't give much info as to what goes on at the weekends. Perhaps I am breaking an unwritten rule by telling you about what goes on, but I think knowledge of what to expect makes people more comfortable. Here is a brief description of Retrouvaille. I'd be happy to answer questions you may have.
Retrouvaille, meaning rediscovery in French, is an volunteer organization with support from the Catholic church that holds weekend retreats around the world to help people heal their broken marriages. They have a website, http://www.retrouvaille.org. The program works by example. Couples who have experienced misery in their marriages present their stories. They sit in front of you, with occasional tears in their eyes, holding hands and giving each other support, telling you openly and honestly about their lives, what went wrong, and how they fixed it. Then they teach you a communication technique called Dialoguing and you practice doing dialogues with your spouse, in private. They give you questions to dialogue about. These questions help you and your spouse understand each other at a deeper level than you ever could by simply talking.
The initial program takes a weekend. You can do it in your home city or go somewhere else and make it a mini-vacation. There are follow-up sessions locally. These help you to continue the openness and understanding with each other. They teach concepts like, love is a decision. Or, marriage is like a building supported by four posts: love, commitment, trust, and forgiveness. If you break one of the posts, like trust, and forgiveness is weak, then the building comes crashing down. To rebuild the marriage, you must first rebuild the foundation, and then you can rebuild the four posts. The more I thought about it, the more I understood. To rebuild my marriage I had to forgive, and trust. I couldn't rebuild the marriage first and have those fill in later. (Which is what I had been trying to do).
While it is co-sponsored by the Church, it is open to all. My husband and I are not Catholics, and we benefited tremendously from the experience. The presentations by the priest focused on marriage, not Catholic doctrine. The goal of Retrouvaille is to save marriages. They have only 48 hours with you for that purpose, so there is no time for dogma. However, the priest was also there to be of service to the Catholics in the room who wanted his services. We were told not to confess new things to each other -- the priest was there to take confessions. I found that interesting. They do not focus on the past, they focus on building a new future together.
Religion is a personal thing. For some, I have no doubt, the religious aspect at Retrouvaille is not strong enough for their liking. And for others, any mention of a higher power is too much. So how religious is a Retrouvaille weekend? It is middle of the road. Let me start by saying that I am Jewish, and my husband was raised Catholic, which sort of innoculated him against any religious faith. So as a couple, the religious part was not what we were going to Retrouvaille for. But the program is dedicated to helping people save their own marriages, and it is open to everyone. They make an effort to keep the religious part minimal to not turn off people like us.
On the other hand, like survivors of a hurricane, sitting on a rooftop unable to help ourselves, we were not about to refuse to get onto the boat offering to help us just because there was a cross painted on the side. My philosophy is that if you want the help you will take it from whoever offers it. And so it was with us. We needed help, and I had heard glowing reports of this program, I couldn't wait to go, and I gave it my all.
The program is led by the three couples. They are regular people. They experienced pain and unhappiness and found help at a Retrouvaille weekend years ago; they tell their stories in detail. There is a priest at each weekend. He has short talks interspersed with the couples. What does he talk about? A lot about his life and his personal observations about marriage. He has never been married, but he tries to relate the topic of marriage to his experience, and speak about that. Does he mention God, Jesus, the bible? Sometimes. Yeah, they are mentioned. Are they the focus of the program? No, the subject matter is marriage. The priest is willing to meet privately with anyone who wants to talk to him, and I saw several couples set up times to meet with him. But we didn't choose to.
There was an optional mass on Saturday morning for those who wanted to attend. My H and I slept in. There was a closing mass on Sunday afternoon. It was part of the program, and we should have attended, but we whispered goodbye and sneaked out to the car, as did a few other couples.
The program is relatively inexpensive. There are other marital retreats and weekends that have no religious aspect, but they are much more expensive. The Church supports this program financially, and that makes a difference. That, and the fact that all the lead couples are volunteers, keeps the cost of Retrouvaille low. So I would say it is a toss-up. If you and she cannot take help from a religious agency, then you should go to a different marital weekend. However, if you can overlook a few references to a belief system that you may not subscribe to, then go to Retrouvaille, because they really do save marriages there.
Thinking about the process of a Retrouvaille weekend. I often talk about the dialogue technique and what a great tool it is for communication. But the weekend is so much more than just learning to dialoque.
Over the course of the weekend, interspersed with the stories of the lead couples, you are asked to answer questions. You share your answers to the questions only with your spouse, in private. The questions are carefully chosen to bring out first your feelings about the past, but then also to bring out your dreams for the future. The process of going through the series of questions is purifying in a way that I can't explain. And there is an intimacy of sharing these answers with your spouse. Who knows? Maybe when we withdraw from each other over time we stop sharing our dreams. Maybe the return to sharing dreams is more important to restoring the marriage than other elements.
