Ethics & Religion
Column #1,974
June 20, 2019
Why Go To Marriage Encounter?
By Mike McManus
It
is June - the wedding month! However, a wedding is but a day, but
marriage is for a lifetime.
Will those getting married have a higher rate of success than America's
50% divorce
rate, which has been in place for four decades? Probably not - unless
the couple takes steps to build a strong relationship.
Unfortunately, most unmarried couples are taking the wrong step of
living together. Last year 9 million couples were cohabiting. But there
were only 2.2 million marriages. Even though 59% of those who married
were living together, that's only 1.3 million of the 9 million
cohabiting couples.
What happened to the other 7.7 million couples? Most continued to live
together, but broke up after 22 months, on average. And those who marry
after living together are more likely to divorce.
In fact, there were more marriages in 1970 (2,169,000) than in 2015
(2,077,000) - 45 years later. To put it differently, there's been a 63%
decline in America's marriage rate.
Even so, half of America's marriages continue to fail.
What can a couple do to strengthen their marriage, add joy, reduce
friction - and build it to last??
Attend a Marriage Encounter, a weekend retreat designed to help couples
fall back in love.
After my wife and I had been married about a decade, we began hearing
about Marriage Encounter from couples at church. They told us, "Marriage
Encounter makes a good marriage better."
I said to Harriet, "Let's go. It sounds great."
But she was not interested. She felt we had grown apart. "I felt you
were married to your work, and I was married to my children. You went to
New York City, worked late, and then you wrote all weekend.
"I was carpooling our kids to school and all the after-school activities
- Little League, music lessons, etc. We were married singles, leading
separate lives under the same roof. You were not an attentive father or
a caring husband. "
She thought Marriage Encounter would be a waste of time.
Fortunately we did go, but I was dumbfounded by her criticisms. When she
said I was not a caring husband or an attentive father, I had no
defense, and pled guilty as charged. She said I was a workaholic,
totally devoted to my career.
However, I promised to be more attentive to her and to help out more
with our three sons. I had no criticisms of her, whatsoever.
She recalled tonight - 40 years later - "We fell back in love that
weekend." And I personally developed a deep interest in how marriages
could be improved.
It might be helpful to describe what the weekend is like. Ten to 25
attending couples go to a motel for a weekend. Their first meeting is
Friday night. It continues all day Saturday and through Sunday
afternoon.
Three lead couples tell stories of their own marriages and then ask
attending couples to write "love letters" to their spouse on assigned
topics. One was, "Recall a time when we had an especially memorable
moment together - a high point of the marriage."
Others were more challenging. "What is a topic that I have difficulty in
talking to you about?"
We were told to go to our motel rooms, write for 10 minutes and then
read what each other had written, and dialogue for 10 minutes about it.
These were called "10 and 10s" by the Marriage Encounter leaders.
Harriet recalled tonight, "We fell back in love that weekend."
We did indeed. Thank God, and Marriage Encounter!
The good news is that 1.3 million American couples have attended
Marriage Encounter, plus another 300,000 couples in Europe.
Sadly, however, the number of attendees has fallen sharply in recent
years. Catholics led 504 weekends last year and various Protestant
denominations organized only 57 weekends. A total of only 7,500 couples
attended.
To learn more - particularly when upcoming weekends are scheduled go to
http://www.wwme.org
or send an email to media@wwme.org.
Every marriage deserves a Marriage Encounter weekend to fall back in
love!
__________________________
Copyright (c) 2018 Michael J. McManus, a syndicated columnist and past president of Marriage Savers. To read past columns, go to
www.ethicsandreligion.com. Hit
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