Catholic Engaged Encounter Pt. 1

My fiancee and I recently went on a Catholic Engaged Encounter weekend. Its goal is to make the couple better prepared for the lifelong commitment of marriage through discussions and exercises. Attendance is required if you want to get married in a Catholic church, but we thought it would be a good idea anyway - just to make certain we haven't skipped or buried any issues over the years.

We've been very open and honest with one another so I didn't think this retreat would unearth anything major. We found some little things we addressed and know we need to work on, but I now feel 101% confident I've chosen the right person to marry. It was an emotional weekend for us and even moreso for some of the other 40 couples in attendance.

The retreat was led by two older couples who would read from papers they'd prepared. Some of these felt really long and dry - they write them ahead of time so they won't get sidetracked telling a story. If it's written out and read, they know exactly what to cover and how long it will take. I felt this took some of the emotion out of it but I do understand the reasoning behind it.

After each topic presentation, couples would split up and answer questions in our workbooks. Then we met up and discussed our answers. The majority of the weekend was this - listen, write, share; listen, write, share. While it gets repetitive, I think it works because you're given time alone to think and collect your thoughts before talking with your partner. If you don't finish, or if something turns into a bigger issue than you'd realized, then you can come back to it later.

I overheard some guys talking in our dorm room about how good the weekend was for them. They admitted they were avoiding some issues as a couple, and there's only so many times you can put it off.

We had a group discussion with anonymously submitted questions that was intense for everyone. I thought some of them might be silly questions or they would just be too generic. But the ones shared were very honest and personal problems in need of advice on a couple's specific problem. Some couples even stood up and expanded on their questions, and got great input on tough situations.

Back tomorrow with the second half of this post.