We recently talked about Marriage Encounter on our program and got an email from a listener who didn’t find it too helpful:
I was listening to your topic on Marriage Encounter.
For my wife and I it was not so good experience
We were married in a Lutheran church in the 80’s. My wife was Catholic I was Lutheran
About 3 years ago after being married for 20 + years, I decided to explore becoming Catholic.
As part of this, the Pastor in our church said we needed to go to a Marriage Encounter weekend. He did allow me to skip the NFP classes however(in retrospect I would have rather attended a NFPM seminar than WWME).
The Encounter was in a not so nice part of town. All of the Counselors read from papers which seemed as though they were scripted. It was a pretty “cheesy” program to say the least.
My wife felt it caused more problems than it helped. She also felt it may have causes a couple separation for some of the attendees.
In the end we felt as though we were at a Timeshare Presentation and were being squeezed for money…
I finished RCIA and we were “married” at the Easter Vigil. I have become closer to God by becoming Catholic and I wished I would have done so long ago.
I have continued to educate myself in the Catholic faith by reading, prayer and listening to every Catholic podcast I can find.
I certainly would not recommend our local chapter of WWME to anyone in our area.
Have you ever attended Marriage Encounter? Did you have a similar experience or was it a good one for you?
We’ve heard incredibly good things about Retrouvaille, in case you or someone you know has been struggling in their marriage.
Personally, we’ve never attended either, but I always have high hopes for these kinds of things.
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