My experience was that Retrouvaille was effective, counseling was ineffective. In counseling my quiet, reserved husband dominated the conversation and spent the whole time complaining about me. The therapist rarely moved the topic forward. We wasted time rehashing the past. In Retrouvaille the past was forgotten after the first morning. We never dealt with finger-pointing and incriminations. We dealt with feelings. We always had equal time to get our thoughts on paper and equal time to discuss them. There was no third party to take sides. Didn't need one. In Retrouvaille we spent an entire weekend focused on us, not an hour here and there carved out of the workday over a period of months. In Retrouvaille we could see the goal -- to be like the couples who led the sessions, and the loving way they interacted with each other. And Retrouvaille was a bargain; counseling was a financial drain.
