Retrouvaille, meaning rediscovery in French, is an 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.helpourmarriage.org. The program works by example.
It is in the format of a conference. It begins right after you get there on Friday night. The first couple starts talking about the pain in their marriage. At first it's surprising to hear people be so open and honest about their lives, and about things that most people try to hide, like infidelity or abuse. But these are couples who have experienced misery in their marriages, and they are sharing their stories with you -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. 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. The presentations probably last about an hour and then you are given a question to answer in your notebook. The men stay in the room to write; the women go to the bedrooms. The next time you get a question it will be the men who go to the bedrooms to write. Once the time is up, the couples meet in the bedrooms to share their writings. Then there is a snack, and that's it for friday.
Saturday morning begins with an optional Mass and breakfast. Then the presenters begin again. On Saturday you are taught how to dialogue with your spouse. This is a written communication technique which allows you to express yourself without interruption. It is superior to conversation. 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. You break for lunch, dinner, have time for walks on the grounds of the retreat, etc. Sunday you continue with dialogue and learn about the Post sessions. It closes with a Mass. (My husband and I were a little rude and left before the Mass. No one ever said anything about it.)
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 six follow-up, or Post sessions. You would want to do those locally. The Post sessions are very important to strengthen the couple after the weekend. They 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 if forgiveness is weak, then the building comes crashing down. To rebuild the marriage, you must begin with a good foundation, and then rebuild the four posts.
While it is sponsored by the Church, it is open to all. My husband and I are not Catholics, and we benefited tremendously from the experience. We did not find the presentations by the priest to be too slanted to Catholic doctrine. He was 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.
Retrouvaille helps you to look at the positive things about your marriage and your spouse and stop looking at the negatives. And it teaches you to communicate, not to win an argument, but to understand the other person's feelings. Those two things really turned our lives around. Instead of thinking all day about why I was mad at my husband I started to think instead about the nice things he did. And we both changed. We changed the way we looked at each other. We changed the way we interacted with each other. We changed the way we were. Our friends have noticed the change and commented on it.
Retrouvaille was a turning point in our lives. It was probably the single best thing we have ever done together in 27 years of marriage. Everyone should learn what they teach early in their marriage. It's a shame to wait as long as we did. And it is not a big time commitment. Less than 48 hours. What else can you do on a weekend that has such a big reward? I can't think of anything.
