• Seven Kinds of Love: Here you will use the Sternberg questionnaires that are completed for homework before the workshop • The “Falling in Love” Model: Here you will discuss how a person falls in or out of love and how a person falls back in love • The Anatomy of an Affair • The End of a Marriage: Doing the wrong thing and Doing the right thing • Commitment Model: Different kinds of commitment • The Four Horsemen: The way we communicate with each other • Repair Attempts • Attraction • Stress-Reducing Conversation • Conflicting Life Desires: Here you will use your Life Maps for evening homework that are completed before the workshop • Negotiation • The Four Behavioral Styles: Here you will use your profiles that are completed online before the workshop • How to handle anger and pain • Forgiveness
Using these resources: • About love using the work of Dr. Robert Sternberg, Yale. • About commitment using the work of Dr. Johnson, Penn State. • About learning to be best friends using the work of Dr. John Gottman,University of Washington. • About how to have “win-win” compromises using the work of Dr. Willard Harley, Minnesota. • About how people fall in and out of love using the work of Joe Beam, president of Family Dynamics and designer of the A New Beginning seminar. • About how to forgive and move on using a very practical model that you can implement immediately.
Is there overlap with Retro or is it significantly different?
Alex,
From the description above, I don't see much overlap with Retrouvaille at all. I'm sure that if I sat through it I would see similarities. But Retrouvaille isn't presented as theories developed by PhDs, or learned analysis. Retrouvaille is open sharing of situations from couples who have gone before with couples who are now in the throes of painful times. It is gut-wrenching, in a lot of ways, like this forum, where people open their hearts and their lives and let you see into them. And what I learned from was the look in their eyes, as they told their stories. When I saw the looks of love on their faces as they sat next to their spouse, and revealed the pain of the affair in excruciating detail, I said to myself, "If they can do it, I can do it." It was role modeling. I had never seen people so in love with each other. Not sappy, make you sick, teenagers kissing and petting in front of everybody kind of love, but a deep love just expressed by hand-holding and smiling into each others' eyes. There are not many times in my life that I've looked at someone else and thought, "that's what I want to be", but I did when I was at Retrouvaille. In addition to the sharing by the lead couples at the weekend, they taught the dialogue method.
At the Post sessions they talked more theory. The idea of a marriage being a house held up by four supports -- love, commitment, forgiveness, and trust. If any of the supports were broken, the roof would cave in. Yep, I got that theory. that's exactly what happened. And they talked about your family of origin and the family you created together, and they talked about intimacy, and a lot of other subjects. There was a life plan exercise, so that might be similar, and discussions on trust and commitment. The focus of the weekend was the sharing, and the dialogue.
