It is good that you signed up for Retrouvaille. They do not have a heavy religious influence. They are completely focused on saving marriages, and marriage is the topic they talk about.
You cannot teach it to yourselves. These are not exercises you can do at home without their training first. They teach you by using their experiences as examples. If you don't meet the people and hear their stories, then you don't get the experience. It was started in Canada, which is why it has the French name. I'm sure the program in Canada is topnotch.
TTA is correct. Call a truce. This is like a serious disease that you need a professional doctor to treat. You cannot fix it yourselves. Wait until the Retrouvaille weekend. They will teach you how to talk to each other about your problems, and they will give you the right questions to ask. They will give you rules to discuss by. There are rules for fair fighting. I didn't know before we went there that all of our fights were unfair fights. No wonder we never solved a problem.
Someone asked if both my H and I were committed to reconciliation when we walked in the door to Retrouvaille. Honestly, neither of us was committed to the marriage at that time. We were unhappy together and we felt that we would give this one thing a try and then we would get divorced. I was more interested in reconciliation than he was. He had a girlfriend, and I had no one.
It is only 2 days of your life. Surely the years you have spent together and the 5 children you have together are worth spending 2 days listening to what the Retrouvaille team has to say. The cost of the program is the facility rental and your meals. All of the team leaders are volunteers. Retrouvaille only pays their travel expenses. They make the program as inexpensive as they can because their goal is reduce the marital strife in the world. A very big project!
