Engaged Encounter
 

Some of you may have heard of Engaged Encounter, a premarital counseling retreat hosted on many weekends of the year throughout the country by local Catholic Archdiocese. My fiance and I went to our local one this past weekend and LOVED IT!

Neither of us is Catholic (you don't have to be of any organized religion), but that didn't matter. It was a great opportunity to get away for the weekend and focus on us, and talk about specific things that not even we had thought about after more than four years of dating. It was emotionally draining, but we left feeling so loved and excited for our wedding in three months!

Just wanted to let you guys know about it since I know we have a few other engaged GCers on here, or in case any of you have friends who want/need to do premarital counseling. We went to it because our church required PMC to get married, but we probably would've done some anyway. And now after experiencing it, I definitely think PMC is something that EVERY couple should do. For those who want to do it all in one weekend, I can't recommend Engaged Encounter enough.

I can't speak to it as one of a couple, but I highly encourage premarital counseling as a counselor :D

That makes two of us!

Also, if you've ever been engaged or married before, see what the local houses of worship in your area offer in the way of premarital counseling. I was recommending Fresh Start, but I understand it's out of "business". You might be able to ask for a Fresh Start type of program, though. I know many of the local churches require attendance to this sort of program prior to marriage.

I'm so glad that it was a positive experience for you, PeppyGPhiB!

My husband and I attended Engaged Encounter before we married many years ago because it was required of us (we are Catholic). I must admit, I went reluctantly. Did some whining and grumbling. Instead of slogging through paternalistic preaching and Catholic church do's and don'ts as I thought we would probably do, I found it to be really positive and uplifting, interesting and thought provoking. It made me even more sure of the commitment that my future husband and I would be making to one another. I would highly recommend it, or a similar program, to anyone.

I despised Engaged Encounter -- we had to do it because we got married in the Catholic church. It's actually a big part of why I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore. Ours was very very heavy on the preaching -- we literally got locked away in a closet with one of the couples running the show, and they spent an hour trying to convince us that living together was going to completely ruin our relationship (and at that point, we'd already lived together about a year -- no way we were finding the money at age 23 to finance two separate apartments in DC, even if we wanted to). There was a whole afternoon session about how birth control is awful, and snide pointed comments at a few couples in the room (us included) who they knew lived together and used BC. It was humiliating and I was really angry for a long time after.

I am way in favor of premarital counseling (our sessions with my parish priest were helpful), and I'm glad EE worked for some couples, but I can't recommend it to anyone except the strictest practicing Catholics.

It probably does depend on who is running it. Most of the couples in my group were 30 and older. They acknowledged that most of us lived together and just stated what the church's view on it was and why and moved on. We had a special treat at ours, because the priest was a widower and had grandchildren. Although Andy and I found we had already discussed everything, it was fun to see how many times we not only wrote down the same thoughts, but in the same order during reflection time.

I'm happy you had a great time with it PeppyGPhiB. Congratulations on your upcoming marriage!

Definitely agree and encourage pre-marital counseling, as well as continuing counseling.

People have this thing about marriage counseling as meaning that you have issues. That's the problem. A lot of people go to counseling when it is too late.

We went through Catholic premarital counseling. We were already living in sin, so a lot was not applicable. In our case, I didn't find it particularly helpful, but we expected some hoops to jump through in order to be married in the Church.

Wow, I would have been very unhappy if I had been at this EE. I am a pretty liberal Catholic, and don't particularly agree with some teachings. I think, like anything else, it is the luck of the draw. The couple who presided over our weekend were grandparents, had been through a lot during their married life, and were pretty realistic and non-dogmatic. Their focus was on the couples, and supporting good communication, especially the difficult stuff. Birth control talk was for maybe 15 minutes. Pretty cut and dried-this is the Church's position and this is why. They told us that ultimately, it was up to us. The priest was a Jesuit professor at Fordham who was really interesting to listen to and talk to. I guess we just really lucked out.

^^^Jesuits are cool like that.

Husband and I did not do EE, but we did the PreCana training 1 night a week for 5 (?) weeks at a diocese building. We had to do it because of our work schedules and the fact that I was moving to a foreign country.

Overall, ours was fine. Nothing too shocking on the dogma front, but we're both practicing active Catholics. The only thing that super super creeped me out was the NFP lady who came up to the mic to speak about how she had 9 children and knew the conception dates of each one (and then told us). And then she passed out her mucus and temp charts. Sorry lady, don't need to know.

Ahh EE....I remember that...by the end of the weekend my husband said, "I don't know if I have any feelings about anything left to discuss." Even I was tired of talking about my feelings at that point.

They tried to shove NFP on us and my husband's explanation of NFP was "No effing p***y."

LOL!

I'm glad we didn't do EE. Most of what I've heard about it has been negative, particularly the bits about NFP. DH and I did some premarital counseling with our rabbi, just the three of us, and that was perfect for us.

It's funny I saw that you posted in here and my first reaction was "I thought she was Jewish" lol.

I have heard NFP referred to as "Never Fail Pregnancy." I attended a Catholic high school, and I had to take a class entitled "Marriage and Christian Family Living" in order to graduate. Never mind that I wasn't even dating yet! Anyway, we had to learn about the various types of NFP, and we were supposed to do the whole charting thing, and turn in our results.... I refused, and instead wrote a paper about all of the different types of birth control. Needless to say, I got a "D" in the class!

After that experience, I pretty much left the church. The sad thing is, i was so put off by that whole experience, that when my husband and I got engaged, I refused to attend any sort of marriage preparation class. We would really have benefitted, I think, and avoided many difficulties in our early years of marriage.