[ADqtPiMel]

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.