Marriage Enrichment Retreats Part 2

Occasionally when we are faced with a controversial subject (for example, "How far are you prepared to allow your partner to go in friendships with the opposite s.e.x?"), we might ask all the couples to discuss this privately together for ten minutes, and then report to the whole group what conclusions they have reached.

Another kind of exercise is what we call "dialogues." A volunteer couple sit in the center on chairs or on the floor facing each other, and talk back and forth on a subject chosen by the group but accepted by them.

Some topics have been "How do we deal with conflict in our marriage?"; "How do we overcome fears of intimacy?"; "What are our procedures in decision-making?"; "How do we meet each other's dependency needs?" The subject should of course focus on husband-wife interaction.

It is best for the interchange between the couple to be slow and deliberate. Indeed, it is helpful for each to allow a period of silence before replying to the other (learning to pause in this way is a very helpful means of making husband-wife discussions more effective).

Sometimes two or three couples may volunteer; all sit in the center of the circle (the "fishbowl," as it is sometimes called) and the dialogue is taken up by each in turn. While the dialogue is going on, other members of the group should not intervene or in any way act as an "audience." The general discussion comes afterwards, and provides an opportunity for others who identified with the couples in dialogue to share what they felt.

An interesting variant is to ask if another couple will volunteer to sit with the couple involved in dialogue, and to function as _alter egos_ (Latin for "other selves"). The _alter ego_ on each side listens carefully to what is going on, and intervenes from time to time to verbalize deeper levels of communication and interaction that are not being expressed in words. Playing the _alter ego_ role requires some insight and skill, but it is highly effective when well done.

Another exercise for individual couples is "positive interaction." A very simple device, it is usually highly effective and often deeply moving. For this reason we often make it the last activity on Sat.u.r.day evening. It can either be carried out by about three volunteer couples, or all couples may agree to take turns. The couple sit facing each other, holding hands, and are asked to tell each other, simply and directly, what they specially like about each other, being as specific as possible. Surprisingly, it turns out that very few couples have ever done this before, and everyone finds it a heartwarming experience. We think we have encountered here another taboo in our society--married couples spend infinitely more time telling each other what they _don't_ like about each other than what they _do_ like. Most of us have a strangely inhibited self-consciousness about spelling out in detail what we mean by "I love you."

We generally conclude the retreat with a short session of perhaps half an hour in which we share with each other new insights and the rewarding experiences we have had together. This may appropriately be followed by a Quaker meeting for worship.

These exercises are no more than ill.u.s.trations. Leading couples are inventing new ones all the time, and there seems to be no limit to their ingenuity. The books by Herbert Otto and Gerald Smith, listed in the bibliography, are full of good ideas.

In essence, these were the experiences in which we and our nine trainee couples were involved during the crowded hours we spent together at Pendle Hill. Before they took their departure, we enjoined them not to try to repeat anything we had done unless they could do so entirely naturally and comfortably. They would develop their own patterns of leadership, and these would be more effective than anything we had taught them.

EVALUATION AND REAFFIRMATION

The follow-up retreat at Pendle Hill was much more than a reunion or season of rejoicing. We undertook together an intensive evaluation of what had been experienced. One couple, for example, had had to cope with a marriage in serious conflict so we set up a role-playing re-enactment of the situation to serve as a learning experience for the whole group.

We also tried to pool our ideas about the best way to plan and lead marriage enrichment retreats. Our agenda covered the following areas:

_Organizing the Retreat._ Time, place, cost, recruitment of couples, size of group, preparatory materials.

_Methods and Techniques._ Introductions, agenda, directing discussion, dividing up, special exercises, crisis situations, evaluation.

_Leadership Roles._ Qualifications, goals, training, couple teamwork, preparation, vulnerability, follow-up.

_Future Plans._ Further retreats, training new leaders, cooperation with other groups, books and materials.

_Other Areas for Enrichment._ Retreats for youth, premarital couples, parents and teen-agers, solo parents, senior citizens, Meeting members.

A number of issues of particular concern to the group were extensively discussed. One was the distinction between our retreats and group marriage counseling on the one hand, sensitivity training and encounter groups on the other. Another issue concerned our emphasis on positive interaction, and the discouragement, though not avoidance, of overt expression of negative feelings between members of the group. We also discussed what causes marriages to get "stuck" so that they cease to grow. This led us naturally to consider the limitations of lay leaders without training in marriage counseling, and how to make effective referrals to professionals when this seems to be indicated. We also talked about the use of silence, so natural to Friends, and how far non-Quakers could accept this.

In all our discussions we were looking forward. There was a confident a.s.surance that we had found something of great importance that must be communicated to others--to the Society of Friends generally, but to the wider world as well.

THE SECOND ROUND

Another training program was organized and a second group of couples were invited to Pendle Hill. On a Friday evening in November 1971, therefore, another wide circle of married couples a.s.sembled in the familiar living room at Pendle Hill; later went forth to conduct retreats arranged by their Yearly Meetings; and returned triumphantly in April 1972 to report to one another what had happened.

Six of these couples were new. With them we invited two experienced couples from the first group of trainees. Our idea was that they might help in the training of the other six, and be ready then to graduate as trainers in later regional programs.

We have used this method in training couples before, encouraging a couple conducting a retreat for the first time to team up with another trained couple, each supporting and helping the other in shared leadership. This is a good learning process; and now we were applying it at the level of training potential leaders, in the expectation of making ourselves dispensable. A movement of this kind should not be allowed to focus on personalities. It will prosper best by involving many couples in a broad sharing of leadership responsibility.

We might have asked ourselves whether what had happened in 1969-70 could happen again in 1971-72. Would the high caliber of the earlier group of couples be sustained? Would they again learn quickly enough through the experience of one retreat to function as successful leaders? Would they come back with the same enthusiasm and delight? The answers to these questions would do a great deal to validate the plan we had adopted.

When our couples returned in April 1972, the answers were resoundingly in the affirmative. In one case, it was true, the local arrangements had broken down and they had not had the opportunity yet to conduct a retreat--but they came to the reunion just the same. (Their opportunity for leadership came later.) Reports from all the others, including the two "veteran" couples, had the same authentic ring of success that had been sounded so unmistakably a year earlier.

Quoting from the group:

"We felt our job was to provide some structure to help the experience develop, and then let people sort it out for themselves. Both of us felt it was most important to ride with the tone of the developing situation, and avoid any use of the more aggressive techniques of confrontation.

Stan was worried on Sat.u.r.day that the talk was too general. Then one of the wives broke through by asking if we could discuss something "...

down here, where I am ... like s.e.x?" So we got there ..."

"We viewed our task as leaders to be one of creating and sustaining an atmosphere in which each couple could speak personally concerning their marriage. We felt we best accomplished this task when we partic.i.p.ated as a couple in the same way as we urged the others to partic.i.p.ate."

"We regarded ourselves as facilitators. We tried to be creative listeners; to put questions to the group that would help them to share personal experiences; to bring about a change of pace when we sensed this to be necessary."

"We were quite relaxed. We tried to be perceptive of the needs of individual couples. We hope we didn't talk too much."

"We saw ourselves as equal partic.i.p.ants with the others, and facilitators of a process which started well with frank, meaningful conversation. We did agenda-building at several points. Our aim was to create an atmosphere in which defensiveness could be replaced with tolerant acceptance, and trust and confidence could grow as we heard each other and learned from each other."

THE PROBLEM OF UNFELT NEED

"The underlying problem is the fact that the marriage enrichment retreat meets unfelt needs. People don't feel keenly that they need it. If you think your marriage is sound, you aren't strongly motivated to spend a weekend making it even sounder. To get the tingle of a potential deepening and enriching takes emotional impact. This means hearing from someone obviously sensible who is warmly convinced about it."

A number of theories were developed to explain this resistance to our project. In general, it is true that it takes _problems_ to motivate married couples to seek help, just as it takes pain to induce many people to visit a doctor; and in both cases, action may prove to be too late to be effective. On the other hand, many couples with basically stable marriages are wistfully aware that their relationship falls short of their expectations. But it takes a strong stimulus, in the form of a cordial personal invitation, to get them to take the necessary steps to enroll for a retreat.

Whatever the cause of this reticence, expressing itself on occasions as resistance, it seems an inappropriate response to the needs and opportunities of our day and age and one of the many factors responsible for the alienation between young and old which is popularly termed the "generation gap." Our trainees were themselves mainly in the second half of life, and they well understood the "privatism" that is a legacy of our past. They themselves, however, had lost nothing, and gained a great deal by the efforts they had made to cultivate greater openness to others, both in their marriages and in their wider relationships, and they would lovingly invite other Friends to make the same venture. They would also plead with Friends to give stronger support to, and undertake more active partic.i.p.ation in, a project to provide marriage enrichment retreats for the couples in the care of our Meetings.

Some views were expressed suggesting a special reticence among Friends.

There seemed to be some foundation for two theories--first, that Quakers tend to be very heavily involved in social projects, sometimes to the neglect of their own family relationships; and second, that they tend to be somewhat puritanical in the sense that they consider it improper to open their private lives to others. There may be a deep dichotomy in att.i.tudes of Friends here such as reported by one couple: "vivid impressions of honest encounters between those who regard the worship of G.o.d as a private affair, and those who feel the need to reach out to their Meeting community for personal support and a sense of communion which includes closer relationships with other Friends."

Like other Friends, we are finding that these experiences can release hitherto unrealized and untapped resources of spiritual strength and power. As expressed by one couple: "For two years we pa.s.sed through a dark time in our family, trying to find resources to deal with a seemingly insurmountable problem. At our first retreat, with the loving support of the group, we were able as a couple to recover our self-confidence, sense of worth, and well-being, and reaffirm our strengths to each other.

"The family problem has now been happily resolved, and we have found extra strength to partic.i.p.ate fully in the expression of our Quaker concerns in the larger community. Our Meeting did much to sustain us through the bleakest times, and bring us back into clearness and light; but what helped us the most to help ourselves was our activities with the marriage enrichment project. We continue to nurture at home the new openness and depth we have discovered, and have committed ourselves to maintain the healthy growth that has been made possible for us."

CONCLUSION

What has been described in this booklet could easily be dismissed as a new fad that will gain limited attention for a short time and then be forgotten, but it may instead be the discovery of vast untapped resources that can raise primary human relationships to new and higher levels of richness and creativity. If this should be the case the loss of this great opportunity would be tragic.

The need of men and women today, as in all ages, is to learn to live together in love and peace--to build up rather than to tear down, to cooperate rather than to compete, to find meaning in life through open sharing with others rather than through narrow self-seeking.

Religion has always striven to further these goals, because they represent the spiritual development of man. But again and again the simple truths spoken by great religious leaders have been lost in the complexity of elaborate inst.i.tutions and the l.u.s.t for power.

Friends have been distinctive in their stubborn resistance to these diversions and distortions of the simple truth that we must learn to love G.o.d and man, and that there is no other path to redemption. In each new age, Quakers have found ways to witness to the way of love and the way of peace.

May it be that a central calling for Friends today is to respond to the disintegration of marriages and the alienation of the generations by finding in their own marriages, and in their family relationships, a new quality of creativeness based on a deep and honest sharing of life? Can love be spread abroad in the earth, if it cannot be nurtured in the close and intimate relationship between man and woman, the nuclear relationship where love begins and where life begins? Can one proclaim peace among the nations if unable to contrive to live in harmony with those under one's own roof?

The mood of our age is compounded of hope and despair. We have achieved so much, in terms of technological skill and power; and we have achieved so little, in terms of harmonious human relationships. We have created the power to make this world, compared with what it has been, a paradise for man to enjoy, but we have failed to make it possible for man to enjoy what has been achieved. With the threat of an atomic holocaust hanging like the sword of Damocles over our heads, we know beyond doubt that we must learn the art of living together in love and peace or lose all we have.

In such an hour, what can we do?

We can make a beginning. We can begin at home--with ourselves, and those nearest and dearest to us. We can strive to learn the great art of living in the school that has been provided for us. We can build relationship-in-depth at the foundations of human society: for in the last resort the quality of relationships in any community cannot rise to any higher levels than the quality of relationships in the families that make up the community; and the quality of relationships in any family cannot rise any higher than the quality of relationships in the marriage that has brought it into being.