Staying Married—Episcopal Marriage Encounter

Teddy Lovejoy

If you are wondering what marriage encounter is, first I'll tell you what it is not. It is not psychotherapy. It's purpose is not corrective, nor rehabilitative. Nor is it in-depth probing of your relationship. Most of us would shy away from that, and with good reason. Putting one's relationship under a microscope would take all the fun out of it and make all of us nervous wrecks. Marriage encounter is also not confrontational. It is not within the “Encounter” movements that were aggressive, attacking forms of group self-discovery back in the 1980s and some say still exist in Seattle! Getting you all mixed up like that would not serve constructive purposes.

And Episcopal marriage encounter is not an attempt to set you straight about your religion. Rather, within the context of our faith, marriage encounter provides an experience in interpersonal couple dialogue. Its spirit is in the faith that, as God loves us, so shall we love one another. For one weekend you and your spouse are guided in the process of exchanging letters written to each other about selected topics, a process which all couples on the weekend simultaneously participate in. You also are given questions that you are to pose and answer to each other. In dialogue you speak and listen to each other, posing and answering the same questions. You do all of this within the privacy of your hotel room. Periodically you meet as a group with the couple leaders (in our case it was four couple leaders), persons who have been trained to lead marriage encounter. In these meetings dialogue principles are discussed and you are shown how other couples would enter into these questions. An important rule we learned is that no question or answer was to be considered silly or without merit. We also participated in prayer together during these meetings. Your ultimate goal is to know one another more deeply.

This certainly happened for Tom and me. It wasn't that I learned anything new about Tom, but I came away with a deeper appreciation for who he is, the person within, as separate from the person I live with who takes out the garbage and keeps me informed daily about the national and international political scene. Our emotional connection was deepened as was our respect for one another, and I came away feeling that this was as God wanted us to be.

On our particular weekend, the opportunity to speak with other couples was short-lived. It occurred mainly at meal times. We learned that there were couples participating in marriage encounter who had been married for many years and couples who had only been recently married. One such newly wed couple, I remember in particular, struck me as most impressive! Each of them had divorced parents, and this couple wanted to be especially sensitive to how to deepen their mutual understanding at the outset, hoping to be able to avoid the failures they had witnessed. This is why they had attended the weekend.

At the end of the weekend, there was a ceremony that brought together in summary all that we had done. Again we prayed together. It was a joyful ceremony during which couples who had been to previous marriage encounter weekends were present in a surprise ending. We recommend Episcopal Marriage Encounter to all who wish to deepen a really personal and spiritual connection with your mate. You need to plan for it in advance, set aside the time, finish the work beforehand, make child-care arrangements, get a pet-sitter, and go!