Marriage Prep: Act Three

Apologies for the lack of post-age lately. Between the cold that won’t quit and stress at work, I’ve been highly unmotivated to do much of anything when I get home at night.

We had the final part of the marriage prep at St. Mary’s this past weekend, the Engaged Couples Retreat. This was the retreat where we were supposed to pretend we don’t live together. I think I kind of blew our cover though because we overslept because the alarm didn’t go off and I mentioned that in a conversation to one of the couples. Oops.

We spent all day Saturday with 10 other engaged couples and 6 or 7 married couples learning all about what happens when “two become one.” (Anyone else have a Spice Girls song in their head now? Just me? Ok then.) The day was split into sections and each subject was covered by a different couple. The time went by quickly and with the exception of the final section, none of them were overly difficult to sit through. And I’m happy to say that none of them were overly “Catholic” even though one of the ladies came up to me afterwards to make sure it wasn’t too Catholic. LoL. I think she was joking… Most of the things discussed were universal and not specific to a certain faith. Most of the things weren’t even really faith-based. They were common sense based.

There were five sections: Friendship and Love, Communication, Finances, Intimacy, and Spirituality. Summary from all sections would go something like this: you need to be friends before you can be lovers, you need to talk to each other, you need to talk about money, intimacy is great, relationships are stronger if there are shared spiritual rituals and beliefs.

I was kind of surprised at how they skimmed over the intimacy section. Not a peep about NFP (although there was a pamphlet about it in the folder we got.) Perhaps this particular parish realizes they can talk about abstinence and birth control all they want but people are going to do what they want anyway? I don’t know. It just surprised me a bit. Other than that, everything was good advice and some things sparked some discussion later that evening.

We stayed for mass and were introduced and blessed by the congregation. We then made plans to meet with Tom, the organist, in a couple weeks to go over music selections. After going home and eating dinner we headed out to the martini bar where we sat and talked for a few hours. We got there early enough we could snag the comfy couches in the corner and talk undisturbed. We then came back home and apparently fell asleep pretty early. It was a good day.