We recently talked about Marriage Encounter on our program and got an email from a listener who didn’t find it too helpful:

I was listening to your topic on Marriage Encounter.

For my wife and I it was not so good experience

We were married in a Lutheran church in the 80’s. My wife was Catholic I was Lutheran

About 3  years ago  after being married for 20 +  years, I decided to explore becoming Catholic.

As part of this, the Pastor in our church said we needed to go to a Marriage Encounter weekend. He did allow me to skip the NFP classes however(in retrospect I would have rather attended a NFPM seminar than WWME).

The Encounter was in a not so nice part of town.  All of the Counselors read from papers which seemed as though they were scripted. It was a pretty “cheesy” program to say the least.

My wife felt it caused more problems than it helped. She also felt it may have causes a couple separation for some of the attendees.

In the end we felt as though we were at a Timeshare Presentation and were being squeezed for money…

I finished RCIA and we were “married” at the Easter Vigil.    I have become closer to God by becoming Catholic and I wished I would have done so long ago.

I have continued to educate myself in the Catholic faith by reading, prayer and  listening to every Catholic podcast I can find.

I certainly would not recommend our local chapter of WWME to anyone in our area.

Have you ever attended Marriage Encounter?  Did you have a similar experience or was it a good one for you?

We’ve heard incredibly good things about Retrouvaille, in case you or someone you know has been struggling in their marriage.

Personally, we’ve never attended either, but I always have high hopes for these kinds of things.