The Couples Retreat
So very, very much to catch up on! With the help of our parents, we’ve made enormous progress in the past couple weeks in an attempt to get as much done before the holidays as possible. One week before Thanksgiving and Black Friday, it looks like we can’t totally abandon the wedding for the season, but we can make sure it’s not consuming our weekends.
With lots more updates to come, we’ll start back at the beginning of our blogging lapse – the Catholic Couples’ Retreat.
Known as “pre-cana” to Catholic fogies and their guilt-ridden children alike, this workshop is meant to kick off your marriage experience by opening up parts of your soon-to-be-married relationship you may not have explored yet. According to most married Catholics we talked to, it promised to be an awkward time if nothing else. We were encouraged, however, that Bill and Sara, who were just married at St. James, said it wasn’t bad. Bill wouldn’t hold back crazy stories if he had any to tell.
We attended the retreat at St. Michael’s in Wheaton, managing to find the room with another couple that was wearing the let’s-get-this-over-with look all over their faces.
Once upstairs, we found a cafeteria-style room with about 12 round tables… and about 11 silent couples all sitting at their own tables. We walked to the front to check in with the nun running the workshop (also at her own table). We signed in, paid our $50 fee (the church knows how to make its money…), and turned to make the decision of where to sit as most of the other couples checked us out.
I followed Gavin to the empty table in the back of the room.
More couples continued to show up and a couple about our age that thankfully shared a sense of humor sat with us at our table.
Sister Gesuina, the nun, started the workshop by introducing herself and starting the string of unholy language and jokes she employed all morning. We could tell right away that she wasn’t a typical nun. She passed off her demeanor as being the cause of a strongly Catholic Italian family and working with high school kids. Based on my experience with both, fair enough.
She was more like a stand-up comedienne than a nun, sharing observances like, “As a warning to any of you out there marrying into a Catholic family, you do realize that once you’re married, there’s only one side of the family, correct?” (I may have been the only one who laughed at that one. My Mom cracked up too when I shared the joke later.)
We took all sorts of personality and word association quizzes. We even played a logic game where Gavin got every answer right (before revealing that he’d heard almost all of them before). We compared answers to discover that we were both in denial about which animal our personalities best match, and that we aren’t your typical word-association subjects. Assuming we’d be instructed to discuss the surveys and what they revealed about the compromise in our future marriage, we kept quiet about our “cheating.” The discussions never came.
Rather than a discussion or even a chance to compare answers in a constructive setting, we took a break for doughnuts and Sunny D before moving into the next part of the retreat. Gavin and I piled on the rations and headed back to our table, realizing no one else took as much as we did. Hey, for $50, we wanted breakfast!
The second half of the retreat was the part everyone remembered when they told us the retreat might be awkward. This half is when Sister Gesuina talked about sex.
Have you ever heard a nun talk about sex graphically and metaphorically? We have now.
Sister Gesuina made significantly less jokes, but made an earnest effort to avoid the 5th grade sex-ed atmosphere. (Really though, does it ever get easier to talk about sex in a room of people you don’t know?) Toward the end, she passed around laminated illustrations of the male and female reproductive systems with an explanation of the church’s stance on sex within marriage and birth control on the other side. That was the end of the cross-couple joking at our table ended shortly thereafter since no one wanted to call any attention to themselves during all of this, although Gavin and I had to try really hard not to crack jokes about the laminated anatomy lesson.
Sister Gesuina wrapped up by letting us out an hour early, which she explained makes her popular. She handed out generic certificates of completion to each couple and we were dismissed.
No discussion. No takeaways. No revelations or growth as a couple. No real progress of any sort within those two hours.
We did get doughnuts and Sunny D though.
We left and decided we needed to move ahead in some way that weekend. After hopping in the car, we headed to Bed Bath & Beyond to start our registering experience.
With lots more updates to come, we’ll start back at the beginning of our blogging lapse – the Catholic Couples’ Retreat.
Known as “pre-cana” to Catholic fogies and their guilt-ridden children alike, this workshop is meant to kick off your marriage experience by opening up parts of your soon-to-be-married relationship you may not have explored yet. According to most married Catholics we talked to, it promised to be an awkward time if nothing else. We were encouraged, however, that Bill and Sara, who were just married at St. James, said it wasn’t bad. Bill wouldn’t hold back crazy stories if he had any to tell.
We attended the retreat at St. Michael’s in Wheaton, managing to find the room with another couple that was wearing the let’s-get-this-over-with look all over their faces.
Once upstairs, we found a cafeteria-style room with about 12 round tables… and about 11 silent couples all sitting at their own tables. We walked to the front to check in with the nun running the workshop (also at her own table). We signed in, paid our $50 fee (the church knows how to make its money…), and turned to make the decision of where to sit as most of the other couples checked us out.
I followed Gavin to the empty table in the back of the room.
More couples continued to show up and a couple about our age that thankfully shared a sense of humor sat with us at our table.
Sister Gesuina, the nun, started the workshop by introducing herself and starting the string of unholy language and jokes she employed all morning. We could tell right away that she wasn’t a typical nun. She passed off her demeanor as being the cause of a strongly Catholic Italian family and working with high school kids. Based on my experience with both, fair enough.
She was more like a stand-up comedienne than a nun, sharing observances like, “As a warning to any of you out there marrying into a Catholic family, you do realize that once you’re married, there’s only one side of the family, correct?” (I may have been the only one who laughed at that one. My Mom cracked up too when I shared the joke later.)
We took all sorts of personality and word association quizzes. We even played a logic game where Gavin got every answer right (before revealing that he’d heard almost all of them before). We compared answers to discover that we were both in denial about which animal our personalities best match, and that we aren’t your typical word-association subjects. Assuming we’d be instructed to discuss the surveys and what they revealed about the compromise in our future marriage, we kept quiet about our “cheating.” The discussions never came.
Rather than a discussion or even a chance to compare answers in a constructive setting, we took a break for doughnuts and Sunny D before moving into the next part of the retreat. Gavin and I piled on the rations and headed back to our table, realizing no one else took as much as we did. Hey, for $50, we wanted breakfast!
The second half of the retreat was the part everyone remembered when they told us the retreat might be awkward. This half is when Sister Gesuina talked about sex.
Have you ever heard a nun talk about sex graphically and metaphorically? We have now.
Sister Gesuina made significantly less jokes, but made an earnest effort to avoid the 5th grade sex-ed atmosphere. (Really though, does it ever get easier to talk about sex in a room of people you don’t know?) Toward the end, she passed around laminated illustrations of the male and female reproductive systems with an explanation of the church’s stance on sex within marriage and birth control on the other side. That was the end of the cross-couple joking at our table ended shortly thereafter since no one wanted to call any attention to themselves during all of this, although Gavin and I had to try really hard not to crack jokes about the laminated anatomy lesson.
Sister Gesuina wrapped up by letting us out an hour early, which she explained makes her popular. She handed out generic certificates of completion to each couple and we were dismissed.
No discussion. No takeaways. No revelations or growth as a couple. No real progress of any sort within those two hours.
We did get doughnuts and Sunny D though.
We left and decided we needed to move ahead in some way that weekend. After hopping in the car, we headed to Bed Bath & Beyond to start our registering experience.
posted by Laura @ 9:51 PM
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