Marriage Enrichment Opportunities

A friend of mine asked me for suggestions for marriage retreats or conferences in the area. I wrote one of our members, Dr. Matt Turvey, who is more in the know on this than anyone else I know. Here's what he pointed out. Thought it might be helpful for any of you looking for a good marriage building resource.

Henry,
Great to hear from you.  Not knowing if this couple is looking for enrichment, crisis intervention, saying it’s enrichment when it’s really crisis intervention, or what, I’ll give you a few options. 
 
Eagle Brook may be having their retreat sometime soon.  They could call and check with them.  I think it’s coming up in October or a bit later.
 
Family Life doesn’t come back until March ’09.
 
Every month the marriage ministry at Living Word does a Friday night MarriageMatters (first one was on 9-5-08).  ...I love their marriage pastor over there.  He’s solid – and the program is great.  Nicole and I “tested” it out last year....
 
Later this month there’s a “Dynamic Marriage” class starting at the Lakes EV Free church in Lindstrom (and several that are closer start a bit later).  This is put on by local facilitators trained by the Family Dynamics Institute.  It’s a neat group with some great, biblically sound material (in my opinion).  They can click on http://www.familydynamics.net/seminarschedule.htm?sch=dmc to see the schedule of other local classes.  It’s not a retreat, but 8 weeks of teaching.  This group also has a weekend format that is great – but usually it’s for couples who are struggling a bit.  So take your pick.  This one is called “New Beginnings”.
 
Another suggestion, more self-guided, is to utilize the “Vision Retreat” guidebook put out by MarriageToday.  It’s a small notebook with lots of Scripture, open questions, and a guided format for couples to take their own retreat, prayerfully focus on their marriage, and take it to the “next step.”  Nicole and I did one of these last year…we loved it.  ...They can get one of these through the bookstore at www.marriagetoday.org.  It’s just $15, and then they can find a nice secluded B&B or hotel or camp and spend some serious time in prayer and conversation.  I don’t recommend this first off if the couple is having some difficulties.  But, if this is for enrichment, then this is great.
 
Hope this helps a bit. 
 
Matt
Matthew Turvey, Psy.D., LP
Director of Strategic Alliances
Life Innovations

Marital Happiness

More highlights from the Christianity Today interview of University of Virginia sociologists Steven L. Nock and W. Bradford Wilcox (in their own words):

• About two-thirds of all divorces in the United States are, at least officially, initiated by women. One of the key factors [they cite] is the emotional quality of their relationships.

• The biggest predictor of women's happiness is their husband's emotional engagement. The extent to which he is affectionate, to which he is empathetic, to which he is basically tuned into his wife, this is the most important factor in predicting the wife's happiness. This basically drowns out every other factor in our models.

• We have to recognize that for the average American marriage, it matters a lot more whether the husband is emotionally in tune with his wife than whether he's doing, say, half the dishes or half the laundry.

• Women who have more traditional gender attitudes are significantly happier in their marriages.

• My theory is that women are looking for, in general, husbands who provide them with emotional and financial support, and support to make the choices that they think are important for them and for their children.

• I think we're going to see a continued growth of more egalitarian marriages in a large subset of the population. But we're going to also continue to see what I call a neo-traditional model of family life. What I mean by neo-traditional is that it's progressive in a sense that men, particularly religious men, are investing more and more—especially in the emotional arena—in their wives and children. But it's traditional in that there's still some kind of effort to, in a sense, mark off who is the primary breadwinner and who is the primary nurturer.

• This kind of neo-traditional family model is here to stay. I think that prediction is somewhat at odds with what many of my colleagues in the academy would predict.