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We got ourselves Catholicized this weekend.
Well, not really. Just sorta.
To get married in the Catholic Church, you have to go through a program called pre-Cana first. Basically, the idea is this - Catholics aren't allowed to divorce. So if they're going to marry you, they want to make really, really sure you've thought this all through.
So we (and, like, 100 other couples) spent all day Saturday listening to a marriage counselor and doing activities in a workbook.
All right, that sounds really cheesy. It wasn't. It was actually pretty cool. A lot of the activities were things like filling out forms on various topics - your own family history, your favorite things, your strengths and weaknesses, your fighting styles, your feelings on children, your financial history, how you wanted chores to get done - both with your answers and also with what you thought your partner's answers would be. Then you compared with your partner to see whether your own image of yourself was different from your partner's image of yourself, and vice versa. For us, there weren't a lot of surprises - we'd talked about most of this stuff before and we know each other really well. But even so, there were some things that were a little surprising. Just little things where one of us didn't realize how they were coming off to the other, or where one of us was totally beating themselves up over a "failing" that the other hadn't actually even noticed. And there were a couple topics we hadn't ever talked about - whether we'd want to adopt if we couldn't have kids of our own, for example.
And while we were pretty unsurprised by a lot of the stuff, I suspect there were a lot of people there who probably hadn't thought of some of it. I kind of wish there was a way to make this kind of program mandatory for anyone trying to get married. People definitely got out of it what they put in, but it's at least worth an effort.
It's also an impressively practical little program. It started with a prayer and ended with a mass, but it's not really about religion at all, except in the context of what role you each expect it to play in your marriage. This wasn't preaching - it's run by lay people, and it's really entirely about communication and making sure that you think and talk about all the issues that make or break a marriage. There were exercises on planning out a full budget for your first year of marriage, or exactly how many hours per week you ideally want to spend on every activity in your life. On how you fight, and how you make up, and how you choose where you're going on vacation. On warning signs and how to know that you should stop right now and put the wedding on hold. On what you expect out of sex and how you want to deal with your parents and in-laws. Really frank, blunt stuff.
Anyway, good program. Really interesting. Wish more people had to do it.
Well, not really. Just sorta.
To get married in the Catholic Church, you have to go through a program called pre-Cana first. Basically, the idea is this - Catholics aren't allowed to divorce. So if they're going to marry you, they want to make really, really sure you've thought this all through.
So we (and, like, 100 other couples) spent all day Saturday listening to a marriage counselor and doing activities in a workbook.
All right, that sounds really cheesy. It wasn't. It was actually pretty cool. A lot of the activities were things like filling out forms on various topics - your own family history, your favorite things, your strengths and weaknesses, your fighting styles, your feelings on children, your financial history, how you wanted chores to get done - both with your answers and also with what you thought your partner's answers would be. Then you compared with your partner to see whether your own image of yourself was different from your partner's image of yourself, and vice versa. For us, there weren't a lot of surprises - we'd talked about most of this stuff before and we know each other really well. But even so, there were some things that were a little surprising. Just little things where one of us didn't realize how they were coming off to the other, or where one of us was totally beating themselves up over a "failing" that the other hadn't actually even noticed. And there were a couple topics we hadn't ever talked about - whether we'd want to adopt if we couldn't have kids of our own, for example.
And while we were pretty unsurprised by a lot of the stuff, I suspect there were a lot of people there who probably hadn't thought of some of it. I kind of wish there was a way to make this kind of program mandatory for anyone trying to get married. People definitely got out of it what they put in, but it's at least worth an effort.
It's also an impressively practical little program. It started with a prayer and ended with a mass, but it's not really about religion at all, except in the context of what role you each expect it to play in your marriage. This wasn't preaching - it's run by lay people, and it's really entirely about communication and making sure that you think and talk about all the issues that make or break a marriage. There were exercises on planning out a full budget for your first year of marriage, or exactly how many hours per week you ideally want to spend on every activity in your life. On how you fight, and how you make up, and how you choose where you're going on vacation. On warning signs and how to know that you should stop right now and put the wedding on hold. On what you expect out of sex and how you want to deal with your parents and in-laws. Really frank, blunt stuff.
Anyway, good program. Really interesting. Wish more people had to do it.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 05:26 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 05:58 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 08:03 pm (UTC)From:I really like the pre-Cana. My old roommates in Seattle went through it, and I thought it was a really good idea. I also like how they don't try to force a conversion to Catholicismwith it. (or at least from what I've heard)
Yay for Catholic girls and their heathen boys.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 09:49 pm (UTC)From:They also had a section on couples cohabiting and what they expect to change or not change.
It's a very practical program.