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Marriage Encounters - Part One

I've often talked about how I believe that marriage encounters helped save my marriage but I've never really gotten deeply into the mechanics of the thing.

Funnily enough though, the more I talk to aspies in marital crisis, aspies who have survived the crisis and aspies and partners who "crashed and burned", the more I understand exactly what marriage encounters armed me with and why, out of all the various marriage support agencies in existence today, it stands out as the one offering the best chance to couples with at least one aspie partner.

Whether the organisers realise it or not, the marriage encounters programme is particularly tailored for the aspie mind.

Spoilers
As part of this series of posts, I'm going to have to "spoil" some of the secrets of Marriage Encounters. For this, I apologise in advance. If you're already booked in on a course, or if you're definitely going on one, you should probably ignore these posts - I think it's better if you learn via the real event.

If this doesn't apply to you, then read on...


Initial Reactions
My initial reaction to the whole marriage encounters thing was a shrug. By the time my mother-in-law booked my wife and I on the course, our once proud marriage was in ruins. We were both ready to walk out on eachother - and indeed for a couple of weeks, we had vacated the house.

We'd tried counselling but it really wasn't going anywhere. Sometimes the counsellor would agree with me, sometimes with my wife. It was all a point scoring thing and kind of like an uncomfortable game of tennis.

I'd already decided in my head what marriage encounters would be like. I figured that it would be like an alcoholics anonymous meeting where we'd stand up and say "Hi, my name is Gavin and my marriage sucks". I'd figured that it would be a bit of a joke. I was also a bit dubious about the whole Catholic church bit. After all, I wasn't a good Catholic and neither was my wife. We really aren't the praying type.

Arrival
The trip down to the venue was nice. It was the first drive that my wife and I had taken together in a long time - the first drive without kids that is... It was quiet and although we weren't exactly engaging in major conversation, I'm sure I rambled about my special interests and she rambled about hers. Neither of us listened to eachother though. We don't generally share the same interests. Back then, she and I saw this disconnection of interests as a drawback - it's amazing how much things have changed in such as short time.

If nothing else, then it was at least good that we managed to not fight over the map and directions. The programme moves around and we arrived in a sleepy looking village as darkness approached on a Friday night. My wife started talking excitedly about whether or not we should pick up some alchohol for later. We decided not to. After all, we were there for the whole weekend and we could always drive into town on the following night.

We never got to the alcohol shop.

We never even got to the town.

By the end of the weekend, my wife and I were totally exhausted. We'd saved our marriage but only by physically dragging it back from the precipice ourselves. Marriage encounters is hard work. Very hard work.

Initial Discussions
The beginning started out more or less as I'd expected. A whole group of us arrived, started talking to eachother and were introduced to some leaders, one of whom was a priest. I groaned inwardly.

My wife and I haven't had great tolerance for priests of late. The priest who'd officiated at our wedding some six years earlier had thrown a fit when we were five minutes late. He didn't want to be late for his dinner. At the time, we'd all rushed to the church from work and wouldn't be in a position to have dinner for several hours. We'd always felt that priests were very detached from reality and that people who had never been married should never be in a position to give marital advice. It turned out that we were right, but at the time, we didn't understand the pivitol role that the priest had in the group.

After stowing our luggage, we were all made to sit in a circle. "Here it comes", I thought, "group therapy". We were given a couple of questions to answer.

1. Describe one of the best times in your life - how did you feel?

2. Describe one of the worst times in your life - how did you feel?

I filled it in knowing that I wasn't going to be volunteering any info to the group at this point.

Then we were told.

Swap papers with your partner.

It was private between partners, we weren't going to share anything with the group.

We dutifully swapped papers. My wife looked at my paper, burst into tears and fled from the room. In shock, I looked down at her answers. Our wedding was listed as one of the best times and some run of the mill sad event was her worst.

Like a typical aspie (a word that I'd never heard of at the time), I'd taken the question literally.

My best time was a childhood Christmas, to which she couldn't relate - she'd not been there.

My worst time was a bout of suicidal depression, which I'd decribed in detail - and which I'd attributed to our marriage.

What an idiot!

Now... I understand it. Back then, I just thought I was answering a question.

I shook my head thinking... "the whole weekend is going to be like this. We're going to make things worse". I looked around and realised that there was sobbing all around me. At least I wasn't the only idiot.

Not knowing what to do, I started moving towards the door my wife had fled out... I glanced towards the moderator group at the front of the room and one of them smiled at me and gestured to indicate that I was making the correct decision.

I went outside and the door locked behind me.

I'm not sure if it was deliberate on their part or not but the locked door meant that my wife and I had to walk right around the building to get back in. It was a good walk and we smoothed things out as we walked and talked about what we'd written. It was the first time we'd properly discussed how we felt.

It was the beginning of a long process of healing... but, as we learned the next day, it really had to hurt if it was to heal.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Um...I don't understand how you answered the question wrong.
Gavin Bollard said…
While admittedly, I didn't know that the answers would be read. I was heartless in my answers. I didn't consider how my answers would make my partner feel... and I laid blame on her shoulders.

That was wrong enough.

When you're married, you're two people. Not one. You can't afford to think about your decisions alone but must think about them in the context of your partner. This becomes even more difficult, but necessary once you have a family.
Anne Marie said…
I don't think your answers were heartless. The pastor didn't say to write down the answers according to how you believed it affected your wife as well. The pastor said to write down answers according to what you thought was the best and worst times of your life. How can you fix your marriage if you don't write down the answer you believe to be correct for you?

This probably helped you guys to have just the kind of encounter that they probably predicted, helping you to learn more about each other, so that you could heal your marriage.

I think that this is the hardest thing about being an Aspie. I say things to my husband, innocently, and he becomes upset and angry. I won't even get to find out what it was about what I said until maybe a day later, when he's done being angry at me.

Because my brain is wired differently, I say things or answer questions the way I think I hear them. This often gets me into trouble.
Unknown said…
Hey what an interesting post! It’s always interesting, lots of people tend to think of life with such a condition as only affecting the individual, but if effects your partner just as much!

**Note, I seemed to have some trouble writing links in the comment box, so I included the full working urls in () after the anchor text for the links)

I apologize most profusely for this being a rather off topic reply, but I’ve been reading through a few of your posts and I’d very much like to get your opinion on a matter of interest for me, I just didn’t know where to post it so I went with the most recent entry!

It sounds as if you are rather well informed about mental healthcare, I would love to hear your input on the subject! Have you encountered in any treatment plans a recovery-based clinic or psychiatrist? I would very much love to hear how you think a recovery model treatment plan for Asperger’s differs from that of a traditional approach. Especially in regards to whether you felt one was more effective in treatment plans than the other. But if you haven’t encountered such a treatment plan, I would very much love to hear your take on the recovery model that is hitting the mental health field by storm of late anyways!

I would very much love to hear feedback and if you don’t mind I might even like quote you back on my own blog, the Mental Health Recovery Blog (http://mental-health-recovery.blogspot.com/)if you would be comfortable with such a quotation. I will of course reference back to you, but if you would prefer not to no worries at all I’d still very much love to hear your opinions!

If your not overly familiar with what the recovery movement is, there are some great article links at this post (http://mental-health-recovery.blogspot.com/2009/07/some-great-recovery-based-articles.html), and another great article is here (http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Mental-Health-Recovery-Means&id=2615596).

I look forward to speaking with you more on the issue!

Warm regards,
Lex
MHCD Research and Evaluations
(www.outcomesmhcd.com)
Anonymous said…
i love this post and that last line most of all.
Rachel said…
Wow! What a great post. I can't wait to read Part 2. I hope I won't have to wait too long (hint, hint). ;-)
The thing that saved my marriage was my mother's death. My wife (the neurotypical of the two of us) and I were separated at the time. It underscored the fact that life is fleeting.

We got back together at her funeral and have never looked back. We'll celebrate our 24th anniversary in October.
Unknown said…
Marriage is hard. We're struggling with it right now. Thanks for sharing. :)
Abby said…
I don't see anything wrong with your answers, whether you knew they would be read or not.

Maybe it was because your marriage was already so on the rocks, or maybe because your wife's answers included you, or maybe because you didn't know about aspies at the time. But I didn't read anything that said your answers had to be in the context of your marriage.
ntwife said…
That's one difference in NTs and Aspies though based on taking the questions just as it's stated I guess. I (an NT) would always have thought to answer this question with a situation that I had spent with my Aspie husband, where he may have done just as you did. I feel he would look at his whole life and not be concerned about how it would affect me. Honestly when I read the second question, I feel I know the exact answer my husband would give and it was a time that I hurt him badly, and the happy time would probably have been before me because our years together have been so rocky. I can't blame him in some ways, because that's just the way it is, but now that we know, maybe this is the type of thing we can work on, because it does hurt to hear things like that, especially when NTs would take that into consideration and just assume their Aspie partner would to. Just my thoughts.

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