The Updated Retrouvaille Program

An updated Retrouvaille program follows a steady rhythm. Three presenting couples and a clergy member give short talks. After each talk, you and your spouse go to a private space to write, then get together together to read what you wrote and dialogue about it. No group sharing. No role-play in front of the room. No public personality test. No counselor. No therapy. Just you and your spouse working together, with help from couples who have done it. The presenters use their own stories so you can keep yours. Below is the shape of the weekend, hour by hour, and what to expect on each side of it.

The shape of the weekend

You arrive Friday evening and stay through Sunday afternoon. Couples sleep on site. Meals are included. Each couple has a private space for writing and dialogue between sessions. The presenting team is three couples plus a clergy member. A typical room runs three to fifteen couples, sometimes more in larger communities. The team has presented before, sometimes many times. You will not be the first couple in the room with hard things on the table.

Friday evening

Two sessions: Introduction, and Understanding feelings and emotions. About four hours of program time with breaks for beverages and snacks. The first private dialogue between you and your spouse is short and gentle on purpose. Most couples arrive tired, defended, unsure they should be there at all. The team knows. The first night's job is to get you in the door, get a bag of words on a page, and let you sleep.

Saturday morning

Three sessions: Understanding yourself, Modern marriage challenges, and Stages of marriage. Breakfast first, then a steady cadence of talk, write, dialogue, talk, write, dialogue. The dialogues lengthen as you go. By late morning, most couples are reading each other something honest for the first time in a long time. The room gets quieter as the morning goes on. That is a good sign.

Saturday afternoon

Three sessions: Communication techniques, Building lasting relationships, and Marriage patterns and unity. The dialogue tool you will use the rest of your life is taught here. It is not complicated. It is one writing prompt, ten minutes of writing, and ten minutes of reading and listening. The skill is not the technique. The skill is doing it on a Wednesday in November when you do not feel like it. You will practice that skill several times this afternoon. For a fuller list of what you will learn across the whole weekend, that page covers each topic area.

Saturday evening

Two sessions: Building trust, and Forgiveness and healing. The hardest material lands here. By Saturday night, most couples in the room have done enough writing and dialogue to know the technique works. They are not yet sure it can carry the weight of what brought them. The team has been there. Several of the presenters were in the same place, in their own marriages, on their own Saturday night. The session names tell you what they say.

Sunday morning

Two sessions: Rediscovery, and Community support. The arc starts to close. You have been writing about your spouse for two days, reading what they wrote about you, and listening more than you usually do. By Sunday morning, many couples report that they see their spouse as a person again, not a list of grievances. That is rediscovery. The community support session names what comes next so you know it is real.

Sunday afternoon

Two sessions: Overcoming obstacles, and Transition to follow-up. You leave with a plan. The next six weekly follow-up sessions are scheduled before you walk out of the building. Each follow-up runs about four hours, in a small group, often with the same presenting couples or other presenting couples who bring their own unique story to the program. The point of the follow-ups is not more teaching. The point is six weeks of guided practice while the tool is still new in your hands.

What you will not do

The weekend has a clear list of nots. We name them so you can come without bracing for them.

• No group sharing of your story. Everything you write stays between you and your spouse.
• No couples-counseling exercises in front of the room. The presenters do not run scenes.
• No role-play. You will not pretend to be your spouse, your mother, or anyone else.
• No public personality test. The weekend is not a quiz. There is no scoring.
• No public disclosure. The presenters tell their stories so you can keep yours.

What to bring

Pack comfortably for a weekend away. Comfortable clothes you can wear all day. A pen you actually like to write with. Toiletries. Whatever you take for sleep on a normal night. A willingness to try the exercises once before deciding what you think of them. The full packing list lives on the weekend retreat overview if you want every detail.

After Sunday afternoon

The weekend is the foundation, not the whole program. After Sunday, six weekly follow-up sessions of about four hours each run for six consecutive weeks. After that, an optional ongoing community is open to couples who want to keep practicing alongside others who came through the same program. Some couples stay involved for years. Some come back the following year as presenters. Others finish the six weeks and are done. Any of those is a fine outcome.

How this weekend fits the larger program

The weekend does not stand alone. It sits inside the full program structure, which is the weekend plus the six follow-up sessions plus the optional community. Skipping the follow-ups is the most common way couples lose the work they did on the weekend. The follow-ups exist because the weekend, by itself, is not enough. The combination is what carries.

What this weekend will cost

A modest registration fee covers room, meals, and materials. At the end of the weekend, couples are invited to make a donation toward future weekends. No couple is turned away for lack of funds. The full breakdown lives on the cost page. If you want to know whether the weekend tends to work, the success rate page carries the outcome data and the caveats.

Find a Marriage Rediscovery weekend

If a Marriage Rediscovery weekend is the next step you want to take, the upcoming weekends list carries live dates and registration. If you want to talk to a volunteer couple before signing up, contact is the place to do that. Real people answer.