THE PROBLEM OF UNFELT NEED
"The underlying problem is the fact that the marriage enrichment retreat meets unfelt needs. People don't feel keenly that they need it. If you think your marriage is sound, you aren't strongly motivated to spend a weekend making it even sounder. To get the tingle of a potential deepening and enriching takes emotional impact. This means hearing from someone obviously sensible who is warmly convinced about it."
A number of theories were developed to explain this resistance to our project. In general, it is true that it takes problems to motivate married couples to seek help, just as it takes pain to induce many people to visit a doctor; and in both cases, action may prove to be too late to be effective. On the other hand, many couples with basically stable marriages are wistfully aware that their relationship falls short of their expectations. But it takes a strong stimulus, in the form of a cordial personal invitation, to get them to take the necessary steps to enroll for a retreat.
Whatever the cause of this reticence, expressing itself on occasions as resistance, it seems an inappropriate response to the needs and opportunities of our day and age and one of the many factors responsible for the alienation between young and old which is popularly termed the "generation gap." Our trainees were themselves mainly in the second half of life, and they well understood the "privatism" that is a legacy of our past. They themselves, however, had lost nothing, and gained a great deal by the efforts they had made to cultivate greater openness to others, both in their marriages and in their wider relationships, and they would lovingly invite other Friends to make the same venture. They would also plead with Friends to give stronger support to, and undertake more active participation in, a project to provide marriage enrichment retreats for the couples in the care of our Meetings.
Some views were expressed suggesting a special reticence among Friends. There seemed to be some foundation for two theories—first, that Quakers tend to be very heavily involved in social projects, sometimes to the neglect of their own family relationships; and second, that they tend to be somewhat puritanical in the sense that they consider it improper to open their private lives to others. There may be a deep dichotomy in attitudes of Friends here such as reported by one couple: "vivid impressions of honest encounters between those who regard the worship of God as a private affair, and those who feel the need to reach out to their Meeting community for personal support and a sense of communion which includes closer relationships with other Friends."
Like other Friends, we are finding that these experiences can release hitherto unrealized and untapped resources of spiritual strength and power. As expressed by one couple: "For two years we passed through a dark time in our family, trying to find resources to deal with a seemingly insurmountable problem. At our first retreat, with the loving support of the group, we were able as a couple to recover our self-confidence, sense of worth, and well-being, and reaffirm our strengths to each other.
"The family problem has now been happily resolved, and we have found extra strength to participate fully in the expression of our Quaker concerns in the larger community. Our Meeting did much to sustain us through the bleakest times, and bring us back into clearness and light; but what helped us the most to help ourselves was our activities with the marriage enrichment project. We continue to nurture at home the new openness and depth we have discovered, and have committed ourselves to maintain the healthy growth that has been made possible for us."