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Today's |
The Blog
Sunday December 12, 2004
We're back from the wedding course and yes, I am still alive and we are still getting married. I was definitely not a happy camper on Friday. In fact, I had been upset about for quite awhile. In the end it wasn't too bad. Sure being not a very religious and an abstract person, all the religious and touchy\feelings sections might be icky but fortunately Catherine understood that.
Did I learn anything new? Yes and no. I dare to say that Catherine and I had at least discussed 90% of the things before and the remaining 10% was more or less related to the first 90% so not really new either. Basically everything we talked about was more or less old news and from that point of view I didn't learn anything. But because there weren't any surprises, it meant that Catherine and I are on the same wave length for many things so I have learnt that our relationship was even stronger than I knew it already was.
A couple of notes from the course:
1) My first impression: this is a cult,prison and mental clinic all in one.
2) The faces of everyone, including myself, when the priest said that the first rule was: 'no socialising'. He meant that you should do the exercises with your partner only but the way he said it was very cold. People were actually very hestitant to communicate with each during the breaks for the first hours. I started to refer to the priest as the Nazi Priest.
3) The sessions consisted of a lecture followed by an exercise where every couple had to fill in a questionaire separately from each other and then discuss it together. Well for the first exercise Catherine went to her room and after I was done I was told to go to my room. I actually went to Catherine's room but couldn't get in and was waiting in my room. And then the bell went to return to the big room. So in the first session we never met up. A good start.
4) Most annoying session was the lecture about the Billings Ovulation Method, which is the church official method to postpone conception, although they didn't mention that 'church' fact. Also note that they said postponing and not preventing. Anyway, there is nothing against this method but we thought it was highly unethical to spread some fear about the pill by saying that 'they had heard horror stories' by giving no further details and insinuating the the pill can make you infertile for up to a year after you go off. Keep in mind that there were a lot of young people in the room. With the pill probably being one of the most taken medications, we all would know about these horror stories. These things left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
5) So after each session people would go back to the big room and if you were late, people were told to clap their hands. Most of the times we were of the first ones to return but only once we were late and it was after the only session where everybody really should have been back on time without other people thinking that you had issues with the subject: the sex session. After the priest said 'they figured it out', people started clapping their hands. I could resist and said that I had problems finding the Viagra tablets. (Hey, we were probably the oldest ones there)
