Marriage Matters: Engaged weekend, part 1: Ice-breakers, making lists and personality profiles

In a large conference room at the Diocesan Pastoral Center, about 30 engaged couples heard presentations on communication, family of origin, sexuality, stewardship and the sacramentality of marriage.

It all began inauspiciously for me because the weekend began with an icebreaker. I can’t remember in which circle of Hell Dante placed the icebreaker as a punishment, but I like to think it’s right down there at the bottom on the “lake so frozen / it seemed to be made of glass.”

I don’t much care for icebreakers. But this one wasn’t as painful as it could have been. We had to run around and ask our peers questions like, “How did you propose?” or “How long have you and your fiancé been dating” or “Do you follow a local sports team, and if so, which one?”

Each answer fills up a square and five squares in a row horizontally, vertically or diagonally gets you “Bingo!” and a little prize.

The exercise taught me two things. Firstly, most of the couples that I talked to have been dating a very long time, like, half-a-decade or longer. Secondly, I learned that I asked the wrong person what his favorite TV show was.

“I don’t own a TV, and I don’t watch TV,” he snarled at me.

Ice, most definitely, not broken.

Marriage fears

The group’s second collaborative effort of the evening came shortly after bingo. Sarah and I had to pair up with four other couples and write out all of our fears about getting married on a big piece of butcher paper.

Money problems ranked high on each group’s list, as did infidelity, falling out of love, in-laws and a host of other calamities.

Then we had to write a list of the things we were excited about in marriage. These lists tended to be shorter than the lists of horrible, no-good things that we just wrote. Also, the words on these lists were more vague, less image-laden.

A couple people in the class mentioned their unease with the lists. They said it was kind of a downer looking at all the worries, pitfalls and catalogue of human weaknesses staring them in the face.

Also unnerving was how anodyne the list of positives looked in comparison. Adventure, support, and then five synonyms for “support” topped those lists. I was getting the sense that we hadn’t quite plumbed the depths and wonders of marriage yet if this was all we were coming up with.

Our instructors got closer, I think, by describing marriage in terms of the cross. If you look at the characteristics of Calvary, you can see that it was a sacrifice freely given, that Christ was acting out of fidelity to His Father, that He gave Himself totally, and that the outcome of His sacrifice was fruitful.

These characteristics are mirrored in the Catholic wedding rite. The priest (or deacon) asks three questions of the bride and groom. Do they come before him freely and without reservation to give themselves to each other?

The fidelity and totality of Calvary are mirrored in the question asking whether the couple will honor each other as man and wife for the rest of their lives. And finally, the fruitfulness of the union comes up in the question, “Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and His Church?”

It seemed brilliant to me that the hermeneutic for looking at marriage was through the Cross, the one moment where human weakness was transformed and redeemed.

Feeling a bit strengthened by this revelation, the class pressed on to little lectures on communication and family of origin.

Communication is pretty self-explanatory. The presentation focused on a concept called “love languages,” which is basically the different ways you can show people you care about them. Sarah told me my love language was difficult to hear when I am constantly fiddling with my iPhone in her presence.

I was duly chastened.

Personality types

Then, we took a test that was supposed to show us our personality traits. I was a Blue, along with about a third of the women in the room and none of the men. We Blues have a “humanistic style of decision making.” We “have difficulty facing conflicts and are sensitive to rejection.”

Sarah was a Green, which means she’s much more logical and theoretical than I, and is not so much of a crybaby, I think.

Then, we got a little bit into our families of origin. “Families of origin” is a grandiose phrase that sounds like it belongs in an alternate fantasy universe, like, “Dimplecore, son of Fannonsnore, tell me your Family of Origin.”

In actuality, your family of origin is just the family that you grew up in. It’s the family that has been so kind as to bless you — both by nature and nurture — with all sorts of quirks and funny ideas about raising a family that are probably in direct conflict with your spouse’s inherited quirks and ideas.

You can carry these ideas or habits with you for years without even realizing it. It’s important, our instructors said, to know that when you get married, you’re starting a brand new family.

You get to decide how you’re going to educate your children or discipline them. You get to figure out how you’re going to manage your finances together and how you’re going to divide household work.

And just because your family never ate until 9:30 at night when you were growing up, or just because your father never cleaned a dish in his life, you and your future spouse might decide that 7 p.m. is a more reasonable time for supper and that, well, you’re going to be doing some dishes.

This may all seem a little prosaic, but it was fascinating to see where these conversations would lead after asking the question, “How would you divide household duties?” or “How would you discipline your children.”

At least, Sarah and I continued to think and talk about all these things long after the evening ended. Next up: talks on sexuality, finances and the sacramentality of marriage.

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