Friends Couple Enrichment - What Are We Up To?

In January, 2017, 12 of the 20 active and associate couples who make up Friends Couple Enrichment gathered for our annual gathering. We worshiped together, had business meetings, learned from each other and -- most importantly -- took time to listen and support each other as each couple took the opportunity to dialogue while being held in the loving circle of the group. We came away energized to continue this vital ministry of deepening and enhancing couple relationships.

UPCOMING FCE EVENTS

Friends Couple Enrichment leader couples offers workshops and events in many places. Upcoming events include:

April 15, 2017: 1-day event in Hartford, CT, led by Debbie and John Humphries.
May 20, 2017: 1 day event in Sandy Springs, MD, led by Joan and Rich Liversidge
June 2-4, 2017: A weekend event at The Maison Quaker in the village of Congenies in France. Led by Gretta and Jacob Stone.
July 2-8, 2017: "Sacred Conversations: Couple Enrichment" workshop at the Friends General Conference Summer Gathering in Niagara, New York. Registration opens April 1.Led by Nancy Bronder and Phil Majors.

Learn more about how to bring a Friends Couple Enrichment event to your community.

Two sides of a story

Friends Couple Enrichment has 19 leader couples actively offering events. What is it like to lead an event? What is like to participate in an event? Below we share two recent blogposts from our website that speak to those questions:

The Lasting Effects of A Couple Enrichment Weekend
We went to a Couple's Enrichment weekend at Woolman Hill Quaker Center ten years ago. The workshop itself was both fun and enriching, the skills easy to learn and immediately applicable. At home over the following six months, we returned to that form of dialogue from time to time. Then, a stressful period in our marriage forced us to return more diligently and exactingly to the process we'd learned during the workshop. . . . [READ MORE]

Summary of a Weekend Retreat at Quaker Center, Ben Lomond, California
…Partners appreciated the opportunities throughout the weekend to practice communication exercises and to have or witness couple dialogues. Many couples commented how different a dialogue felt from other conversations, in that each partner felt truly heard. Severl comples remarked that they had discussed the same matter many times before and yet . . . . [READ MORE ABOUT THIS RETREAT]

Follow our website to get updates when new stories are posted.

Featured Exercise

How well do you know your beloved?

Our conversations with our partners are often predictable: “The traffic was awful on my way home from work.” “Whose turn is it to cook?” “Wasn’t Olivia’s soccer goal great?”

These conversations are part of the fabric of our lives, and there is nothing wrong with them. Still, it’s fun every once in a while to talk about something different, the kind of getting-to-know-each-other conversation that we used to have when our relationship was new.

Check out the “5 Things” exercise on our FCE website to help you get the conversation going, and see what new things you can learn about your beloved.

Visit www.friendscoupleenrichment.org for additional exercises, contact information for leaders, upcoming events, and more

From Friends General Conference (FGC)

An article in the January 2017 issue of Friends General Conference “Vital Friends” eNewsletter celebrated the creation of Friends Couple Enrichment as an independent nonprofit organization after 40+ years of being a ministry under the care of Friends General Conference.

Friends Couple Enrichment is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Tax deductible donations to help support the ministry can be made by sending checks to:

FCE Treasurer
8905 48th Ave
College Park, MD 20740