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Giving (and Receiving) Love with "Love Pills"
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Making “love pills” is an exercise that Mike and Marsha Green have often used at the end of a Couple Enrichment event to help keep the deep sense of love and connection between partners alive after the event is over. But there’s no reason to wait for a Couple Enrichment Event to do this – you can do it any time!
The exercise was originally sparked by Gary Chapman's books on the Five Love Languages, which describe different ways of expressing love: words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, service, and physical touch. Making "love pills" offers a whimsical way to challenge yourself to express love in different ways to your partner over the course of several weeks.
Here's how it works (opens as a PDF).
(If you like this, you can check our website for other exercises Couple Enrichment Leaders have created.)
SEE MORE EXERCISES
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When Friends Couple Enrichment became an independent organization in 2016, we committed ourselves to expanding the number of retreats we would do at retreat centers (Quaker or otherwise).
Traditionally, most Couple Enrichment events have been organized by local meetings, but occasionally a leader couple offers an event at a retreat center. These workshops offer the opportunity for people from a wider region to gather together to share the joy of a weekend event.
Rather than leaving the organizing of these regional retreats up to individual leaders, the entire body of FCE leader couples committed to organizing ourselves to be able to offer such retreats on a regular basis. We are pleased that our Retreats Committee has put in place two regional retreats for early 2019. Registration is now open for:
- February 8-10, 2019: “Connecting From the Heart” Couple Enrichment at Woolman Hill Retreat Center, Deerfield Massachusetts. Led by Jon and Debbie Humprhies Register now
- March 15-17, 2019: Couple Enrichment at Pendle Hill Retreat Center, Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Led by Marsha and Mike Green. Register now
Don't forget, there is also an opportunity to participate in a Couple Enrichment workshop June 30 – July 6, 2019, in Grinnell, Iowa. Workshop #47, led by Pam and David Minden. Registration will open in April, 2019.
We plan to continue to organize regional workshops such as these: if you have a suggestion for a retreat center that might put us on their schedule, please contact us at info@friendscoupleenrichment.org. Meanwhile, we are still very interested in having Meetings contact us to organize local retreats as well (see next article).
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Bring an FCE Event to Your Community
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There is a particular richness when a retreat is held for couples within a single meeting or community. It not only enriches the individual couple relationships, but it also deepens the bonds of caring among the couples in the group, and thus enriches the meeting or community as well.
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Please check the website regularly, as we update it whenever a new Couple Enrichment Event is planned.
Events planned already for 2019 are:
- January 19, 2019, 6 p.m. potluck, 7:30 p.m. program: "Grow Your Relationship". Sandy Spring Friends Meeting, 17730 Meetinghouse Road, Sandy Spring MD 20860. Register by emailing richlivers@gmail.com.
- February 8-10, 2019: “Connecting From the Heart” Couple Enrichment at Woolman Hill Retreat Center, Deerfield Massachusetts. Led by Jon and Debbie Humprhies Registration Open
- Feb 22-24, 2019: “Wisdom’s Wonders: The Heart of Sacred Conversations”, an event hosted by Pittsburgh Friends Meeting. Led by Jamie and Dan Mudd. For more information, email danandjaime@friendscoupleenrichment.org.
- March 15-17, 2019: Couple Enrichment at Pendle Hill Retreat Center, Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Led by Marsha and Mike Green. Registration now open
- June 30 – July 6, 2019: Couple Enrichment Workshops at the Friends General Conference Gathering in Grinnell, Iowa. Workshop #47, led by Pam and David Minden. Registration will open in April, 2019
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