About
Retrouvaille is French for rediscovery. It is pronounced re-tro-vi. The name is the whole idea: two people who have lost each other, finding each other again.
What it is
Retrouvaille exists for couples in serious trouble. Cold marriages, angry marriages, marriages living under separate roofs, marriages with a betrayal sitting in the middle of them.
The program has three parts. A weekend experience, a set of follow up sessions over the next few months, and an ongoing monthly community called CORE. It is not a retreat, not a seminar, and not a marriage enrichment course. Those are good things for good marriages. This is for the marriage that is coming apart.
The heart of it is a communication technique called dialogue. It sounds almost too simple: you write, you trade what you wrote, you read, and then you talk about your feelings rather than your arguments. Couples who have been screaming past each other for years find that it works when nothing else has, because it removes the interruption, the defense, and the score keeping.
Nothing you learn depends on both of you feeling hopeful. It only depends on both of you showing up.
Where it came from
A group of couples whose own marriages had nearly ended, working alongside Catholic clergy, built a weekend for hurting couples. They called it Retrouvaille. The first weekend was offered in French.
The program crossed into English speaking North America and spread through Catholic dioceses, carried almost entirely by word of mouth from couples it had helped.
More than 100 communities across the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia and Latin America run the same program from the same materials. Tens of thousands of couples have been through it.
Retrouvaille-Rediscovery of Arizona is the local community serving the Phoenix metro area. It is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, EIN 86-0519460, run entirely by volunteer couples and supported clergy. We offer four weekends per year.
The people who lead it
Every Retrouvaille weekend is led by three presenting couples and a priest. The couples are volunteers. They are not therapists, not clergy, and not experts.
What qualifies them is that their own marriages were once in the same condition as yours. Some were separated. Some had affairs. Some had simply gone silent for a decade. All of them went through this program as participants, came out the other side, and chose to come back and do the work for somebody else.
They present their own stories from the front of the room. Honestly, including the ugly parts, which is what makes the weekend land. Sitting in that room, you stop feeling like the only couple this ever happened to.
The priest is there for the spiritual dimension of marriage and to celebrate Mass on Sunday. He is not there to judge your situation, and he is not there to convert anybody.
An important distinction
This matters more than it might sound, because it changes what the weekend feels like and who it works for.
If you are already working with a counselor, keep going. Retrouvaille is not in competition with that. Many couples find that the weekend gives them the vocabulary and the willingness that finally makes their counseling productive.
One honest caution. If there is active physical abuse, or untreated addiction, or serious untreated mental illness in the marriage, a weekend is not the right first step. Safety and treatment come first. Call us anyway and we will talk it through with you.
Faith
Retrouvaille began in the Catholic Church and it has never hidden that. There is a Catholic Mass on Sunday afternoon at the end of the weekend, and a priest is part of the team.
What that does not mean: it does not mean you have to be Catholic, or married in a church, or practicing anything at all. Protestant couples, Jewish couples, couples of no faith and couples who are angry at God have all sat in that room and gotten what they came for.
Nobody will pressure you about religion. Nobody will ask about your annulment status or your attendance record. The tools you learn are about how two people talk to each other, and they work regardless of what you believe.
We are not Catholic. I braced for a sales pitch that never came. They were respectful of where we stood the entire weekend, and the tools they gave us have nothing to do with what church you attend.
Couple, Queen CreekThe Mass at the end was the first time in years my husband and I stood next to each other and felt like we were on the same side of something.
Wife, ScottsdaleThe next step is small
You will talk to a couple, not an office. Ask anything you want, including the things you would rather not put in writing.
602-254-6723