What is LL

Living in Love is an exciting day and a half parish based retreat workshop designed to energize the romance and renew the joy of being in love through a practical application of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

Living in Love offers liberating insight into how differently men and women prefer to achieve intimacy and helps couples get in touch with the resources that draw them to each other and fuel their romance. The retreat is a series of lively presentations given by parish couples trained by the PMRC who share personally from their own lives in order to illustrate the content of each exercise with practical, relevant, and inspirational real life examples that set the level of openness for the participants. The presentations are followed by private couple time and each exercise ends with a very brief communal prayer for the practical grace needed to be a better husband or wife. There is no large group discussion or open sharing. Although the atmosphere is full of fun and laughter, the content is engaging and insightful, and the experience is uniquely positive and life changing. Living in Love provides an extraordinary opportunity for married couples to reconnect with their own love history while gaining a joyful sense of hope, purpose and direction for the future.

The weekend is powerfully effective for couples of all ages but has special appeal and popularity among young and even newlywed couples. The action oriented, common sense, thinking adult approach is refreshingly “male” friendly.

Details: The retreat is normally held in parish facilities; so that, couples sleep at home. It begins at 8:30 AM Saturday, ends by 3:30PM Sunday, and includes a lovely romantic dinner on Saturday night. The cost varies by parish but is nominally $100 per couple. Online registration is available. Full payment is required to secure your reservation. Breast fed babies are welcome and babysitting may be available upon request.

Every couple who experiences the Living in Love retreat workshop is invited to participate in an eight session follow-up program that teaches practical life skills, principles, practices, and strategies that help a couple integrate the vision of the weekend into their lives and realistically “live in love” every day. The program doubles as a mentor training course, since it addresses the same topics covered in the Preparing to Live in Love program of pre-marriage mentoring for the engaged. The topics, however, are presented and expanded at a level appropriate for the married.

Living in Love Every Day is presented in two hour blocks, nominally once a week, at a time convenient for the participating couples and is generally facilitated by a couple who has also been specially trained by the Pastoral and Matrimonial Renewal Center. It is a more informal, interactive, “How to” course that expands on the principles of the Living in Love retreat and offers additional insight, content and specific tools, skills, and strategies not offered on the Living in Love weekend.

The course includes state of the art professionally printed materials, workbooks, and take home reading material for the experiential portion of the program as well as outlines and resources needed to mentor the engaged using Preparing to Live in Love.