Marriage Enrichment Retreats: Story of a Quaker Project

The authors outline a Quaker-led initiative to strengthen marriages by training married couples to lead short retreats that focus on communication-in-depth and mutual growth. Drawing on long experience in counseling and marriage guidance, they describe selection and training at a study center, pilot retreats conducted by the trained couples through Yearly Meetings, and a follow-up evaluation meeting. The program emphasizes offering enrichment to couples who consider their marriages satisfactory, encouraging reassessment of Meeting responsibilities toward preparing and supporting marriages, and applying modern knowledge about interaction patterns to help couples move toward deeper relationship development.