Confidence and Dialogue

Page 1 of 8 (Revised June, 2006)

Confidence and Dialogue Presentation Outline Time: Approximately 30 Minutes I.

Introduction

A.

Reveal your personal urgency for them to dialogue. 1. 2. 3.

Share your yearning for their successful dialogue. Explain that, through dialogue, we can offer them more than just a great weekend. Dialogue is an opportunity to reveal to our spouse his/her specialness on a daily basis.

II.

Confidence is the Key to Dialogue

A.

Confidence is not the ability of your partner to advise or soothe you.

B.

Confidence is not garbage dumping.

C.

Confidence is not the revelation of an action or event - it is not confession.

D.

Confidence is strictly the sharing of a present feeling with my beloved. When I do this, I trust that my spouse will reach out to try to feel my feeling.

E.

This type of confidence is more than a feeling. It is also a decision to be more honest and open with my beloved.

III.

Confidence Sharing. Share the feeling I found difficult to share with my spouse in a love letter.

A.

Briefly state the kind of person I am and the kind of person I see my spouse to be. Mention the area I find most difficult to talk to my spouse about because of the kind of people we are.

B.

Give a specific example of a feeling from this area that I shared with my spouse in dialogue. Briefly describe this feeling.

C.

Describe the interior wrestling I experienced before making the decision to share with my spouse in dialogue.

D.

Share how I had to focus on the goodness of my spouse, trusting in him/her.

Page 2 of 8 (Revised June, 2006)

E.

Describe lovingly what sharing this feeling meant to us.

IV.

WEDS

A.

Spell out what WEDS is - Write - Exchange - Dialogue - Select a question.

B.

Personalize each aspect of WEDS. Tell them how you do this. Include the following in this section. 1. 2 3. 4. 5.

Write and dialogue on Prime Time - not on “convenient” time. Prayer - before writing love letter and before dialogue. When we think about skipping our dialogue, we should ask ourselves if our spouse is worth 20 minutes. When we make an excuse and don’t dialogue, we are missing an opportunity to be more for each other that day. We don’t fit dialogue into our day; we fit the day around our dialogue.

V.

Personal Testimony

A.

What has dialogue meant in our marriage? Share the joy and closeness that dialogue gives us.

VI.

Dulcinea

A.

Distribute handout; give brief intro to tape; play tape

B.

Share awareness of my opportunity to help my spouse become Dulcinea by reflecting to my beloved his/her own goodness.

C.

Share decision to be loved - by believing in the image my spouse has of me.

Question: What feeling do I have that I find most difficult to share with you? Describe that feeling fully in loving detail.

Women stay in conference room for love letter. Men will go to their rooms to write.

Page 3 of 8 (Revised June, 2006)

Confidence and Dialogue Presentation Overview Purpose: To show that it is only by growing in our ability to open ourselves to each other and being willing to take that risk (confidence) and by developing a deep personal friendship between husband and wife through the joys and sorrows of daily life (a dialogue relationship) that God’s plan of true unity can be realized. This presentation reveals the spiral effect of openness through dialogue, which builds confidence and unity. It helps give the couples greater insight into the technique of dialogue and enable them to form their own basis for a life-long encounter.

Connection with other Presentations: This is a logical development of confidence and the gift of the dialogue, with Parable and the Plan of God presentations. It is God’s will for couples to grow in closeness with one another, and regular dialogue is a tool to use for this. It is a preparation for their awareness of the Church’s stake in their marital relationship.

Time: This presentation is approximately 30 minutes. It is the eighth presentation given on the weekend. This is the third presentation in the “We and God” phase of the weekend.

Handout: The words to Dulcinea (one per couple.) Description of WEDS

Personal Reflection/Love letter: Recommend 30 minutes

Dialogue Time: Recommend 30 minutes Note: This presentation should be mostly positive in tone and very clear and joyous so that couples can get back into the rhythm of the weekend after having spent time relaxing.

Page 4 of 8 (Revised June, 2006)

Questions to Help Develop the Presentation Introduction: How can we describe our awareness of the couples, even before the weekend? How were we aware of the couples as we were planning for the weekend? How can we describe that awareness with them on Friday night? Saturday night? How can we make them aware of their goodness? That they are a gift to each other? What are our hopes for them this weekend? How can we express our eagerness for them to successfully dialogue so they can grow in their relationship? How can we express the promise of dialogue in their lives? How can we show them our confidence in their goodness?

Confidence: How can I best explain that dialogue is the best tool we have to grow closer as a couple? How is confidence the key to dialogue? How can I get across warmly and adequately that the revelation of past defects and mistakes is not the confidence on which we are sharing? How can I get across that garbage dumping, no matter how loving, has no place in this sharing? How do we know from experience that confidence is a decision and not a feeling? What is the definition of confidence?

Confidence Sharing: What is the feeling that was most difficult for me to reveal to my spouse? How can I describe that feeling briefly, yet meaningfully? What fears did I experience when I thought about writing that particular feeling to my spouse? What response in my spouse encouraged me to overcome my fears and share this feeling? What was my spouse’s reaction after he/she read my love letter?

WEDS: How does writing a love letter each day help us to increase our awareness of each other? What difference do we see in ourselves when we write a love letter and dialogue in “Prime Time” vs. “Convenient Time?” How is our love letter affected by writing on prime time? How can we best explain “a minimum of 10 minutes for writing?” How can we explain why we pray before writing? How and when do we use non-verbals in our exchange? How can we express the importance of’ this gift to each other? How do I try to experience my spouse in the second reading of’ his/her love letter? How does prayer enrich our dialogue? How do we keep focused on each other in dialogue? How can we explain dialoguing for a maximum of 10 minutes? How can we convince them that our spouse is worth 20 minutes a day? What happens to me when we skip a

Page 5 of 8 (Revised June, 2006)

dialogue? How do I feel? Why is it important to select the question immediately at the end of our dialogue? What are the best kinds of questions for us?

Testimony: What difference has dialogue made in our lives? What motivates me to continue dialoguing on a daily basis? What are the most positive and most meaningful aspects of our dialogue? How has dialogue increased my sense of self-worth? How has it enabled me to see and reveal my spouse’s goodness? How has dialogue helped me to see my own lovability? What happens inside me when a couple tells me they’ve stopped dialoguing? How important is their dialogue to us? Why do I want these people to take dialogue home with them?

Dulcinea: How does Aldonza becoming Dulcinea make me feel about myself? About my spouse? How do I feel when I make the decision to reveal my spouse’s goodness to him/her? How do I feel when I make the decision to believe in the goodness in me that my spouse reveals to me? When I make the decision to be loved?

Page 6 of 8 (Revised June, 2006)

Confidence and Dialogue Presentation Content I:

Introduction This presentation is, in a way, our love letter to the couples. In this presentation, we are not so much talking about dialogue as we are about the couples. The team couple shares that the tool of dialogue is so good for our marriage that we have a sense of urgency for them to use this in their relationship, too.

II:

Confidence First tell the couples what confidence is not. Be clear and explicit about each item. Then tell them what confidence is and that it’s a decision to be more open and honest with their beloved. Sometime couples think the way to have a good marriage is by doing what the other wants, by pleasing them, whereas actually the real goodness in their relationship is found in being real with one another. The call here is to be totally open to becoming a full person with their beloved. What is important in the relationship is this confidence; it’s an encounter with “we” type of confidence. We are talking about the openness to be myself with my beloved. The growth of confidence is a spiral effect. One reveals a little; the other accepts. This, in turn, inspires the other to reveal still more. We want to point out that this is a decision; the decision focuses on the belief that my spouse is loving enough to accept me as I am, that it is a decision to believe in my spouse’s goodness. This decision to concentrate on the beauty and responsiveness in my spouse helps to overcome embarrassment and fear in revealing feelings.

III:

Confidence Sharing The background of the feeling should be given briefly. Then the feeling is described in such a way that the difficulty in revealing this feeling is very clear to the people in the room. This should not come from a traumatic situation, such as the death of a child or any other example that will cause the couples and clergy to focus on the situation, rather than the sharing of the feeling. The feeling should come from a situation which involves my relationship with my spouse. Then share the wrestling that goes on within me as I am making the decision to write. Focus on the difficulty of trying to become more and more conscious of my spouse and his/her goodness and worth. Share the difficulty of getting away from “myself” and concentrating on my spouse. In doing this, we are showing how we think less of our own fears as we focus more on the trust and belief we have in our spouse. I can express Page 7 of 8

(Revised June, 2006)

how easy it was to become distracted from this and go into my fear of sharing this feeling and how I had to repeat the decision to turn my focus away from myself and onto my spouse. Spouse shares same as above. The couples need to hear how we experienced our spouse’s loving acceptance in warm, tender tones. This part of the sharing is given in rich detail.

IV:

Weds We tell the couples and clergy how we do our daily dialogue by going through each section of WEDS. We give them all the information, hints and encouragement we can to motivate them to take dialogue home with them. Let them know that the discipline of dialogue, and how we work on getting better at using this tool, are both important.

V:

Testimony In our personal testimony on the dialogue in our lives, we want to share how much deeper our personal relationship is with one another, how much closeness we’ve experienced — how much trust, confidence and faithfulness we have shared. In a way, it’s like sharing a new diet (dialogue) but we really want them to see our new figure. We speak of our dialogue but it’s us, not our dialogue, that is beautiful. We share with the couples and clergy how our relationship with one another has grown and continues to grow through the tool of our regular dialogue. We share how beautiful our love for one another is and how we’ve become more aware of the lovability of our beloved.

VI:

Dulcinea In our sharing, we want to point out that, in order to truly believe in ourselves, we have to experience being loved. To do this, I have to be loving enough to be fully honest with my beloved. Aldonza doesn’t believe herself worthy of love. She reveals herself and does not listen to Don Quixote. But his persistence eventually allows her to believe in her own goodness, and she becomes Dulcinea. What we are bringing out is that our confidence involves more than revealing who we are. It also involves allowing my spouse to love me as a result of my revelation. We emphasize the responsiveness of my spouse and the decision to listen to that responsiveness. This involves much more than simply not being rejected. Beyond that was my spouse’s closeness and love for me as a result of my sharing myself openly. We share our experience of being loved by our spouse, going from Aldonza to Dulcinea. Page 8 of 8

(Revised June, 2006)