Our couples come mainly from Southampton area. We have 3 couples facilitators, including my husband and myself. We offer at the moment 3 course per year.  Several years ago we started giving 1 day courses on a Saturday. We were a bit apprehensive about this at first but due to the wonderful location of the course it works well.

The contents of the course: This depends a bit on the facilitators we have, but in general: We start with issues around communication. Problems in communication and difference in communication between man and woman. We also invite couples to think of issues that will probably change their lives in the future and how they can learn to deal with those. We discuss problems that might raise their heads. We talk about conflict and ways of dealing with conflict.

 We show a video on sexuality from the organisation Care for the Family. We talk about commitment and aspects of Christian marriage. Our Parish Priest is involved in this part of the presentation.

We alternate the different presentations throughout the day. Some activities are presentations, in some there is groups discussions and there are also tasks  the couples have to do together.

The couples bring their own lunch, we will provide drinks/snacks during the day. We end the day with a prayer and festive drinks.

Here in St Boniface parish in Southampton we provide one course a year at present, run on two evenings and one whole Saturday. The team consists of 3 married couples from the parish. We usually recruit 8 - 10 couples on each course, drawing from neighbouring parishes as well as our own. We make a nominal charge of £10 per couple for expenses.
The dates for our 2011 course are as below:

    Sunday  6 February                12.00  – 10.30 pm (after the 10.30 Mass)
    Tuesday 8 February                 8.00  –   9.30 pm
    Tuesday 15 February               8.00  –   9.30 pm
    Sunday 20 February                2.00   –   5.00 pm

Southampton, St. Boniface
Angela Braga
58 St James Road
Shirley,
Southampton
SO15 5FF

Tel: 023 8032 1096
Email: angelabraga@ yahoo.co.uk