D & J's Story

Many years ago three couples among our friends, whom we thought we knew well, ran into serious trouble. In each case there had been an affair, and we found ourselves getting involved with the people concerned. It occurred to us that there must be some sort of organisation “out there” that ought to have been able to help. We were given the names of several organisations, of which AME was just one. So we enrolled on one of the weekends out of curiousity, just to see what it offered. We thought our own relationship was fine, and although there were occasional areas of friction, we didn’t feel we needed “help". After all what couple doesn’t have the odd difficulty? Our reason for going was so that we could learn how to help others. Or that’s what we thought! However by the end of the weekend we found we had learnt so much more about each other, and we were each able to understand why certain things in our behaviour so irritated our partner. We learned how to listen to each other and also how to talk. We also learnt and are still learning (slowly) how to avoid certain behaviours. Life wasn’t bad before, but life for us changed after that first AME weekend all those years ago. A nephew of ours said he had noticed the difference immediately after the weekend and wondered whatever we had been up to!

David & Judith