Testimony from Patt (now Mrs Lim)

I went for the first Alpha TPMC with much mixed emotions and thoughts.

Thoughts were mostly focused on 3 main topics:

1) Have I just signed up for a course that will just keep sprouting bible verses and evangelism at us for 2 hours per session over 7 weeks?? Or just extra nagging from parent-type people?

2) Who are these people who dare to tell me how to work my absolutely unique relationship? How can anything they say be more than just utterly obvious self-help propaganda? e.g. Buy Low, Sell High - that's the winning formula!

3) ....can this course actually help? 

Answers are (thankfully):

1) No. Everyone was quite tactful and there were no odd, out-of-place, fiery religious comments. There were no lectures, no nagging (despite some obvious reining in at times :) Neutral is a good word to describe the course. 

2) They didn't tell us how to work our relationships! Subjects were brought up and examples of how they were dealt with were shortly discussed - then short private discussion between the 2 of us would commence. It was (again thankfully) not even vaguely like Show and Tell forced sharing. Q&A time was open, and again, neutral.

3) Yes it most definitely did. How much did it help? Dunno - its hard to quantify.

However, it wasn't smooth sailing all the way - having to discuss some sensitive subjects ahead of time was odd, because there were arguments about things that haven't happened yet! Eg: are our children going to go to private or public schools? Chinese or Govt schools?

  
What was the top 3 top things from TPMC for us?

• Our continual relationship with our support couple
  
• Learning how to discuss issues without taking it personally
  
• Having been provided a Rough Guide to our lives ahead together - what could happen, what we could do...and what might not be a good idea to say or do in certain situations ;)

 
In retrospect - I just had quite a lot of fun during those 7 weeks. We are not quite sure what it was exactly that makes me remember it that way as those 7 weeks were peppered with some rather vocal discussions which would have been easier avoided (at that point of time) - but now - about 1.5 years after the course - thinking about TPMC just makes me laugh and bubble over with and enthusiastic

"Yea man - go for it!"
  
Caution: This is just me. Even my hubby has a different point of view/experience :)