Out of sheer curiosity....for any of you who have been to the Love Path seminar....have you ever been contacted by this association after the seminar to find out if your marriage ended in divorce or was repaired?  I'm just curious about where the statistics come from regarding how many marriages are "saved" by this seminar.  I know of several people who went through the Love Path weekend and ended in divorce, but yet they claim an incredibly high success rate.  And, none of us were ever asked after the fact if we even stayed together.  Just curious.

Statistics over a short period of time tend to be misleading. Statistics are more accurate if there are more cases to examine. If in one workshop every marriage was saved, it would appear that our success rate is 100%. If in the next workshop, every marriage was lost, it would appear from that workshop that our success rate is 0%. If we had yet a third workshop with 75% success, and we queried graduates from all three workshops, the success would be 58%. Add fifty more workshops to the mix, and the statistic is much more accurate than measuring one, two, three, or even twenty workshops. When we had the research done on our effectiveness, couples from seven years of workshops were contacted. Our success rate was 77%. We do not do that type research every month or every year. It is done over cumulative years when it is done.

As to not being contacted to see if you were still together after the workshop, we do our best not to intrude on people's lives. Many contact us to discuss their situations, ask our thoughts, discover if we know counselors in their area, and the like. We happily talk with these folks and help in every way that we can. Between interacting with new couples asking questions about the workshop and helping couples who contact us after the workshop, we stay extremely busy. If you wish our help, we'll do all we can for you. However, we won't push our way into your life. You'd resent it and we would have to work 24 hours every day.

We are developing as rapidly as possible a coaching program for couples who wish futher help after they leave the workshop. We were first able to offer that to the couples who attended our February workshop. If you have been to any of our workshops and would like to engage the help of a coach, please contact us and we'll arrange that. The coaches are recompensed for their labor, so there is a charge for the coach's time.

Yes, there are couples who go on to divorce. That breaks my heart. I genuinely care and it hurts to see the pain. If I focused on the ones that didn't make it, I'd have to quit and do something else. I couldn't handle the burden. The great news is that an extremely high percentage of couples do make it. Our last scientifically validated survey said 77%. In a couple years, we'll have another done.

Please know this, if only 10% of marriages made it after the workshop, I'd still do the workshops as long as I could focus on the miracles that do happen. I love to hear the stories of love renewed, hopeless marriages turned around, and people working things out.

If statistics were all I cared about, I'd limit who could come to the workshop. Other "marriage intensives" do that. One, for example, will not enroll a couple if there has been an affair unless the affair is over and both spouses are committed to making the marriage work. We, on the other hand, accept couples when one is still heavily involved with someone else. Why? Because my experience over a decade is that a great many of those will turn around and save the marriage. A hundred percent? Sadly, no. Do people in affairs who don't save their marriages hurt our success rate? Absolutely. We probably would be in the 90 percentile range if we avoided the tough cases like those. But the ones that do save their marriages make it all worthwhile. Just a few minutes ago I spent a half-hour on the phone with a lady who attended the workshop with her husband who was in an affair. She told me about the miracle they experienced and the great progress they've made in the months since they came. That's what I key on. That's what pray for with every couple we meet.

If we didn't have the passion to help couples, there are much easier ways to make a living. However, when God calls, we seek to obey.