The Blessed Marriage Project (BMP) is an independently funded, grassroots initiative by Blessed couples for Blessed couples. Its programs welcome Blessed couples and married Blessed family members of every age and at every stage of marriage, and from every part of our Unificationist families community.
The mission of BMP is:
- To connect Blessed couples to God and True Parent’s vision of the true husband and wife relationship,
- To challenge couples to evaluate the health and status of their own marriage,
- To empower spouses to invest in the further development of their love relationship, and
- To educate and support singles and couples to live lives of absolute sexual integrity and to bring their marriages closer to God’s ideal.
The initiative was conceived by two families in 2013, and formally launched the following year, with the donor couple generously giving $100,000 to cover annual expenses. Now their contribution has been over $200,000 annually, to include the related PureMind.Online initiative. (Read more history.)
The BMP is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt non-profit organization (meet the Board of Directors). The programming is led by professional Unificationist marriage educators.
In 2015, the Project began experimenting with new retreat formats, and expanding its menu of educational resources, most notably, PureMind.Online, to help combat the threat that pornography represents to Blessed couples.
Currently, the primary offering of the BMP is its Energize! Couples Retreats, which are designed for Blessed spouses to experience God’s love through a refreshing opportunity to learn useful information and tools, bond and enjoy each other as spouses, and to connect with other Blessed couples. To anchor the benefits in couples’ lives, the Retreat launches an opportunity for a local Small Group experience, and ongoing educational and supportive events and resources.
The purpose of the BMP also includes training young Unificationists to learn to carry out such programming in the future. In addition, the Project provides for training volunteers to facilitate Small Groups and Seminars among past participants and other married couples in their local church communities. The team is looking for other young people with a passion to support couples to join our staff, as well as older members to partners with us and contribute their skills.
The Project is offering Energize! Couples Retreats in 2017 depending upon what hosting communities contribute in terms of funding and local staff, and how their open dates coincide with the availability of BMP staff. We encourage interested communities and potential donors to contact our staff.
Thanks so much for this helpful guidance. In all of my work with couples, as well as my personal experience, I have observed something that every man should be aware of: while men tend to be very genital-focused in our intimacy with our partners- focused on the experience of orgasm, and therefore easily perceiving physical touch only as a pathway to sexual intercourse, or some experience of orgasm, women are s-o-o-o-o different. Sunmarie emphasized how important it is for her to experience her husband’s touch as something more than just his desire for sex, suggesting that that might feel conditional- that he is only touching her because he wants something from her, or from the intimacy, for himself. She expressed that when his touch is not assumed as an entre to sex, she feels loved, reassured, comforted, and unconditionally cared for.
I want to further suggest that for women, the experience of intimacy, even sexual intimacy, is not all about the genitals and orgasm… the gentle stroking, the time, and connection, the feeling of presence and closeness itself, is the most impactful, emotionally meaningful, and also arousing, and opens her to the climactic aspects of intimacy. Too many women are shut down and emotionally closed to this awakening and opening, often because too many men are mechanical and focused on their orgasm, with no sensitivity to or awareness of their partner’s needs and preferences. Sadly, porn trains men to be even more orgasm-focused, and to see women falsely presented with the same orientations and expectations as men, or as their fantasy of someone who only exists to please their desires. Too many men have never learned to be in touch with their feelings, and so their sexual impulses bypass their hearts, and go straight to their brains, where orgasm generates dopamine and oxytocin… this is the true definition of a “dickhead,” a man disconnected from his own emotions, focused on his physical, genital experience alone.
The cosmic joke, which is actually a challenge, is that men and women love and need to be loved so differently. Therefore intimacy and harmony challenges us to be mature, unselfish and open to our partner’s unique needs, often so different from our own. Thanks again for this simple, honest and helpful sharing.
What a real and clear Comment! Thank you for it and thank you for the video ♥️