I had already been aware of this situation for sometime, but have received additional information to back-up my suspicions:

The men*s retreat group from my church(and its alumni) are waaaaaaayyyyy cooler and do more fun things than the women*s group.

I blogged about my HORRIBLE experience on a so-called *retreat* for women over 3 years ago; I nearly left my beloved parish over it. Something about the chemistry of our group was just...rancid. Rotten. Nauseating. I was in much worse spiritual shape after than before I attended.

Lets call the format of this specific type of retreat/spiritual experience WXYZ. WXYZ alumni (as they are called) are both men and women but each retreat session is single-sex. I hated my experience as previously noted, partly because of what I considered a very corny format, but mostly because the facilitators and presenters just did a totally shit-ass job of things. Nonetheless, I tried to be gracious, even sending thank you notes to the presenters for their time and efforts, because that is the type of person I am. I also explained gently to the ordained person who was overseeing the process at the time that I would not be continuing in the program.

I am still on the e-mail list for the WXYZ alumni, however. And why not? I love getting the inside scoop on what is going on! But seriously, all this *alumni* stuff has recently surfaced again in my life and when someone who has been through this specific program asks me *did you do WXYZ* I don*t know how to answer because I want to say, *Yeah, and it SUCKED!*

Instead I will raise one eyebrow, crack a half-smile and say, *Yesssss....* leaving the question, although technically answered, still hanging in the air.

Because the people who are into it are REALLY into it, my obvious lack of emotional interest in the topic usually ends the discussion when they realize the WXYZ magic did not work on me.

OK so...I did not intend this post to bust on something that other people have found helpful; that would just be vindictive and that aint my thing. What I am trying to express, is that I have become increasingly jealous of the male counterparts of the WXYZ franchise. These guys go out for bar nights, go see raunchy bro-mance movies, and share all sorts of wacky, madcap adventures together. (Some of them also get together to do a slew of good deeds in the community, but I am not jealous of that!) Even if they are not part of the *gang* that does things together socially, literally EVERY guy I have met has nothing but great things to say about WXYZ.

So THEN I wonder if we even went through the same program? Was the WXYZ for women structured differently? Was there less discussion and debate of facilitated topics? Did the guys have as much weepy prologue before each spiritual/scriptural topic was raised? Was the women*s program dumbed-down???

I have had some totally cool discussions with some of the male alumni of WXYZ, and I often think (as naive as this sounds) that I might have really enjoyed WXYZ if it was co-ed. But I think that since the nature of the program is to purge all the dark secretive shit in your soul out to the group, for the sake of honesty and modesty, (and due to the unsophistication of most people) that single-sex WXYZ makes sense for the majority of participants.

Why do I even care about WXYZ, some 3-plus years later? As noted, it has come up as a hot topic of discussion due to some changes in the parish - not in a bad way; more of a time of reminiscing for alumni. So folks talk about it and I have been in the crossfire.

And then...there are the blogs. I have stumbled into a few blogs written by WXYZ guys from my parish, thus learning about some of the fun things they do, friendships they have forged, etc.

I am not trying to be all Chaz Bono about my Catholic Christian spirituality here; I am not wanting to BE a man. But I am just feeling that, like most other things in life on Earth, the guys have certain advantages.