The Importance of Pre-Marital Counseling

It’s a brand new year and the wedding season (April/May) is approaching. I believe in marriage and think it is a beautiful thing; when it’s with the right person and when the two are truly ready. Marriage is no walk in the park and it takes work, effort, strength, determination and sheer will to make it work. Many get caught up in the actual wedding day, but marriage begins day after the wedding. I’ve seen and known many women to get so wrapped up in the planning of the wedding and the actual wedding day; they didn’t understand the wedding day is just an event and marriage was nothing like that. I also know many people jump into marriage without even thinking about pre-marital counseling, which could attest to the high percentage of divorce in this country.

I have heard so many people say pre-marital counseling is stupid; it’s a waste of time; they don’t need it, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Pre-martial counseling serves many purposes.

• It clearly explains what marriage is and what to expect. We all think we know how marriage is going to be, but we don’t. We also tend to think it’s going to be full of teddy bears, unicorns and pink roses all the time and that certainly isn’t true. Marriage is challenging.
• It helps you get YOURSELF in order to ensure you are prepared to share your life with another individual.
• It assists the couple in talking about the important things that make up a life together, such as finances, children, religion, duties, etc. These things tend to be overlooked; as if you assume your significant other shares the same values as you and wants the exact things you want at the same time you want them; when in actuality, many people engaged don’t even broach these topics.
• It assesses any current issues between you as a couple that need to be straightened out for the betterment of your marriage.

In my humble opinion, I think bullet #2 is by far the most important. If you don’t work out the issues within yourself and get yourself together; how can you be any good for your significant other? People enter into marriage with all these issues, past resentments, excess baggage and unrealistic expectations and these are things that could have been worked out and dealth with beforehand if the couple would have taken the time to go through pre-marital counseling and honestly made that a priority.

Understand five sessions is most likely not going to get you what you need. Being patient and allowing the pre-marital counseling to take as long as it needs to will only make your entry into marriage that much more solid.

If you’re engaged, I urge you to take a look into pre-marital counseling. After all, the goal is to have a marriage that lasts and works, so why not give yourself the means to make that happen…

What is your position on pre-marital counseling? Of course, we want to know…..