[image by vicnknes]
One of the things that I wish more couples did was seek out premarital counseling. It’s quite shocking to me that very few people go through any type of premarital counseling, therapy, classes, etc. leading into their marriage. We require training and exams for driver’s license’s, to get into school, but one of the most important decisions one can make in life hardly requires anything.
There are lots of great resources out there for Premarital Counseling, but one of my favorites is Prepare/Enrich. My wife and I went through this program with our therapist, and I have recommended it to quite a few couples who have found it to be extremely helpful.
One of its strengths in my opinion is its ability to identify issues that couples need to discuss in counseling before marriage. Usually the key issues that are identified, then become the topic of therapeutic conversation. For example, issues like money, inlaws, sex, education, God, etc. may be ones that couple’s need to talk about with someone.
Most couples go into the engagement phase so head over heels that they aren’t always thinking clearly, or they are fearful of approaching some serious subjects with each other out of fear of actually disagreeing on something, or finding out so close to marriage that they actually don’t see eye to eye. So they just ignore the issues, but inevitable they will not stay hidden but emerge sometime early in marriage.
So if you are going to get married, or about to get married…do yourselves a favor and get premarital counseling.
If you are already married, and did or did not get premarital counseling, can you share your thoughts on your own perspective for either doing, or not doing it?
