I love premarital counseling. I liked it when I went through it myself and I like facilitating it with other couples. I find it incredibly satisfying. There is something about working with an engaged couple as they ponder the excitement and mystery of marriage that is very encouraging to my soul. There is so much hope there. Newly engaged couples are a lot of fun and I count it a great honor to hear their stories and help empower them for a new life together.
I was a little bit surprised to find out that many people do not share my passion. Some of my fellow counselors view it with distaste. And many people are downright frightened by the prospect. They don’t like the idea of being under the microscope or they worry the counselor will tell them they shouldn’t get married. Others have had bad experiences with it and harbor bad feelings about the experience.
So here’s the thing, I’m wanting to encourage more couples to do it (premarital counseling that is), and I’m wondering if there’s anyone brave enough out there to share their opinions and experiences of it (good or bad). Maybe you have some advice/cautions for others? Or maybe you are a person who didn’t do such counseling and I’m curious to know why. What put you off? Maybe you are single and not engaged but have an opinion on the subject? Lastly, perhaps you are one of my fellow counselors (or a pastoral counselor) - I’d love to have your thoughts and experiences as well.
Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it!
May Light increase!
The howler monkeys of Belize
4 days ago
13 comments:
I would totally recommend premarital counseling without a doubt. I think it should be a prerequisite to marriage, even getting engaged. However, for me, I had a horrible experience. We had a bad counselor really is what it was. He did a compatibility test, but we never got the results. We showed up for appointments and he didn't. He canceled and rescheduled to the point it was too close to the wedding day and I was way too busy with the last minute plans and details to finish at that time. He was the pastor who married us. Perhaps just because he was the pastor didn't mean he was equipped or committed enough to do the counseling. So engaged couples, seek a professional counselor like Mark! Plus he's in it because he's passionate about it. Don't be afraid to ask the counselor questions first before you decide to dedicate time with him/her. Go through ALL the steps and the whole process and listen to the feedback with open ears and an open heart!! NEVER be afraid to push back the wedding date if there's work to do. It's not worth it. Marriage should be once, and forever.
Ouch! Sounds like your experience was definitely not great. Although our premarital counseling was with a pastor, he was extremely gifted in this area and was quite professional about it. I have heard that a lot of pastors aren't. Some couples feel like they are not a priority. Thanks for your story, thoughts, and the plug!
Well, Sarah and I are actually starting our pre-marital counselling this upcoming Wednesday.
I'm of mixed feelings on the subject, to be honest. I think one thing I'm going to struggle with is maybe over-focusing on what the therapist is saying.
I look at it this way. If I know someone is analyzing me, then to me it becomes almost like a mental game of chess; what do they really mean when they ask, where is this line of questioning going? I suppose it's a bit of a defence mechanism (in my layman's guess), but I'm not sure if I'll be "locking horns" with the therapist or not. I imagine it will be influenced heavily by the actual therapist; if I'm put at ease and they seem trustworthy, I'll relax more.
How about this Mark. I will write a special feature for your blog for you, about my experiences in pre-marital counselling in a three or four part series. I will not go into absolute specifics (as that's not fair to Sarah), but rather more of my overall impressions. In exchange, you buy the popcorn when we go see Iron Man. Interested?
Jay
Jay
Hmmm . . . yes Jay, I am interested. I think you would have to OK the idea and the individual posts with her, but yes, I would be interested to hear your impressions about it. I'm especially interested in the feeling it elicits in you and what you find the most/least helpful. Yah, let's do it. Popcorn is on me.
If only I could be there with you (sigh).
Oh yeah, I would of course have to okay it with Sarah, and let her have a preview. I'm not planning on going into specifics but more thoughts on the overall experience, impressions I get, etc. But yeah, one word from Sarah and I kibosh the idea.
If you can convince Sarah I could wear a helmet cam so it's like you're there... :)
(Sarah's already shot down my idea of wearing a helmet cam on our wedding day)
Jay
I did premarital counselling with my first marriage, not my second. My experience also wasn't that great but that was my own fault. I wasn't being honest with myself or my counselor. I think that the best piece of advice I could give couples is if you're going to go through counselling, be honest. You may just find that you're not ready to get married, and that is perfectly okay. Better to be sure than go through with the wedding and find out later that it wasn't what you really wanted.
This is the first time I've been on your blog and your post caught my attention. I am a HUGE believer in pre-marital counselling. Ernest and I had awesome per-marital counselling and felt it made a huge difference for us. While our friends struggled in the beginning of their marriages we felt very prepared for the many situations we faced. Recently we faced another very difficult time in our marriage and I believe that it was our excellent pre marital counselling which gave us the tools to work through it and come out on top. I am a huge believer in pre marital counselling. In fact, I think it should go on longer and cover even more areas. There are so many things you face as a young couple and having the right tools makes a world of difference.
This is my first time on your blog and I had the opportunity to attend a pre-marital class in September 2007. While I took away some information personally I believe it catered to people that were not together long enough to figure out "Life, Marriage & Finances". There was several couples in the room that were only together 1 - 2 - 3 years and were fractically looking for paper/pens to take "notes". However, my now darling Husband at time were together for 9 years..at the stage in our lives where we figured out finances, emotions, and rolls we play in each other life. I agree that pre-martial classes are needed for those couples that have less than 5 year in their respected relationships but after living together for 8 of 9 years... the pre-maritial class caused us to laugh and snicker our way thru the day.
I laughed when I saw your blog topic! As with every wedding item it has taken me a couple of months to come around to certian things (wedding colors, counselling, etc.). After several months of trying to avoid the permarital counselling issue I am kind of excited to start next week. With hearing many good stories mixed in with the bad it seems that it can be what you make it. I guess we should make the best of it! It will be interesting to see what Jay writes about it!
Oh, that was sooo long ago!!! All I remember is that because we were taking our counseling from a friend of my family I felt extremely sick about it. I was literally shaking and sick to my stomach. The counseling itself was good. I loved the tests that we had to do and the books we read. My favorite sessions though was the last one when his wife joined us and they talked about the more intimate side of marriage. I felt WAY more comfortable with a woman in the room and they were really informative with some things that I had never even thought about. Ok, I'm going to just stop now ;o)
Ok, under some minor pressure I will share my premarital counseling experience.
My dear husband and I wanted to be married by a nice old family friend of theirs. He is a very nice man, and somewhat on the conservative side of things. It just seemed the way to do things that he would not only marry us but also provide for us our prior counseling. I was only slightly trembling in fear at the concept of my parent's-in-law's best friends doing what I expected to be a thorough preparation of all that Scott and I would struggle with in all aspects of marraige, but, well, somehow I figured I could survive. I breathed (an internal) sigh of relief when our first assignment was to buy a workbook and go through the lessons, first individually then just the two of us together. How shall I rate the success of this workbook? Did it raise any major issues? Well, yeah a couple. Did it solve any major issues? No, not really.
Time flew by and before we knew it, it was almost the big day. One sunny weekend when Scott and I were visiting his parents, not more than three weeks before the wedding, the dreaded phone call came. But, it was just to see if Scott wanted to go out for coffee. Another sigh of relief. Now, I didn't plant any tiny recording device, but I have it on good authority that perhaps 2% of their conversation had anything remotely to do with marraige! Oh, well, it certainly wasn't going to be me pushing the counseling issue.
But, before you write off our counseling experience completely there was one more phone call- maybe we would like to come to their house for dinner? My mind wildly explored all the conversation avenues that we could possibly travel as my mouth, almost on its own, cheerfully agreed.
Alas, all that fretting was terribly in vain. We had a lovely dinner, the four of us, and retired to their cozy den for dessert. Then the counselling bombshell hit.
Did we have any questions?
What should I ask of these kind hearted folk? What self revealing information should I share with my mother in law's best friend? I believe I asked one question, a fairly mild, innocent one, which we discussed for a short while before cheerily saying goodnight and thanking them profusely for their hospitality.
Three weeks later we said our vows and were off to figure out this grand complicated thing called marraige. And here we are, just shy of seven years later!
In spite of all this, I would definitely highly recommend premarital counselling, escpecially when it goes both deep and wide into all things marraige-related. Maybe with better counseling we could have saved ourselves some of the major issues that loomed over the first couple years of our wedded bliss- but, maybe not. Who knows?
I do want to say this to both sides of the counseling table: Put some effort into it. Marraige is worth it!
Happily married by the grace of God, (and I really like the guy that married us!)
have you ever thot about post marital counselling...Just kidding
Awesome stories and thoughts people! I have really enjoyed reading everyone's stories so far.
Julie brought something to my mind though; I wonder how many people censor their discussion of how "good" their premarital counseling was because maybe they know (or their family knows) the counselor/pastor? If it's your current pastor, it would be even more difficult to publicly make critical comments. This to me is part of why premarital counseling (well, all counseling actually) difficult if you have a previous relationship with the counselor. Just a thought. Any other stories out there?
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