About
Premarital Counseling
Available Online and In-Person
Preparing for your upcoming marriage is an exciting time! With your attention pulled in a million directions, it’s important to nurture your bond before saying “I do”.
With all of the time you spend planning your happily ever after, don’t forget to schedule premarital counseling to ensure that you and your future spouse have discussed all of the “hot button” issues that may arise before tying the knot.
Who It’s For
Premarital counseling is for couples who are preparing for marriage. It can help strengthen the bond between you and your partner and bolster the foundation for your partnership.
How It Works
We walk you through premarital counseling in a step-by-step fashion to strengthen your bond before saying “I do”. With certified Prepare/Enrich administrators on our team, we use the Prepare/Enrich Assessment and Curriculum to help guide you and your partner in discussing all of the essential topics as recommended by relationship experts before tying the knot.
Let’s Talk About:
- Identifying strength and growth areas
- Exploring personality traits
- Strengthening communication skills
- Resolving conflicts and reduce stress
- Comparing family backgrounds
- Comfortably discuss financial issues
- Establishing personal, couple, and family goals
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Let’s see if this is the right fit for you
Do You Want To Get Your Marriage Off On The Right Foot?
Are you planning to get married and hoping to put your best foot forward? As you’ve seen other relationships around you falter, do you worry you might be making the same mistakes that could lead to similar problems? Would you like to identify areas in your relationship that could use some improvement to ensure you avoid common pitfalls that lead to marital conflict?
If you and your partner are planning a marriage and future together, you have a lot on your mind. Although you’re excited to embark on this life journey together, you might be concerned about making this commitment. After all, how can you be sure that you have a foundation strong enough to endure the unavoidable bumps in the road that life will bring?
Witnessing a relationship fail—whether it was your own or someone you know—might make you worry that this relationship could meet a similar fate. Although your love is strong, perhaps you’re concerned you and your partner are idealistic and lack the skills to keep a long-term relationship going.
Maybe There Have Already Been Signs Of Discord
Even though most of the time you get along, you might experience occasional disagreements with your partner that cause distress and disconnection. Whenever this happens, you may wonder if you’re really as compatible as you thought.
Although you both do your best to avoid another argument, perhaps you’ve noticed a similar pattern arising the next time you don’t agree about something. Feeling uncertain about how to avoid conflict down the road, you realize that rather than ignoring problems before moving ahead with marriage, it makes sense to work on strengthening your relationship now.
The good news is premarital counseling exists for couples who want to build a strong foundation before marriage. If you’re experiencing any difficulties within your relationship, pre-wedding—or pre-engagement— counseling can provide you with the skills you need to improve communication and avoid conflict.
Marriage Is Just The Beginning
Our culture often portrays marriage as the zenith of a romantic relationship. The happy ending at the end of most romantic comedies implies that once we’re married, everything will be great and our problems will take care of themselves.
However, the reality is that marriage is the beginning of a lifelong journey together. Embarking on this commitment without first taking the time to assess the strength of our relationship can be risky. Entering marriage on sure footing improves the chances of a successful partnership. According to the Health Research Funding, “Couples who underwent counseling before marriage had a 30 percent higher marital success rate than those who did not.”
Relationships Take Work And Commitment
We may think we know how to overcome disagreements and differing philosophies, but ignoring them until they blow up into bigger issues will only be “kicking the can” down the road. Proactively addressing our differences early on can make a significant impact on the sustainability of our long-term relationships.
The fact is few of us were ever taught how to be in a healthy relationship. Perhaps we lacked strong role models growing up and so we don’t know how to identify the problematic areas in our relationships. And because we have no idea how to resolve conflict when it arises, we are likely to blame our partners for their lack of agreement. Even if we have excellent communication skills and are normally great at expressing ourselves, when it comes to our partners, we may find it difficult to articulate our point of view without the conversation turning into an argument.
Fortunately, premarital therapy can help you identify the problematic areas in your relationship that you can improve upon before tying the knot. Whether you prefer Christian-based or secular premarital counseling, we can customize your therapy sessions to suit your needs.
Premarital Counseling Offers Couples Tools For Strengthening Their Relationship
Planning a wedding is one thing, but when you slow down and think about it, are you also planning a marriage? Although you may feel confident that your relationship is sustainable for the long term, it’s also okay to admit that you might have doubts. It’s actually a sign of strength to acknowledge that you may not have all the answers when it comes to keeping a relationship healthy for years to come.
Premarital therapy gives you and your partner a safe space to explore the problematic areas of your relationship in a non-judgmental setting, allowing you to get to the core of the issues that cause problems and helping you find solutions for moving forward. Rather than waiting until your discord is at the point where the relationship is already in crisis, receiving couples counseling is a proactive approach to smoothing out the wrinkles in your relationship before entering into the commitment of marriage.
The Prepare-Enrich Assessment for Premarital Couples Counseling
The Prepare-Enrich assessment is a questionnaire both of you will complete before your first premarital counseling session. The assessment includes approximately 150 questions that will be personalized for each of you based on your unique background. After you each take the assessment, we will review the results with you in your first premarital therapy session, pointing out areas where you have agreement and accord (your strength areas) and those where you may have opposing views (your growth areas).
Once we have identified what your strength and growth areas are, we will facilitate discussions around these topics. Working through specific exercises, we will help you further fortify your strength areas while strategizing ways to improve your growth areas. For example, an area in which you disagree could be related to wedding planning—if this subject is creating tension within the relationship we will identify it as a growth area to work on. Perhaps one partner feels that the other isn’t helping enough with the wedding plans or fears they won’t end up having the wedding they envisioned.
By slowing down the conversation so that each of you understands what your partner considers to be important about the wedding—as well as why it’s important to them—you will be able to appreciate each other’s point of view and find a middle ground that will make planning your wedding go more smoothly.
After completing premarital counseling, you and your partner will have grown closer and better understand the dynamics of your relationship. Receiving this unbiased assessment of your strength and growth areas will be an invaluable tool moving forward to work through anything that may arise down the road. Having the confidence that you’re prepared to handle any future conflicts will ensure you both feel ready to fully commit to each other without reservation
But You May Wonder Whether Premarital Counseling Is Right For You…
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Why is premarital counseling important?
Why not start your marriage in a strong place? Premarital counseling allows couples to assess their strengths and areas for growth under the supervision of a trained therapist. In addition to learning skills that can improve communication, couples who attend counseling usually leave sessions with a better appreciation for one another and a stronger connection than ever before.
How many sessions does premarital counseling usually take?
Before premarital coaching sessions begin, we ask that you take the Prepare-Enrich assessment. Thereafter you will commit to three premarital couples counseling sessions. Depending on how these sessions go, you are welcome to schedule additional counseling if we determine they would be beneficial for you.
What if my partner doesn’t see the benefit of couples counseling before marriage?
If you’re a solid couple who rarely argues, your partner may not understand why premarital therapy is necessary. Perhaps you can explain to them that attending therapy doesn’t mean something’s wrong with your relationship. Rather, it’s an opportunity to evaluate your current dynamics so that you can identify your strengths as well as areas for improvement.
Let them know that embarking on premarital counseling shows that you are taking marriage seriously and are committed to having a successful long-term relationship.
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Premarital Counseling Is An Investment In Your Future
You want to make sure your marriage has every chance of success. For more information about premarital counseling, please contact us. For more information about the Prepare-Enrich assessment, visit our page.
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