Consider Premarital Counseling and Save Your Marriage Before It Starts
1. Strengthening Communication Skills
A prime reason that many therapists give for choosing premarital counseling is to help strengthen your communication skills with each other. In the early years of romance, a couple typically doesn’t encounter major communication conflicts. Powerful hormonal surges drive romantic attraction. But within a few years, these strong neurotransmitters will mostly fade and be replaced by a deeper kind of attachment.
Once the head-over-heels phase lessens, communication conflicts can arise. Your ability to navigate these issues without demeaning and dismissing each other’s points of view will significantly impact the success of your marriage. Premarital counseling offers the chance to learn how to be respectful, listen, and maintain your bond even under conflict.
2. Personality Insights
Counselors who offer premarital services often include personality assessments as part of their package. These can provide valuable insights into how your personalities differ as well as how they’re similar. This knowledge will help you understand what motivates each other and why something that inspires and energizes you may not be the same way for your partner.
3. Third-Party Wisdom
Most couples aren’t terribly interested in third-party advice about their relationship. Perhaps this is because it often comes from in-laws! But a seasoned premarital counselor brings a wealth of perspective and knowledge to the table. They’ve worked with many couples and know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to healthy relationships.
When you consider premarital counseling, please understand that a counselor can provide an impartial, unbiased viewpoint. They may notice both strengths and faults in each of you that neither of you sees right now because you’re still in the passionate phase of a new relationship. As they draw your attention to these areas, they’re giving you helpful insight into yourself and your partner.
4. Planning Ahead
Building a life together requires a lot of effort and time. It can be easy to forget about less sexy things like finances, career goals, relocations, in-laws, and where you want to live. But the reality is that all of these issues are crucial and will need to be addressed no matter how blissed out you are with each other.
Premarital counseling can provide helpful advice and guidelines in these areas. It gives you a space to talk about topics like budgeting and how you’ll handle moving to places you may not want to go if your spouse is transferred for work. You’ll be able to ask about how to handle those tricky in-law situations — and so much more.
5. Better Equipped for a Healthy Marriage
It’s easy to forget how quickly time goes. Before you know it, you may be married for many years and decades. That’s a long time. Life will bring challenges and joys that you can’t even imagine right now.
But premarital counseling can help set you off on the right path for the years ahead of you. You’ll learn about best communication practices, compromising, planning for the future, and what makes each of you tick. These are invaluable skills that you’ll never regret having!
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If you and your fiancé are ready to learn more about the wonderful benefits of marriage support, consider premarital counseling. Please contact my office or visit my Premarital Counseling page to learn more.