Engaged Relationships: Preparing Your Marriage for Success through Premarital Counseling
Starting to plan for a wedding includes preparing your relationship for marriage. It can bring a mix of emotions. Excitement, anticipation, stress, and a little nervousness blend in your mind. You want everything to be perfect, but at the same time, you both know that there will be bumps along the way. You both have discussed expectations and hopes for the future together and are committed to starting your marriage on the right track. It's a big step, and you know you are ready. So, let’s talk about Premarital Counseling before the big day.
Benefits of Premarital Counseling
Premarital counseling is a valuable resource for couples planning to get married or enter a long-term commitment to each other. It provides a safe and supportive environment where partners can discuss their expectations, values, and plans about their future together. Through premarital counseling, couples can identify potential issues that may arise in the future and discuss strategies for addressing them. It can help build a strong foundation for the relationship and increase the likelihood of a successful marriage. Premarital counseling can cover various topics and is a proactive step that can benefit any couple, regardless of their background or belief system.
Premarital counseling can have many benefits for couples. One of the main benefits is that it can help couples learn how to communicate effectively with each other. Communication is key in any relationship, and premarital counseling can teach couples how to express their thoughts and feelings in a healthy and productive way.
Another benefit of premarital counseling is that it can help couples identify potential areas of conflict before they become major issues. By discussing topics like finances, parenting, and religion, couples can work through any differences and devise a plan for how to handle these issues in the future.
Premarital counseling can also help couples build a strong foundation for their marriage. By discussing their goals and values, couples can ensure they are on the same page and working towards a shared vision for their future together.
Overall, premarital counseling can be a valuable tool for couples who want to start their marriage on the right foot. By learning how to communicate effectively, identifying potential conflict areas, and building a solid foundation, couples can increase their chances of having a happy and successful marriage.
What is Premarital Counseling?
Premarital counseling for engaged couples or couples in a relationship who are beginning to discuss marriage allows meeting with a trained facilitator, marriage therapist, or couples therapist who can help you process everything that comes with starting this new phase of your life together. Sessions can be a few hours, up to twelve hours, or more if desired to enhance an important topic that needs special attention specific to your relationship.
What is the PREPARE/ENRICH Marriage Assessment?
PREPARE/ENRICH is the most used relationship inventory for couples looking for premarital counseling or an assessment to "enrich" their marriage or relationship. It is evidence-based and built on solid research to measure the couple's strengths with assessment reliability used by a trained facilitator. Using PREPARE/ENRICH for Premarital Counseling makes it a practical assessment for effective counseling sessions that can help reduce the risk of divorce by 30%, per the research. The inventory gives you a "road map" of your relationship that you can view in a copy of your results, and your premarital counselor will review it with you in the first session. The strength of the assessment is you can have a visual of results that will increase your awareness of yourself and your relationship. Further, these results equip you for the conversations and specific skills you need to discuss in your counseling sessions. It helps you focus on developing the skills your relationship needs and gives areas of skill building to help you strengthen and build a solid relationship before and after marriage.
What are the areas discussed in premarital counseling?
Here is a list of the topics most often discussed in premarital counseling. Some couples might have talked about some of these crucial topics already. Many couples come in and find a few of these areas difficult to talk about together, either because it causes tension in the relationship or because they need help figuring out how to start the conversation due to the stress of the topic.
Communication and conflict skills
Roles and responsibilities at home and relationship
How to talk about money and finances
Sex, romance, and emotional intimacy
Building rituals of connection
Understand individual and couple's core values
Faith, spirituality, and interfaith relationships
Coping with the stress of wedding planning and the wedding day
Sustaining friendship in your marriage
Discuss blending families and family planning
Exploring family of origin (the families you grew up with)
This is a list of most desired topic areas for preparing for marriage together. It is important to identify areas that you want to bring into counseling and are important to your relationship together.
Ready for Premarital Counseling In Minnesota?
Contact Us to schedule your premarital package today or for a 15-minute phone consultation. Visit our Premarital webpage to read more about premarital counseling and our packages available. Offering couples Prepare/Enrich in Minneapolis and Telehealth in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
