
Most couples bring baggage to marriage...
You are not the first to be here. You meet someone that fills your heart and your head. For several months (or years) it seems you both are living in a cloud of bliss. The air is rare up there and you never want to touch the ground again.
Eventually there will be talk of an engagement and a wedding. You both have never been more in love. Unfortunately, when you are so enamored with each other, life issues don’t usually come up. Things like religion, sex, children, personal values and money are nowhere in the equation at this time. To that end many wake up one day after several years of marriage wondering who this person is that they married.
Pre-wedding counseling is a solution to the nightmare of divorce and unhappy marriages. Counselors know that your love overshadows everything else at the early stages of your relationship and their job is to make you aware of the issues before entering into a lifelong union.
The Counselor – Counseling is usually done by a minister or priest. Most people marry in a church and it is sometimes policy for the couple to engage in counseling before they are allowed to walk the aisle. If you are going for a non-traditional wedding, your counselor can be a licensed family therapist who has experience with pre-marital counseling.
The Sessions – Counseling sessions can range from one or two to an entire course. It is up to the counselor and the couple. The couple and the counselor meet alone to discuss issues that are important to a marriage like the ones mentioned earlier. It is necessary for couples to sort out their individual thoughts on these and other matters to see if they are compatible at the deeper levels of a relationship.
The Outcome – A firm foundation secures the home that is built upon it. That is the goal of pre-wedding counseling – to build firm foundations. The time to discuss children is not after three years of marriage when the biological clock is ticking. Money issues can’t wait until the well runs dry.
The goal of pre-wedding counseling is not to break up couples but to get them to see the big picture of their lives. Think of it as another part of your wedding plans.
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