Anyone Else Doing Pre-Marriage Couseling?? Yes? No?

bullentini

I just started some pre-marriage counseling at my FI's Lutheran Church (he was raised protestant, I was raised without religion). We agreed to do it because it makes getting the marriage certificate virtually free in our state. But now that we learned the fees for this counseling far exceed the marriage certificate cost, I am wondering if it's still worth it?

Did anyone else do any pre-marriage couseling? What did you have to do? Did you like it? If you chose not to get the counseling, why not? Just curious!

terrijason

My paster is requireing it of us and wont marry us until we do it.. but that is the norm for my religion and my community

felicia220

For two reasons,

1. It is usually done if you belong/are getting married in a church, which we do neither. 

2. We have been together for over 10 years and already live together, we are very aware of each others faults and how to handle them.  We communicate very well and rarely argue about anything, we just mostly talk things out before it gets to that point.  From what I have heard counseling is all about finding common ground, and helping you to communicate and such.  We've got that covered. 

aerinpegadrak

We're not, because we've already discussed any potential sticking points (money, kids, religion, family, housework) and are on the same page, so we figured it wouldn't have anything to offer us.  But if you haven't talked about those things, if you fight a lot, or if you've ever had any issues making yourselves understood to each other, then you should definitely do it.  It shouldn't really be about the money, it should be about making sure your relationship has a solid foundation.

Cray.anita

We are not.  We are getting married in a Lutheran Curch and the pastor told us at the first meeting that he is not a counselor/therapist and is not going to act like he is, so he does not do counseling.  We did however have about a two hour meeting with him discussing our childhoods, families and where we wanted to go with our lives.  He said this is so he could get to know us better (we are relatively new members of the church).  It seemed almost like a mini-session.  I am confident that we will be okay without it as we already live together and know each others views on most topics.

KatyRoseM

we are doing it through therapists at our school.  I insisted because others often know of pit falls that I hadn't thought of, and while we have talked about most things I want to make sure.  

chrisnjay2010

we are both catholic and had to do it in order to get married in the church.  we honestly got nothing out of it. It was really expensive too.

megk8oz

We didn't. The first 6 months of our dating relationship was a bit of a hellstorm (Not with each other, we just had a lot of outside drama in our lives affecting both of us), and it pretty much forced us to discuss all of those hard issues like finances, children, religion, etc ...we don't agree on absolutely everything ever, but we rarely fight ... not because somebody "backs down" or just holds back ... but because we know how to discuss things like adults.

Also, our officiant didn't require it. If he did, we would have done it, but it wasn't something we deemed necessary, considering how in depth we've discussed most of the issues that get covered.

golden1215

I don't think you should ever go to counseling just to save some money.  If you haven't been together that long, or maybe have some complexities you know you want to work on, then go. 

bullentini

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_chit-chat_anyone-else-doing-pre-marriage-couseling-yes?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:14Discussion:6427d9ff-cd7d-4693-b33f-4c56af0e2296Post:664dd37c-ccf2-4ce2-b545-2cf9f68aaf92">Re: Anyone Else Doing Pre-Marriage Couseling?? Yes? No?</a>:
[QUOTE]We are not.  We are getting married in a Lutheran Curch and the pastor told us at the first meeting that he is not a counselor/therapist and is not going to act like he is, so he does not do counseling. 
Posted by Cray.anita[/QUOTE]

That's how I felt about the Pastor too! I know he has a lot of wisdom over the years, and in his own marriage, but I just felt like we are capable of discussing our ideas, goals, and expectations about life outside of the church (for free, lol).

jrpetrik

My fiancé's pastor is doing the bulk of our pre-marital counselling (for free–the idea that pastors would charge for counselling is somewhat mind-boggling, actually), and we're hoping to meet with my pastor as well. For now, he and I attend different churches as he's a Presbyterian (PCA–NOT to be confused with the liberal PC(USA)) and I'm a Baptist (ARBCA), but once we're married I'll join his church (as it is, I already attend evening services with him).

We were told that if we hadn't read it over winter break, we'd've been reading "When Sinners Say 'I Do'" (Dave Harvey), but since we did, we're going through a binder-ful of information on things like the covenantal relationship, headship, etc., etc., etc. Plus, we're going to keep discussing things like principles for conflict resolution, finances, expectations, children, and so on and so forth.

nanonian

 Yes, my fiance and I went to a pre-marital retreat. It was not truely counseling and did not claim to be. It was with Church of the Brethren and Mennonites.
 Neither my fiance or I are particularly religous but do beleive in god and wanted to set aside time to talk about importent issues. We talk about them other times as well. But I have see too many divorces to think that marriage will always be easy to handle and I wanted to do everything possible to set us up for a happy life together. 
 The weekend included already married couples sharing their experiences, time by yourself to anwer questions, and then time alone with your fiance. Never were we asked personal questions to be answered for anyone but the two of us. They were even open minded to the idea of differnent forms of birth control. Stating that everyone should see a doctor for the best choice for themselves, and had pamphets available on the pill, ring, and others in addition to "natural family planning".
 As for price, a donation was recomended of $350 per couple but only $50 was required. And they really ment this!! The couples who led the weekend volunteer their time and made sure that we should come even if we could not pay.

 These weekends are not for everyone. I just don't want them to get a bad reputation or for someone who desires to go to miss the experience with their partner because they beleive the price is too high.

jenn.daniel

We weren't going to, but it turns out that we're required to have 3 1-hour sessions.  The cost is included in the $850 fee for the ceremony.  I don't know what it will cover, but the first day we take a Myers-Briggs.

FI and I have talked about finances, religion, kids, jobs, where we want to live etc.  I guess we'll see if the counseling ends up being helpful or not!

pandasquishy

It was mandatory to get married in my church, but it was free and was only two meetings with the Pastor.  Half the time we discussed the programs!  We filled out some compatibility survey which was boring because we'd already discussed all these things previously, but at the same time it was nice to reaffirm where we stand on everything from money, careers, kids and even sex. 

goheels05

We did it.  I thought it was quite beneficial, and I think anyone could benefit from it, even if they think they've already discussed everything. 

Conversely, if you still decide it's not for you, I highly recommend the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.  We took a course with the book in the months leading up to our marriage, in addition to pre-marital counseling, and it was great.  It teaches you to be a better communicator with your SO, show love, work through disagreements, etc.  You could read it together without doing a class and get the same benefit.  The author is Christian, but the book isn't written with particularly strong religious undertones; you can benefit from it regardless of your affiliation. 

Huskerfanz

We did do it and I thought it was helpful even though we mostly found out we had talked about almost everything.  Helped to know we weren't forgetting anything.  Part of it was getting expecations from our parents on our marriage and that was so interesting.  I learned that the ILs wanted to be more involved than I expected or wanted so it helped a ton to know that.

Ditto Heels on The Five Love Languages.  That is great book that has helped with relationships in general for me.  Another book that was really helpful for us was Getting Ready for Marriage by Hardin and Sloan.  It is also written by Christian authors but you can skip that stuff.  It helped us think through the big stuff and the day to day stuff of marriage.

melissaandjosh418

We've done a few sessions with a relationship counselor. We have already discussed everything (kids, money, expectations) and are on the same page but the stress of the planning was getting to us and we started to argue alot. It's helped us realize how much we mean to each other and put things into perspective.

MissyCee

I agree with goheels, I think that counseling can be beneficial to anyone. I am currently doing premarital counseling with the Pastor of my church, the church we are getting married in, and it's free. I actually didn't even realize that some churches charge for that...

My fiance and I have talked about kids, money, holidays, family, goals, careers, etc many times but that doesn't mean that we are not getting anything out of our time with the pastor. A lot of the counseling we are receiving is helping us to remember to involve God in those things as well, and for us to live our lives together as God wants us to. I am really enjoying the counseling and would certainly recommend it to anyone.

bullentini

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_chit-chat_anyone-else-doing-pre-marriage-couseling-yes?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:14Discussion:6427d9ff-cd7d-4693-b33f-4c56af0e2296Post:6fe41c53-6713-4885-b48a-0b3edf49f276">Re: Anyone Else Doing Pre-Marriage Couseling?? Yes? No?</a>:
[QUOTE]We did it.  I thought it was quite beneficial, and I think anyone could benefit from it, even if they think they've already discussed everything.  Conversely, if you still decide it's not for you, I highly recommend the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.
Posted by goheels05[/QUOTE]
Thanks! I'll check it out!

FutureMrsBoucher

FI and I decided that we wanted to just because we wanted to make sure we hadn't missed anything. We've talked about pretty much everything we can think of to discuss, but we felt more comfortable knowing that someone trained in that area walk us through just to be sure. 

We go to a private Christian University that heavily promotes getting married (ring by spring is the unofficial motto) and therefore offer free pre-marital counseling. TBH, I don't feel like we've gotten much out of it yet, but who knows? Maybe we have and didn't realize it. Either way, I think it's beneficial just to go over everything one more time.

SarahElizabeth523

We are doing the pre-marriage counseling because it is required by our pastor for him to marry us. we could probably get out of it though since my fh is the pastors nephew

I think that it is really beneficial though:)

jenn.daniel

I third The Five Love Languages! 

Miss Red

We are. Not religious based or anything. It's been so good for us and we have definitely forged a deeper connection. We have really opened up the lines of communication and like other people have said, it's been very beneficial.

luckyme502

We aren't doing it.  We have talked about it, but we decided against it.  We have these amazing CDs from Denton Bible Church of a series of sermons on the Song of Solomon.  They are all about love, marriage and relationships.  We love it and plan on listening to it again between now and the wedding.

caseylynne21

We didnt do it...and i am wishing we had...i am not saying that we shouldnt be getting married but i think that it would have been nice in hindsight....there are a lot of things that come up and you might need a calm place to talk about it....

krissydawn16

Doing it and LOVE it.  Does your FI play video games while you clean up his mess?  Mine did and after our first session this stopped   Our sessions are about understanding how the other person wants to be "loved".  What we learned so far is that he is "touchy/feely" and sees my love when I do that stuff.  I, however, see his love when he help me with stuff.  Neither of us knew this about each other or ourselves, but it makes so much more sense now!  We've always had good communication so we were able to skip over that part of the counseling because we already had our answers about kids, religion, work, etc.

JFH2010

We've talked about pretty much everything, we'ved lived together in total harmony for the past year, and we literally never fight - BUT my family has a pretty astounding divorce rate, so I'm currently researching counseling options.  It will be something non-religious.  Given my family history, I just want to have all our bases covered and be as prepared as possible by the time we make it official!

smooth84

We did a method called Imago Therapy. It was a two-day intensive session with 14 other couples. It was completely worth it. It taught us better communication skills and how to completely understand where the other person is coming from and their past experiences and how they affect your relationship. It is expensive though and was a gift from my FMIL and FFIL. But I would recommend some sort of therapy, no matter how good you may think you are at communicating or you may not argue a lot its good to get the lessons now instead of waiting 10, 15 years later and those wounds are harder to heal.

lizstill13

My cousin, who is marrying us, is requiring that we do it. She's out of state though, so it's all online/email. So far it's not time-consuming and actually kinda nice, because we get to learn a little more about each other.

whitneykaye87

We're doing it- it's recommended by our pastor, but not a requirement.  It also doesn't cost us money.  We took a little quiz to see how compatable we are on certain things, and to give us a chance to talk about any issues where we're not on the same page.  Like others, we had already talked about each issue so we didn't have any problems, but I still think it was a worthwhile affirmation.

We had also read The Five Love Languages before, which we both thought was fantastic!  Even for couples like us who never had any fights or problems feeling loved, it really helped us be more mindful of how to express our feelings in a way meaningful to the other.

OP, if you don't want to do the counseling for the sake of counseling, than don't.  Ignore the money issue on this one and just think about what you want to do.

kmuthig

My FI and I are doing premarital counseling with our church pastor and his wife.  They aren't charging us anything.  So far we've been to 3 of the 12 sessions and it's been great.  We've discussed things that neither of us have thought about, it's given us a chance to open up on topics that we hadn't talked about.  Plus it's just great to have a mentor couple to help us through the process!