Pre-marital counseling: what did you get from it? What do/did you expect to get?

teamUS2012

We are in the unique position of having to get our pre-marital counseling from great pastoral team we know who live in another state. I'm guessing we'll do it via Skype or something. My church denomination doesn't believe in second marriages, and my FI has been married before, so I won't be able to find anyone that I know who can do our counseling, and I insist on being counselled by someone with whom we have a relationship.

I know some people think it's a drag, and quite unnecessary, but I'm actually looking forward to it.

For those of you who have already been through it, did it benefit you? What did you learn? What did you get from it? Did you find it to be what you expected?

For those who haven't done it yet, what are your expectations?

Sophia1913

We haven't done it yet but this is the ONE tasks that FI is assigned to handle, is finding us premarital couseling 

MarryingmyKnight

I am in the process of taking it with my first session down. What I expect to get from it is some guidiance on marriage and how god views marriage and how we can be in accordance with him through our marriage.  I am also hoping to learn some tools to help make our marriage work. This is both FI and I's second marriage and I am not doing it anymore. This is it!  I have told him that multiple times and he feels and says the samething.

brittanyjterrell

We received ours a few weeks before the wedding and it was absolutely great. It was great to hear some of my husband's views on things such as kids, home-buying, his timeline for things, etc. Also, my pastor talked a lot about making sure to keep God first and a lot of advice on how to make our marriage last. He also prepared us a little bit for what people are going to say because of our young age (22 and 23) and how to make it work against the odds!

I was so happy that we did the counseling and will definitely be using him in the future for any other counseling we may need during our marriage.

CaramelBride973

We are going into our 4th session this week I think we have 8 or 9 sessions. I personally think it is worth it. The pastor that is doing it has been married for years and years and I feel like when he talks about certain things (especially the differences in men and women) he hits them head on. I wanted to do pre-marital counseling because I just wanted to make sure that our marriage will be following God's path not the worlds. I highly recommended to everyone.

lcroster

My FI is responsible for finding our marriage counselor too and hasn't done it yet.  Right now we are not attending church together (that's a whole other issue in itself). But we plan on finding a church together ( i hope it's prior to the wedding).  Anyway he hasn't done it yet and is to have this one thing taken from him.  Due to my job I travel alot so I have to someone that available on Friday - Sunday and FI just hasn't been calling around.    (Sorry to vent).

Now as far expectation I'm looking forward to being able to hear another person opinion on marriage and how to resolve issues.

mrswac58

We haven't gone yet but I am excited. I want us to be challenged and forced to talk about things that we may have overlooked. I love digging deeper and learning about myself and others. My parents are divorced  and his parents relationship, though Im sure its strong, isnt one I want. So I really want to do all that I can to have a wonderful marriage for us because DIVORCE IS NOT AN OPTION! I love saying that!

MsAmeera25

We had our first session on Sunday and it was amazaing already, it causes you to think. One thing that she said to me that really stuck with me is am I ready for marriage. And to be honest I was ready for a husband not neccessarily being married. I can't say that i've stopped thinking single in terms of caring for someone else first before myself etc. And its really helping us build our christian relationship together as a couple so just small things like that. We plan on going now and after the marriage. We are scheduled for 2 sessions a month up until the wedding. I think it going to be helpful for us. 

PrettyCW5

We're actually starting ours this Sunday. Like you, I'm very excited about it. I look forward to going deeper into our relationship and bringing light to things that we may need to address and work on that we may not have seen together. My pastor will be doing our counseling as he is the one marrying us. Yet, since FI is LD he told us he would "condense" our counseling into one session. FI and I will be talking to him on Sunday to see if we get extend it out back to the original sessions. We don't want to have an information overload and feel the session was not effective because we received so much information/material in one day with no time in between to process it all. We'd rather foregore convenience for the sake of our marriage Know what I mean!

PrettyCW5

Also, I don't know if I've mentioned this before but FI is a grad student working on his masters in divinity (seminary). He mentioned that yesterday one of his professors did a lecture on premarital counseling. (from the pastor/minister point of view) They received materials on premarital counseling and FI will be bringing his info down this weekend so we can "get a headstart". We've been doing manuals on our own anyway but I'm looking forward to having an impartial 3rd party guide our conversation.

MrsBoss2012

I'm equally nervous and excited. How personal do they get when it comes to the topic of intimacy? I'm a private person and I don't really want to discuss that with my pastor.  Not to mention if our pastor is unavailable we will probably have someone from my family do it.  I come from a family of preacher's but I definitely do not want to discuss intimacy with my Dad or my Uncles....gross! Ok maybe I'm a little childish but I just don't like the idea and that's the one thing that has me nervous about the counseling.

nitaashanti78

I'm looking forward to scheduling ours as well.  It will be a challenge with my living in TX and FI living in AL but I'm sure we'll get it worked out.  We plan on getting married at his family's church so I'm sure they require it. 

faithlady

We will be doing our second session today and so far it has been helpful! FI was nervous but after the first session he was pleasantly surprised. We have homework each session and so far it has served to make sure that we have the right mindset to embark on this journey. IMO, if you and your FI talk regularly about your relationship, nothing will really challenge so to speak at the most you have an opportunity to reaffirm and put in writing your stance on the relationship.

chescam

We completed 10 hours with our marriage counselor (a pastor we both knew from our college days) and 1 hour with out pastor. Both are the same denomination. The pastor we did most of our hours with came highly recocommended and his track record was impressive. (Only 1 divorce in 20 something years).

We talked about any and everything; our relationship, future goals, money, sex, education, values,  our relationship with God etc. We ended each session with hubby and I kneeling and praying for each other. We also read the 10 commandments of marriage. Great book.Our pastor had a compatability test where we ranked values/goals and discussed the areas that had 3 or more degrees of difference. This was interesting but he requires it for everyone he marries.

I would say that counselling helped us out tremedously. I don't like people up in my business so I usually keep stuff to myself but the sessions were a great outlet for us especially in opening up the pathways of communication. We received practical information on budgeting/spending, how many accounts to have etc and we also learned how to cope with merging the in-laws. Overall, the sessions were so worth it. I was so apprehensive about doing it at first, partly because I didn't know what to expect but I'm happy we did it.

teamUS2012

I'm really excited about it, but we do our own counseling every single day (much to his chagrin). I'm a very analytical person, and I typically have about 3-7 questions for every statement ever made. So most of our conversations include discussions about every topic and every possibility under the sun (what if one of us ends up paralyzed, what if one of our parents or siblings needs to live with us, what if we can't conceive, what if you fall out of love with me, what if I don't like the church we're at, what if I lose my job, what if the sex doesn't work for one of us, what if I [or you] gain a lot of weight, what if all my hair falls out, what if I get that skin thing where you turn white, what if you want to change careers, what if we have money problems, how will we resolve conflicts, where do we want to be in 5 years? How will we get there? 10 years? 20 years? What if.....). We literally talk about EVERYTHING.

So I'm thinking counseling will just reinforce some things we already know, but I'm still looking forward to it. We'll especially need help in the child-rearing area because we don't see eye to eye on that subject at all. It actually got to the point where at one point we decided not to try to have kids because I was afraid it would destroy our marriage.

SunnyBB

We started our counseling Monday.  I had to drag FI.  He is extremely private and shy in public.  Once we got there he loosened up and I think we both realized we will learn a lot. 

I am hoping to get clarity on our plans for the future (kids, home-buying, saving, etc.) and just how to deal with marital issues.  Both of our parents are divorced so we don't have a great model of a good Christian marriage close to us. 

One thing they said on the first day that stuck with me is that divorce is not an option.  Once you make that vow before God you must do everything in your power to not break that vow (excluding extreme circumstances of abuse, etc.).  So you must go into this knowing that it is forever, not to see how this goes, or til something better comes along, etc.