Pre-Marital Counseling

LAM524 · May 2013

Hi All,

Not sure if this is a typical tradition/custom but thought this may be the best place for this question. Im just wondering if you are or have gone to pre-marital counseling? Did your church/priest/pastor require it? What is your opinion/views of it? Was it worth your time/energy?

HisGirlFriday13 · May 2013

We're Catholic (I was raised Catholic and FI is converting), so pre-marital counselling (pre-Cana) is require by our priest, our Church, and our diocese. I'm loving it. I'm so glad we're doing it. The one-on-one meetings with the priest are free, so no cost/benefit analysis there. But we're also doing the required weekend encounter later this summer, which is $100 total for both of us for two days. I've heard good things, but can't say for sure yet.

SVike · May 2013

My fiances dad is a pastor and is marrying us. At first we thought it would be awkward to do counselling with him so we started with a guy both our parents know. It was awful! He spent 3 sessions doing nothing but analyzing us and telling me that because I apparently have daddy problems I don't know about we shouldn't get married. Anyways we went back to doing it with my fiances dad and its going quite well. He's brought up some stuff we do need to figure out, and its really good to get to know him better as well.

[Deleted User] · May 2013

The church we are getting married in (his church, would be ours but I don't live there) requires it. We did a survey and will be meeting with a counselor in a few weeks. The pastor who will be performing our ceremony wants to meet with us too - although I don't think he wants to do it as a pre-marital counseling deal, just to meet me and talk to us so he knows who we are before he marries us.

AllieBear725 · May 2013

We are having a friend officiate us, so it was not required, but it has really been helping a ton. My god mother was the one who suggested we do it anyway, so we just found a good counselor in the area who is covered by my insurance. So far, it's really helped, and is giving us insight for the future.

southernbelle0915 · May 2013

FI is Catholic, I'm Methodist. We're having an outdoor wedding with a non-religious officiant (wedding prep not required). We wanted to do a course, but didn't really want to do the traditional religious marriage prep. We found a relationship psychologist and did an all day intensive session. We got A LOT out of it - skills that will (hopefully) serve us for the rest of our lives. How to address conflict, how to better communicate and understand each other, etc. That was a month ago and it's already made a huge difference.

sarahroslansky · May 2013

We're getting married in a Catholic ceremony, so we were required to do pre-cana. We've had a couple meetings with our priest that have mostly just really helped us with planning the wedding. We also had to do a weekend of lovely seminars that we thought would be boring and awful but it was actually wonderful! They gave us a packet, with a bunch of pages on different topics (like money, kids/family, communication, and sex), and then after listening to a talk on that topic we would separate and fill it out and then get together and discuss our answers. It raised a lot of questions that we had never considered, and also forced us to finally discuss questions that we had kinda always known we had different answers to (for example I've always wanted 4-6 kids, my FI has always wanted 2... discuss). Then at the end of the weekend they had us write love letters to each other and then read them out loud to each other (in private, of course), and that was so wonderful.

amaryann210 · May 2013

Catholic here, too, and it was required. Our sponsor couple are friends of my family, so I've known them since I was a kid. We are doing a six-sessions course with them and while we already had discussed most of the topics (finances, kids, conflict, etc.), it's been good to talk about how and what we really appreciate about the other and how we plan to live our faith in our marriage. I like that counseling is MARRIAGE-focused, not wedding- focused.

LAM524 · May 2013

Wow..thanks for sharing! It seems like everyone really is/has enjoyed their experience. I want to do it also, so does my FI, but I dont know that I feel comfortable doing it with one of my Pastors (his co-workers)

Im not even sure why Im not feeling comfortable about it.

rebeccamillen · May 2013

Well, it's (at times) a trying experience- it really digs deep into your relationship and exposes things you've never even considered. It can be kind of stressful especially if you and your fiance haven't had really in-depth conversations about the important topics (kid raising, finance information, where you want to live, how involved you want to be with each other's families, expectations you have of each other, etc) Premarital counseling really examines your relationship, so it can be uncomfortable, but it's extremely worth it!

LAM524 · May 2013

Thanks rebeccamillen! Schazi13...thanks for relating. Sounds like you guys had a really great way of approaching things!!

LAM524 · May 2013

see Stage...thats how Im feeling. He is a Pastor...with 3 other coworker Pastors. They are all great men and I trust them to a point. Not that Im aware of anything so "personal" being exposed but I just dont know what could arise. Being that he works with them, I feel there is a certain risk. I dont know that I could be as transparent as one should be to get the full benefit of it. I would want to "protect" him and his reputation. Not that he has anything to be ashamed of or hide but who knows what could come up! Its all about diving deep, right!

I wonder what our other options are. Go to a different Pastor at a different church? idk.

MuppetFan · May 2013

I feel pre-marital counseling is very beneficial.

For my first wedding, we did not marry with the church but had significant issues that I wanted to resolve before getting married so I sought the help of the brother and spiritual adviser from my Alma Mater (a Catholic College) for help with this and so we essentially went through Pre Cana.

I felt it was incredibly helpful, it got us to talk about our problems and work them out with guidance. It allowed me to really realize that most of the issues I had with our relationship were not my issues and were valid concerns. In the end, ex-H acknowledged them and worked at them long enough to get to the wedding and suddenly stopped. However, *I* still had taken a lot from those sessions and ended up going to counseling and eventually leaving the marriage.

For this time around, I had a very different approach to choosing a mate and sort of addressed all of those concerns early on from finances to responsibilities, expectations, children etc...

If I were you and uncomfortable with utilizing one of your FI's co-workers I would either address that concern by talking to them about it and seeking their opinions (they may have a response that makes you comfortable with them) or seek someone else.

LAM524 · May 2013

Thanks for sharing Muppet. Good advice too! I will probably talk to the Pastor that my FI socializes with outside of church. We are on more personal terms with him...he will def. be honest about what he feels is in our best interests.

jemmini6 · May 2013

We looked into doing pre-marital counselling, but couldn't find anything in our area that wasn't religion based, and since neither of us are religious, we didn't feel it would have been very helpful for us. I do have a few friends who did pre-marital counselling through their church and all the non-religious issues they said they brought up in counselling, H and I had already talked in depth about, so I felt comfortable not doing formal counselling.

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