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has anyone gone through it and do you think it has made your relationship/marriage stronger ~ was it spiritual counseling or traditional counseling…..
Thank you
Wow,
Gary B. that’s great….! I never thought about all that stuff ~ Thank you
pre-marital counseling?
Posted by admin on December 13th, 2011
Posted in family counseling 
I did with wife # 1…The church made us take pre-marital classes. I suppose that after the divorce, the outcome was…whatever. I guess in the big scheme of things it did not help much. it was but a very small fraction of our entire time together. The most important thing about marriage that I have learned is make each other your first priority. If you do that…you have a good shot. …and don’t go to bed angry at each other.
We went through traditional marriage counseling with an actual counselor. I think it was a valuable tool. Even though we were overall pretty darn good at communicating, it provided us with more tools and whatnot to improve more. No relationship is perfect and it won’t make your relationship/marriage perfect, but it does provide you tools and information to help improve it. You just gotta use the information and tools once you are out of their office. If you don’t use the knowledge, it is useless. Much like learning a new language. If you don’t use it, you will soon start forgetting it.
We did, and it was very helpful. “Love that Lasts” by Gary Ricucci, Betsy Ricucci is a very good book to walk through before marriage. So is “When Sinners Say ‘I Do’” by Dave Harvey.
I think premarital counseling is less important to learn to co-exist than it is to learn that you may be in “lust” but not Love, and maybe shouldn’t be getting married.
The proper counselor will be asking some really tough questions, questions that the couple probably hasn’t bothered to ask because they’re in “lust” with each other — questions like:
How many kids do you want?
How many kids do you REALLY want?
How do you handle anger?
How do you handle forgiveness?
Do you like cats?
Do you like sex?
Do you mind having sex while the cat watches?
How important is religion in your life?
Which is more important – your spouse or your job?
Which is more important – your spouse or your hobbies?
Do you HAVE to watch every football game on TV?
Do you mind if I drink milk directly from the bottle?
Do you mind if I fart?
Some of these things seem really stupid, but I’ve seen couple divorce for far less important reasons! Why? Because they come as a surprise. You think you’re getting The Most Beautiful Girl in The World, and when you get her home you find out she’s as much a slob as you are! Or worse, he’s as prissy as she is!
So I’ve seen a good number of couple actually break up during the premarital counseling. better then, as friends, then a couple of years later, as enemies in a nasty divorce.