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Pre-marital counseling. Hmm…should we? The state of Texas thinks we should. Maybe all states do. They offer discounts on marriage licenses for couples who have taken part in certified pre-marital counseling classes. I’m talking major discounts too, where the license is nearly free. But I don’t want to take a class just to get a discount; I want to be sure that the class we take is the right fit for us, and one that we will benefit from.
As we continue to contemplate whether or not we should go down the road of pre-marital counseling, we recently started reading The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Now we find ourselves saying, “You’re stonewalling,” or whatever term fits the type of behavior one of us in engaged in during a fight. I think this book has been helpful for us, even though it is primarily for couples that have already dealt with marital problems. We still feel like we are learning from it.
The reason all of this is so important to me is because, unfortunately, I have not had the best example of marriage in my life.
I love both of my parents dearly, and in so many ways they were great together, but in so many other ways they were terrible together. I can say this now as an adult, though of course I was devastated as a child when they divorced. I think my mom is an amazing, strong woman, but she got cheated and missed out on having a partner in her life. I don’t want that for me, and I know she doesn’t either.
I was recently talking about this very thing with some friends, and a lady I didn’t know well, who had been married for several years. She laughed at me for saying that I have a real partner in my relationship. She said it was because we were “new” and that it would change a few years down the line. Before I made some snarky comment, I really thought about what she said (I’d had a few glasses of wine, so this was not an easy task). I wondered if she was jaded or if I was naive, but ultimately I disagreed with her. Mr. Fro Yo is not only my partner now; he will always be my partner in life, because that is something we value and work towards. We make it a point to be each other’s equal and to help each other in everything we do. Not just as a support for when we are feeling sad or struggling with a difficult task, but in everything we do––including the mundane things like emptying the dishwasher, going to the grocery store, or making dinner.
Anyway, the point is that I want what my parents didn’t have, more than anything. I feel like we are well on our way to a happy marriage, but because I’m the product of divorced parents, I want to do any and everything I can to be certain that we won’t end up that way. Does that mean pre-marital counseling? Maybe. But I also think it means remembering the things we value for our relationship, especially during the difficult times.
Is there anyone else out there with divorced parents? Are you doing pre-marital counseling or reading books before marriage? Do you feel like you’ve learned something from your parents’ divorce that you want to carry on—or not carry on—to your own marriage?
I have done pre-marital counseling, but its not a course or anything that formal. Just some joint sessions with a MFT we both see independently. I too am the product of divorce, and I’ve learned I have developed a lot of fear-based behaviors that I’ve had to work through. I honestly can say it has made a HUGE difference in what was already a very happy relationship, because it is helping us keep from developing bad habits, and it gives us both a lot more insight into and understanding of each other. I can’t say enough good things about it!!
We’re getting married at a Catholic church and will be going through our church’s pre marital counseling. I’m actually looking forward to it.
@Miss Fro-Yo - what is the discount for premarital counseling in Texas?
I’d love to hear about books other Bees are reading with their FI. I’d love to do something like this too. I think we all spend so much time preparing for our weddings that its easy to lose sight of the marriage preparation part of the equation. After all, our wedding is one day, our marriage is for a lifetime.
@texasmeredith - well put: “our wedding is one day, our marriage is for a lifetime”
I was just saying to FI the other night that we need to make sure we focus on the marriage part, and not just the wedding part, of our future together. I’m from a divorced family, and FI’s parents are celebrating 30 years together in 2010. So we are coming from complete opposite sides of the spectrum. If i want to talk about the “what-if’s” he thinks I’m being paranoid, while I look at it as being realistic.
Thanks for bringing up this topic, Miss Fro-Yo, I really am interested to see what the rest of the hive has to say as well!
I think we we’re going to do the counseling thing… but it hasn’t been easy finding a program in Dallas that sounds like anything less than torture!
I think the discount brings the license fee down to somewhere around $10, doesn’t it?
My parents are divorced, so I was on board with pre-marital counseling and the Catholic church requires it of you. We did the weekend retreat and I thought it was just a nice time to focus on us. We’re not terribly religious, so we disregarded some of that information, but the couple centric information and the leader couples setting an example were nice.
We’re going to do it. We’re going to have a small Catholic ceremony so we have to do it but even if we didn’t, we would.
It’s not so much that we’re afraid we’ll have problems. We know that we will.
We just want to make sure that we’ve covered every angle, and introduced ourselves to every viewpoint we can before getting married.
This is a really interested post!
I’m also a child of divorce, and while my husband’s parents are legally still married, they have a strange on-again, off-again relationship. With that said, though, we didn’t do pre-marital counseling. In fact, we never even thought about doing it. We didn’t get married in a church, and we didn’t get a discount on our license for it.
But I think if we could do it again with the option of counseling very prevalent, we still wouldn’t. It’s not that I don’t think we need it, but I think we both have a very clear understanding of what we’re getting into: that this is a decision that is permanant, and things will not always be puppies and sunshine. We’ve already seen each other at our worst (through cancer, specifically), so I don’t feel like counseling could really make us have a stronger understanding of marriage.
But that’s just me, and I see nothing wrong with going through with it. It’s a very personal decision.
@texasmeredith: You save $60 on your marriage license. Some of the programs are free, and some of them are not. Here is the link to the program in Texas http://www.twogetherintexas.com/UI/HomePage.aspx
@S: I”ve done individual therapy and it was awesome, probably the best money I spent, so I can definitely see how that could be true for couples too.
Sad to say I’m also a product of divorce. My paren’t divorce when I was 15 and it was a complete shock. No one including me and my sister saw it coming. If anything was ever really wrong we never knew about it. Its really is the most amazing thing how a divorce can affect you as a kid, teen or even and adult. We really do learn bad habits from our paren’t divorces. I know I’m scarred to get married because of it. I love my FI and we have a great relationship but its not easy I don’t think any relationship is easy, but I guess thats the point if it was easy it wouldn’t be worth it.
Me and my FI are Catholic as well and we are getting married through the church. I’m getting ready to set up the weekend retreat. I hear thats the best way to go.
Originally I was the one who wanted to do pre-marital counseling and he was more againts it. Like most people therapy, counseling or whatever you want to call it is hard. You actually have to face your problems. Now after express that I really think this would be helpful to work out any kinks we have no and learn to communicate better. So he’s agreed and as long as I can come up with the money we’ll definatly bein in couple counseling
I think that premarital counseling is a very good idea, but FI and I are not partaking for a few reasons–it’s not required of us, for one thing, since we’re not marrying in a church, we don’t have the money, and we feel we are already addressing a lot of the issues that such counseling is designed to bring up. My parents are divorced (his aren’t) and I’ve had plenty of my own individual counseling before I met him… I really believe that if we are both always working to be our best selves and to respect each other, that’s the best anyone can do. We’ll get counseling together once either of those things stops happening, of course.
I did pre-marital counceling as a requirement for my Catholic wedding. I’d recommend it to anyone. DH and I discovered and talked out issues we didn’t even realize we had, but definitely would have come out later!
Chalk me up as another Catholic bride doing pre-marriage class/counseling because it’s required… but I think we would have anyway, or done some soon after marriage. I’m a child of divorce, so once I realized our relationship was getting serious, I buckled down and threw myself into books on relationships. It’s def. helped me deal with some of my issues– and helped him (with parents still together) see my fears, and also see that help is necessary; our marriage won’t be successful if we just stumbled along on our own. Best 2 books (warning: def. from a Christian perspective) were 5 Love Languages and Most Important Year in a Man’s Life/Most Important Year in a Woman’s Life. The 2nd one really made us see that even after 3 years, there’s still stuff we need to talk about and work through if our love is going to last a lifetime. Reading those books have put us in a mindset where we can make the most of the pre-marriage class (hopefully). We’re doing the once a week for 6 wks option to give us time to talk and let things sink in, whereas we thought the weekend option would make us feel rushed.
I was thinking about this today. Since we live so far from our venue, we haven’t met with our pastor yet. We will next month when we go to GA for a quick weekend trip. So I do not know if he will require us to go to marriage counseling. Like Fro Yo, I also do not have any examples of staple marriage in my life. My grandmother has been married four times, my mother three, and my father two (he is still married to his second wife). Also, all of my aunt’s and uncle’s on both sides have been divorced once with the exception of one. My fiance’s parents for divorced when he was too young to remember. His mom remarried and until he was 8 he thought his step dad was his real dad. When he was 8 his mom got a second divorce and then explained to him that he had another father, and that is when he met him. I think his dad has been divorced four times. So with all this negativity in our families, we plan on going to counseling whether it is mandatory or not.
Oh Fro-Yo, I feel ya! My parents got divorced after nearly 30 years of marriage, when I was only about three months into my relationship with my now husband. I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me, and that all my happy memories were tainted by the revelation that my parents were in fact very unhappy with their marriage throughout much of my otherwise happy childhood. It freak me the hell out that I had no idea what made a good relationship!
I’ve since come to realize that A LOT of people grow up with bad marriage examples (sad but true) whether their parents got divorced or not. And then I wonder whether what I got was really a bad example or a learning experience?
The greatest gift I got from my parents’ divorce was that it made me conscious of my relationship as a living, changing thing that needs to be nurtured and supported with togetherness all the time. The level of consciousness my husband and I have about what a significant responsibility marriage is made us feel confident in not doing counselling.
We are going to have pre-marital counseling. We are Christians and our Pastor is preparing the materials for us. A lot of couples we know are really encouraging us to get it because it is helpful to address any possible issues that may come up in our marriage. We may think we’re addressing it now, but it’s helpful that someone who is properly trained will be there with us. It addresses expectations, financial things, etc. We’re two different individuals becoming one, and I know until now til we die, we will continue to make adjustments with one another. A lot of couples who have been married for 10,20,30 years still go to some kind of counseling/retreat to continue working on their marriage. I am looking forward to this.
My parents are still married, but we’re doing pre-marital counseling. It’s a requirement to get married in my hometown church. I’m a little nervous about it, because my fiance is not very religious.
Great post Fro Yo! We are both from divorced families (even multiple divorces on my side, yikes), so we have really put a lot of thought into this. It’s one of the reasons we were together so long before getting engaged (4+ years), and we are very realistic about the hard work that a relationship takes. We recently decided that we would go to pre-maritial counseling, and we are starting next week. I think it is an important step when we are both bringing so much negative family history around marraige into our relationship.
My parents are divorced - and a mess! And Loverboy’s parents are together. I think I’ve learned a whole lot from having divorced parents even though I don’t remember them being together (I was 8 months old when they got divorced). And it is because of this that Loverboy and I have long, serious, exhausting talks about our future. We’ll most likely be doing premarital counseling and/or reading some books. It just seems like a good idea. Thanks for the post … it’s nice to know there are other women out there with my concerns … and that lady had no right to say that to you … but I commend you on your tactful way of dealing with her.
We are getting married in the Catholic church. Our church requires that we take do an “inventory,” which is sort of like a compatibility test, and sessions with a pre-marital counselor to go over the results.
Our priest also gives couples the option to attend Engaged Encounter, which we just did this past weekend. EE is a retreat that takes place over a weekend (Fri night to Sun afternoon). I would highly recommend EE to any engaged couple, even those that are not Catholic. Engaged Encounter is an international program, and they have classes all over the country!
It gave us a forum and the time to talk about alot of different issues that I think everyone should talk about before marriage. It also gave us a chance to re-affirm our love for each other and be really mushy. One of the last activities you do is write a betrothal letter to each other. It was incredibly romantic and emotional and for me, made me feel so connected and grateful for my dude.
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Mrs. Frozen Yogurt, Dallas Age and Occupation: 28, Special Projects Coordinator Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Equity Trader Engagement Date: March 19, 2009 Wedding Date: April 2010 Venue: Marie Gabrielle, Dallas About Me: I was born and raised in Texas, and have lived in several of the cities across the state, but I currently reside in Austin. I went to college in Boston and have a special place in my heart for the Northeast. I love reading, shopping, wine, reuniting with college friends that are scattered across the country, reality TV, trying out new recipes, and attempting all the DIY projects that come along with wedding planning. I'm a "bleeding heart, save the world type" and thankfully my job allows me to work on legislation and policy to help out those in need. I met Mr. Frozen Yogurt in a bar, though he doesn't even drink! And now we are planning a modern yet vintage wedding in Dallas while dealing with the trials and tribulations of first time homeownership.
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