This is not an exaggeration.
As I mentioned before, we are having a Moravian pastor marry us. She is the pastor at my childhood church in Wilmington, NC. The thing is, she is relatively new there…so she was not the pastor when I was growing up, and I have only met her a handful of times. When we started our pre-marital counseling, there was a lot of getting to know each other that needed to be done.
But before we met face to face with our minister, she asked Mr. Magic and I each to take an online survey through a program called Prepare-Enrich. I was worried it was going to be really intensive and open-ended, essay style questions, but it was actually relatively quick and painless with a Likert scale format. Here’s a shot from their “About” page:
Image from Prepare-Enrich
I immediately took my quiz and then nagged Mr. Magic to take his. After that, we set up our first official pre-martial counseling session with our Minister, hereafter known as the Minister of Magic Wedding, or just Minister of Magic, primarily because there just can’t be enough Harry Potter references in my life. She seems much more competent than this Minister of Magic…
So. Pre-wedding counselling. We came, we talked, we conquered.
Image via GraphJam
No, no, it certainly wasn’t as cynical as that image suggests, I promise!
The weekend was run through Engaged Encounter, which is a Catholic organisation that runs these courses all over the world. There were about 20 couples present, so it was quite a big group. The overall gist of the weekend went something like this:
They say that you should spend as much time preparing for marriage as you do planning for your wedding. Well. I don’t know how realistic that is. We spent two hours at our venue today ironing out some details, and I think if we had followed that conversation with two hours of marriage prep talk, I would have thrown up in my mouth a little bit. Not exactly charming, but true.
I do think some degree of marriage prep is important. At first, I thought we’d just follow some formula. We’d find a therapist, we’d go to counseling, we’d get a little certificate, we’d live happily ever after. But the more I researched it, the more I realized that really wasn’t for us. Mr. Lion is a very private person, and I had a hard time imagining him opening up to a stranger!
As with many of our wedding projects, we chose to go the DIY route. We started to look at books on premarital counseling, when we stumbled upon this:
Sigh.
It is going to be tough writing this post, but I know I must for you. I do not want to turn any burgeoning Catholics off by talking about our Pre-Cana experience but I would be doing you an injustice by saying that it was peaches and cream.
If you are going to marry in the Catholic church, a couple must go through Pre-Cana classes. It is a group couples’ counseling session that goes over such topics as communication, finances, future goals, sex (yep, it’s in there), etc.
I have to make an aside in order for you to fully understand why our experience turned unpleasant. You see, as much a Catholic as I am, I fully believe in equality. I’ve met Matthew Shepard’s mother, I helped install the LGTB club in high school. I will not tolerate the perpetuation of hate. The bible has a whole lot to say about treating everyone with respect, and far be it for me to judge anyone else for the way they were born. Zeb feels the same way.
With that in mind, our two days started out pleasantly.
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It’s funny—when people ask me how the wedding planning is going, it’s obvious who hasn’t been through it before. They say “How’s wedding planning? Are you having so much fun?”
Those who have been through it usually say something like, “Ugh, wedding planning. You hanging in there?” They get it. Wedding planning is stressful.
I’m surprised that more brides-to-be don’t lose their freakin’ minds! I mean, here we are, spending thousands of dollars on one day—one day on which we will be heavily scrutinized and judged. Is the dress pretty enough? Is the food good enough? The reception fun enough? Will anyone be offended by our guest list? Our ceremony? Our seating charts? And why are we even GETTING stressed about all of that stuff when all that should matter is that we’re marring our beloved?
The stress isn’t going away. But there are ways that we can deal with it. Everyone has their own methods of stress relief, and I’m going to share some of mine.
Over the past few weeks, I must’ve typed up and then deleted five or six versions of this particular blog post. I’ve had a really hard time putting what I want to say into words. So I beg you to bear with me, readers!
Anyway, this post isn’t about that “D word,” but it’s about another D word that up until recently was considered almost as taboo: depression.
I’ve suffered from depression for almost as long as I can remember, although I wasn’t quite aware of it until I was in my late 20s. As a child and teen, my mother would always give me a hard time for being miserable, or negative, or pessimistic, or for crying for what she thought was a stupid reason. I wasn’t miserable all the time, but I was miserable enough of the time. And by the time I hit my teens, I began to worry that she was right. Was I just a big drag?
I grew up. I finished college, moved out, got a job. I had my good days and bad days. I thought this was totally normal.
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Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Wiggles, rewind! (Can anybody name that movie?)
Back in May, Mr. E and I headed to Hot Springs, Arkansas for the first of three meetings with the family pastor who will be officiating our wedding. Since my parents have never been to the bed and breakfast run by our former pastor and her husband, they joined us for the drive up there so they could get some R&R for a couple of days.
We sat down with Kristie for a couple of hours and talked about everything from the wedding basics, money, and values to religion, vows, and the book Five Love Languages. It was truly amazing to really think about ourselves and what we want in our marriage, aside from the one day of celebration. I won’t lie—some of the questions were a little harder to answer then others, but Kristie was awesome and asked more questions to help us think deeper and truly answer questions such as what the other person is passionate about and what our personal goals are.
There were some homework assignments to take away, which included:
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Posting about our Moo card invitations got me thinking about the weekend Mr Pretzel and I spent with cows, goats, chickens, and oh, about 25 other engaged couples. Strange how my brain works, but moo cards brought back memories of cows, an emu, and a donkey named Rusty.
(Source)
I’m talking about our Catholic Engagement Encounter Retreat. Marriage preparation for those marrying in the Catholic Church is standard. What the marriage preparation looks like will vary from Parish to Parish, in our Parish we had three items to complete.
So, as much as I love wedding planning, I also love marriage planning. And one of the things Mr. O and I have been doing to plan for our marriage is attending couples’ counseling. I have always thought that going to counseling was a good, proactive, helpful thing to do. Before our pre-marital therapy sessions, I hadn’t ever been to see a therapist myself, but I knew how well it worked for people in my life who wanted to work through some stuff. Also, in my career, I interact with a lot of social workers and mental health clinicians, and I see firsthand the good work that they do. So, I felt very positively about the benefits of counseling… but the thing was, I had no idea how counseling actually worked. I basically imagined it like taking a multivitamin. Take this pill, and through some kind of magical body chemistry process, you get healthier.
And then Mr. Octopus and I started going to counseling, and I realized I had been missing a key aspect of the process:
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Over the past weekend, Mr. Sew and I decided to take a small respite from planning to focus on our relationship. It wasn’t easy to turn off the wedding-machine, especially now that there’s only a few months left, but I think it was a really healthy thing for us.
We attended a marriage conference by Family Life, called “Weekend to Remember” down in Santa Clara (although they also have them all over the rest of the nation!). It covered many topics over the three days of classes, from conflict resolution to parenting to sex and everything in between. There were even a few sessions just for us pre-married folk. And of the 500 people that attended, there were couples from every phase of life: from not-yet-engaged to over-fifty-years-married.
I love the smell of a good convention hall.
Mr. Pudding and I completed our Pre-Cana classes this Sunday. We opted not to do the weekend long “Engaged Encounter”, and went to classes on Thursdays and Sundays for two weeks instead. Although we were both a little hesitant about the classes (Mr. P in particular), we actually thought them to be quite enjoyable.
Our sessions were mostly centered around group discussions. They were monitored by five married couples who took us through the material by sharing their personal experiences. We were often asked to share our thoughts with a small group, and than with the whole class. The questions up for discussion ranged from “what values do you and your partner have in common” and “how will you ensure that your marriage is a spiritually healthy one” to “how comfortable are you discussing sexuality with your partner”.
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.
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Mr. Bruschetta and I attended our church’s Pre-Cana marriage preparation weekend six months ago. At the time, our wedding still seemed so far off. Most of the projects and tasks that are currently in the forefront of my mind (and even posted up on our wall) were merely half-formed ideas. At the time, I was blissfully ignorant (thinking only that everything will fall into place somehow) and completely content.
While I don’t want to downplay the importance of the various talks — on subjects ranging from money to sexuality to religion — married couples shared with us that weekend, I will admit that, for us, one of the most valuable exercises was the icebreaker that kicked off the weekend.
Each person was asked to select his/her future spouse’s most endearing quality. What is that one attribute of your husband- or wife-to-be that, at this exact moment, sums up what you love about him or her? We were informed that this characteristic can and will change frequently — at any given time, there are a number of aspects jockeying for the top spot — and encouraged to continue engaging in this activity after the weekend concluded.
Being engaged is about so much more than just wedding planning. Yes, wedding planning is a very big part, but if that becomes a the sole focus I think you miss a big part of the process. The change from dating to marriage is a big one.
When Mr. Ducky and I got engaged we knew we wanted a longer engagement. Part of that was because of grad school and planning, but also because we really wanted to invest in our relationship and prepare ourselves for marriage. It should come as no surprise for those of you that know my background that we wanted to go to couples’ counseling or premarital therapy. After all, if I’m going to be a marriage and family therapist I better know what if feels like to be the one “on the couch”.
Instead of taking a class or going to a pastor, we decided to go see a licensed marriage and family therapist. Not that the other options are bad, they just weren’t right for us. I think any preparation that you do before marriage is great and can be so beneficial for the relationship. Many friends have asked us why went this particular route, so I thought it might be helpful to explain why we really wanted to have our own private sessions with a therapist or psychologist.
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Last evening was a part of a hectic week, as we had our first meeting/counseling session with the minister who will be marrying us.
I have always been a believer in the idea of pre-marital counseling. I guess I just believe that it’s important to talk as much as possible about your ideas, beliefs, and expectations not only of your future life, but also of marriage. Okay… I’m not completely Dr.Phil-like here. I also think deep down that I have to be prepared or over-prepared for almost everything that I do, and I guess marriage is one of those things.
Even before Mr. Swan and I got engaged, I made sure we went through this great set of questions from the NY Times as well as this book, 1001 Questions to Ask Before You Get Married.
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