Hello! My girlfriend and I are about to embark on a life together, though the wedding is still a ways off.
I was raised religious, and always valued the pre-marriage counseling offered to couples in the church. This kind of counseling doesn’t appear to be a thing outside of churches/mosques/temples/etc (At least not without spending a couple thousand dollars on a licensed couples therapist).
The closest I’ve found is “Financial Peace University” by Dave Ramsey, but while the course maybe not officially be religious, it’s almost exclusively taught inside protestant churches by clergy or church members. Plus I feel Dave Ramsey’s finance stuff is somewhat non-conventional, and is solely devoted to strategies that don’t interest our creditcard carrying selves.
Book recommendations are of course welcome, but the main goal is to find a course, with a lesson plan, preferably lead by an in-person instructor.
Does anyone on reddit have any opinions or advice?
Edit: Two prominent suggestions are the Gottman Institute, and Prologue. Gottman seems excellent, though pre-marital stuff is a bit hard to find.
Prologue seems to be a free well recommended resource for engaged couples from the guy who coined “love languages”. Has anyone tried it? After set-up, it appears to be religious (you must either register as the husband or the wife, so no gays allowed).
12 comments
The not Christian term for this is couples counseling and many licensed therapists do this type of work. My advice would be to reach out to a few therapists in your area and make an inquiry if they do it or know someone who does.
Gottman Institute, they aren’t religious (directly) and more scientific based
Don’t fool yourself, anything Dave Ramsey is religious (his business is technically organized as a church) and it’s meant to separate you from your money.
If you’re wanting quality instruction from an in-person therapist, you’ll have to pay. There are plenty of therapists out there that can assist in this.
It’s a really good idea. When my ex-wife and I got married we had to do like 10 obligatory sessions with the minister and all we talked about were honor and committment. And those are wonderful concepts and I’m all for it. But then you get to see what no-fault divorce looks like and realize it’s pretty easy to end things.
It would have helped us both to have fewer sessions with the minister and a few more practical sessions.
1 – Meet with a divorce attorney. “Family law” isn’t the most lucrative field and most divorce attorneys also do mediation work were they are expressly not representing either the husband or the wife: Just explaining how the laws work and what are reasonable solutions. Call a few of them and pay for an hour and just let them talk about basic misconceptions they see young people having in their first marriages. I mean, getting married without knowing the law is like driving without knowing the speed limit and then complaining when you get pulled over. Take a couple of common things you see on subs like this: money, sex, cheating, etc. I mean, most states don’t give a rats ass about cheating……much less whether is was a physical affair or the dreaded emotional affair. The bottom line is most states let you give get divorced without warning and the affair has no real impact on anything. I mean, you can be pissed off, but it’s usually not important to the money or custody of the kids. Nor does a dead bedroom matter. It’s not like someone pays more/less alimony depending on how much sex was happening. Or a stay-at-home parent doesn’t usually have the outcome they might have expected: They’ll still probably do 50/50 custody and just be broke…….so does that decision to “stay home” because their paycheck would have all gone to childcare make as much sense in hindsight?
Anyway….
2 – Get with a relationship counselor. My advice is to read some books with your GF and fine an author you like. One where you both sorta like how they see the world. Then reach out to that author and see if they do sessions and training. Usually doing a session with the actual author is expensive, but they often do sessions to train other counselors and can give you names in your area. These counselors aren’t miracle workers, but just having a protected hour of time where it’s very hard for anyone to interrupt or gaslight or just walk away from a discussion they don’t care for is pretty golden. Plus, it’s not a bad idea to see a person like this annually anyway. It’s like doing a breast or testicular exam: Find any lumps and cancers before they explode to the rest of the body.
But, tbh…..the best thing to know going into marriage is we can huff and puff about committment all we want, but in the US……it’s an at-will, no-fault, unilateral world. And it’s mostly 50/50 of the money and the kids. So “we” can bitch and moan about how unfairly we’re being treated, but if our spouse doesn’t like it anymore……they can take their half and leave. And if they don’t want to settle for half, they better find some way to live with us.
I really didn’t know this stuff in my first marriage. It really wouldn’t have mattered much if we did because we have some significant differences. But in my second marriage I found a much more compatible person. I also take that woman pretty seriously if she has a beef with me, our situation or my behavior. I mean……she left the “father of her children” because she thought he was lame and rude. I’m just a second husband. That’s just a glorified boy toy and a shared bank account, right? So, if she could dump someone she stupidly thought would be the one true love of her life AND plunge into joint custody of her kids, how much bullshit do you think she’d tolerate from me??? Answer – Not a lot. Heck, she probably still has her divorce attorney in her contacts and she knows the rules now. So do I! I’m just saying that it keeps things honest knowing that someone isn’t stuck with you “for better or for worse”. And it’s not as scary and bad as it sounds. It’s actually kinda rewarding to be with someone would has the emotional ability to dump you…..but doesn’t because they’d rather stay.
Yikes, stay away from anything Dave Ramsey. He’s the financial equivalent of AA, good for people who can’t control their spending/debt but useless for anyone else. I would *never* take his advice on personal relationships.
When looking for an officiant (non-church affliated), we found that many accredited officiants are able to provide pre-marriage counseling as a part the service package. (My state gives you a discount on your marriage certificate if you complete a pre-marriage-counseling course)
It might be a few hundred bucks in total, but you get both the counseling AND the officiant if you decide to not go with a church wedding.
If your state/region does something similar, you might be able to get a list of accredited pre-marriage counselors from your local Marriage License Office. Otherwise use something like WeddingWire to find officiants (and you can add the filter to find those who do pre-marriage counseling):
[WeddingWire](https://www.weddingwire.com/shared/search?id_grupo=2&id_sector=205&id_region=426&id_provincia=10002&showmode=mosaic&page=1&userSearch=1&faqs%5B%5D=900201238)
(You might even be able to find someone who will do the counseling *without* the officiating part, you’ll just have to look into it)
My husband and I used [this online course](https://marriage365.com/product/happily-ever-after-online-premarital-course/). It covered 6 major areas and included a video and discussion questions for each. I believe the couple is Christian, but it wasn’t prominent in the course.
Not everything applied to us (their finances in their early years of marriage were wild – we already had much better money management) but I would say it was worth it for us
We were in couples counseling anyways and then asked our therapist to issue us a “premarital counseling” thing. She looked at some criteria, determined that her services to us fit that criteria, and bing-bang-boom she made us a certificate and we got the discount.
We did pre wedding counseling at a therapy center. They had pre marriage counseling packages. They did a religious and none religious ones and they were done by licensed counselors/therapists.
They were 6 or 8 sessions long. Each session was a topic. Financial, kids, sex, etc. We took the religious one, not sure why looking back on it lol, neither of us are religious, but faith was only the topic of one session and never came up in our other sessions, probably bc like I said we aren’t religious and so our conversations did go that way.
Basically look up the general things/topics you should talk about before marriage and each had a session. We had “homework ” before each session that was a worksheet with questions. That questionnaire was used as a sort of guide for the session.
I think it was worth it. I can’t say anything big/new came out of it for us. But we enjoyed talking through things again with a professional and it was good to double check things if you will. Also it allowed us both to agree that should we need it in the future, utilizing a trained professional to help us sort out things would definitely be on the table.
I do remember specifically the therapist asking us something and my husband and I looked at each other and said “do people make it this far and haven’t talked about that yet?” And the therapist was like “yeah, you would be surprised…”
So I think maybe look for couples counseling in your area and call around. I am sure there is someone with some packages available.
I can only speak to Catholic pre marriage counseling, but ours was crap and a total waste of time. We only got married in a Catholic church to make my parents happy, but it was much more pushing nonsense about not using birth control that actually works than anything useful. It’s not given by trained therapists who know what they are doing.
We have been happily married for decades, but empty nest and retirement have lead me to pick up a few of Gottman’s books. We want our marriage to be even better than it was because transitions bring challenges and it’s just the two of us going forward.
We’re starting to work through some of the exercises together and I think the ones that apply are super good for us now and all of them would have been terrific just starting out. I can see how our communication is improving and we are treating each other even better.
Whatever it costs, it is worth it. My wife and I did 19 weeks of premarital counseling with our priest over 33 years ago. We learned so much not only about us as people, but about being a couple. We were partnered with some longtime couples in our parish and given coaching from them in addition to the teachings of the priest. 33 years in Sept and more in love with my wife now than I was when we married. The skills are priceless! We take on a marital strengthening project each year. The Gottman book is excellent but not sure how applicable it would be before marriage. I DO encourage it at some point. If you either of you have mental health coverage at work, the therapist SHOULD be covered. What you talk about is up to you.
You just go to a marriage counselor.
My husband and I are gay and just went with a private therapist. Its really worth it. Now a days you can find relatively cheap options by phone/Zoom too.
It shouldnt cost that much but will still cost something but its an investment in your marriage so I think worth the cost