Premarital Counseling

Are You Ready To Marry Your Partner?

As you plan your wedding, do you wonder if you are ready to commit the rest of your life to your partner? Do you question whether your partner is the right spouse for you? Maybe you know you love your partner, but it’s possible that a few hot-button issues are making you question your engagement.

Perhaps you’ve been having more frequent arguments, and one or both of you feel blamed, neglected or unable to please the other. Do feel like everything is fine, but know you tend to avoid problems in your relationship, which makes you question if you can make it as a couple in the long-term?

Are you ready to resolve relationship issues and feel confident moving forward with your marriage?

Whether your relationship is relatively new or you have been dating for years, while navigating the stress of planning a wedding, it’s not unusual for couples to question the strength of their love and commitment. Certain patterns in your relationship may have begun to bother you both. With your wedding approaching, this can be troublesome.

You may wonder if your partner is truly committed, if the both of you have enough in common for a long-lasting marriage or if you are going to be happy together for the rest of your lives.

Alternately, as the idea of marriage becomes more of a reality, you and your partner may be focused on planning your wedding and attribute your recent arguments and hurtful behavior to solely wedding stress.

Or, maybe you have the nagging feeling that you and your partner might have neglected to learn certain important things about each other’s hopes, values and life goals. You might be wondering if you’ve done all you can to prepare for a fulfilling, loving and lasting marriage.

Premarital Issues Are Very Common

Even though you and your partner love each other, it is common for couples to experience increased conflict as they prepare to spend the rest of their lives together. Joining any two people together for life is not easy.

You and your partner are two different people, with two different perspectives on life, love, family, morals, values, finances, religion and the like. You both come from different backgrounds and may have conflicting views about what marriage looks like, which can cause arguments and tension.

Maybe only one of you wants kids, or one of you spends money more frequently than the other. It might be that one of you prefers to confront conflict and the other avoids conflict. Or, perhaps one of you likes to spend quality time in large groups doing adventurous activities while the other enjoys quiet evenings at home. Whatever the differences between you two, if essential topics are not explored and discussed, they can create distance and bitterness in the future of your marriage.

Many couples believe that therapy is their last option, seeing it as useful only if their relationship is significantly struggling and on the verge of divorce. However, taking preventative steps and seeking professional pre-marriage counseling now can help you feel confident that your relationship will be resilient throughout time.

Premarital Counseling Can Strengthen Your Bond Before You Tie The Knot

I am a certified Prepare/Enrich Facilitator, which means I am trained specifically to help couples who plan on getting married. Through motivating, open and hopeful therapy sessions, you, your partner and I can identify your relationship’s strengths, areas that require more support and strategies to help you foster a marriage built on trust, communication, mutual respect and love.

Through a detailed Prepare/Enrich assessment, you, your partner and I will learn more about the ins and outs of your relationship. The assessment provides results that will invite an open and honest conversation about the temperature of your relationship now and where it is headed. In premarital therapy sessions, we will collaborate to work through conflict, set goals and practice solutions for a strong, long-lasting and emotionally sustainable marriage.

As a couple and family therapist who is specifically trained, educated and experienced in couples therapy, I can also use our therapy sessions to help you and your partner pinpoint negative patterns of interaction and miscommunication that can create emotional distance over time.

With compassion and understanding, I will teach you and your partner how to prevent these destructive patterns from continuing into marriage.

Using emotionally-focused, solutions oriented and strengths-based strategies and tools, I can offer you and your partner a real advantage as you begin your marriage. By taking these preventative measures now to build upon your couple strengths, practice solutions to relationship red flags and secure your bond with your partner, you can watch your marriage flourish against all odds.

In addition, premarital counseling does not take long to complete. It generally lasts about five sessions before couples feel confident moving forward with their marriage commitment. Research reveals that couples who complete the PREPARE/ENRICH therapy program prior to marriage can reduce their chances of divorce by as much as 30 percent.

I see myself as a successful statistic. As a wife, I continue to use these premarital therapy strategies in my marriage. Through my positive experience, I have developed a passion for helping couples learn how to reinforce their bond and strengthen the areas in their relationship that need more support before marriage.

With a little help and a willingness to address worries, challenge patterns and learn effective communication skills, you and your partner can deepen your connection and set yourselves and your marriage up for sustained, future success.

You may think your relationship needs a tune-up before marriage, but still have a few questions and concerns…

We are unsure if our relationship issues will actually become a problem in the future. Maybe it’s just stress or pre-wedding anxiety.

You and your partner are in love, and doing proactive work can allow you both to become an even stronger team now and for the rest of your lives together.

Struggling married couples who have either avoided their problems or spent some time using failing solutions for their relationship issues often find themselves resenting their partners and feeling at their wit’s end, ready to leave the relationship. Sometimes, partners engage in an affair or get divorced because they feel their marriage is beyond repair. If you and your partner plan to have a long and successful marriage, pre-marriage counseling can give you a huge advantage before small things that may seem irrelevant now become big problems later.

Our relationship is seriously struggling. Can premarital counseling still help us?

Perhaps you or your partner have a baby from a previous relationship, families who disapprove of your relationship, a history of being on-and-off again or a previous infidelity causing more problems for you as you get ready for marriage. No matter how difficult your relationship seems now, I typically recommend starting with premarital counseling sessions if you are planning on marrying your partner. The effective assessment tool I use can help you get a comprehensive look at the strengths in your relationship now and uncover the areas that need attention and help prior to tying the knot.

It’s possible that you and your partner are so focused on big, negative issues that you overlook the positive ways you are sustaining your relationship now. About five sessions can help you and your partner better understand how you can use your strengths to foster mutual growth and healing. You can begin to strengthen your bond as you learn successful strategies to combat negative persisting patterns. If you and your partner feel like your relationship still needs work after our premarital sessions, we can begin couples therapy, which will dig deeper into these major problems.

I am afraid premarital therapy might create problems in our relationship that don’t exist now.

If you are unaware of the warning signs that lead toward divorce and fear that you and your partner are unknowingly displaying them, or if you have been avoiding some of your relationship problems in hopes things will get better, it may be frightening to have problematic issues in your relationship reveal themselves.

If you believe the issues are hopeless, you may even think that discussing them could ruin your relationship. But, the warning signs and big issues you may have been avoiding will emerge in your relationship sometime, and when that time comes, would you rather be prepared to handle those issues or unequipped and overwhelmed?

With my trusted strategies and techniques, I can help you and your partner become fully aware to problematic issues in your relationship, how to manage them and how to nurture your relationship for the long haul. Whether you think you don’t have problems now or are avoiding the issues below the surface, relationship challenges are inevitable. No relationship is perfect, not even yours.

Counseling can help you prepare to face challenges as a team, while giving you the skills and insight you need to maintain a secure bond. Think of it as if you were ripping off a bandage – addressing these issues now can save a lot of pain in the future.

Your Happy Marriage Awaits

If you and your partner are ready to explore your relationship strengths, address solutions, prevent negative patterns and move forward with a fortified marriage, I invite you to schedule a FREE 30-minute consultation. We can discuss your specific needs and answer any questions you have about premarital counseling and how it can be helpful for you and your future long-lasting marriage.

Ready To Spend The Rest Of Your Life With That Special Someone?

Ensure you're on your way toward having a loving, supportive, and honest marriage with this free ebook: Are You And Your Partner Ready To Tie The Knot? 13 Questions To Ask Yourself