When To Start PreMarital Counseling?

When to start premarital counseling?: You may be wondering if there is a specific time that someone will need premarital counseling. You are right at your thinking, there is a specific time that you are supposed to begin to plan for your marital life and which is very important. By now, if you have read our previous articles on premarital counseling, this current one should be easier to assimilate for the proper understanding of the subject matter. Premarital counseling has been a very important practice by couples which has always been a reason for the success of many marriages around the world.

It is advisable that partners that are willing or planning to marry enroll for this tough and strict session called premarital counseling so that it will serve as a means for them to understand each other’s needs and expectations properly before marriage.

The question comes when is it proper to go for premarital counseling?

Premarital counseling should begin anytime soon

Don’t even make that mistake of delaying it at all. Since both of you have known your stand, why should you delay it? You should both start going for relationship therapy regularly so that you both can engage in a series of conversations, scrutiny and thorough advice by the counselor. This will not only help you understand each other better but will also expose you to many skills about how to maintain a successful relationship.

However, some people used to delay their premarital counseling until 2 to 3weeks before marriage

I don’t actually support this idea since this marriage involves humans – complicated creatures. It deserves to be given a very long period of time as an exercise. Give strong attention to premarital counseling as you can so that at the long run will help you build a solid foundation in your relationship and marriage.

Who should conduct premarital counseling?

This is a big question to answer. Who should conduct premarital counseling for unmarried couples? Depending on your belief and conviction, only two people are recommended by me to conduct premarital counseling for you—a renowned religious scholar and a professional counselor or therapist that is licensed in that area. Remember, this involves marriage issue, therefore must be taken with all available fuel of seriousness in your heart.  This is the reason why you must be selective in choosing who should conduct your premarital counseling for you.  Remember, premarital counseling comes with lots of advantages especially when done earlier, so in other to avoid wasting your time investment, ensure that you carefully choose a professional counselor.

What are the advantages of early premarital counseling?

These are the advantages of starting premarital counseling early:

• It builds communication proficiency between partners: imagine that your wedding will be taking place next year and you begin your premarital counseling on the first day of the year. This will give you lots of advantages, as you both will engage in a series of conversations that exposes many things about you to each other. You will discover each other’ weakness, expectations, your wants, your needs, and how to plan ahead financially before marriage. You will also quickly detect dangers which when not tackle as quickly as possible will cause future conflict in your marriage. There are many benefits in this part of the advantage, it teaches you to be a good listener and a skillful communicator. When you are too used to people, you easily take them for granted, but if both of you are engaged in a communication professionally designed for the purpose of enhancing the love between you and your partner through effective communication, it is a right choice to choose.
• You can observe the future together: through the help of the counselor who will help you discover many things about each other, you will find the advantage of how to plan your future life together. This is because, after a series of questions and answers sessions, and the feedback is presented for each of you to compare, you will have discovered whether you may be able to cope in a relationship with your partner. If both of you decide to stay together, then, it must be that you have resolved to apply the knowledge acquired during the premarital session to set up a plan for the future. The future plan could be health-wise, financial, children, school fee, food, shelter and so on.
• You will learn the wisdom of your counselor about marriage: everything on this earth cannot be done well without some set of principles carefully and sincerely followed. Marriage is an Institution that needs two mature minds to make things work. As partners, you must be willing to learn every step from your counselor on how to maintain a successful marriage. This is also a very important advantage for those who start their marriage therapy early.
• You will learn many things about each other: it is better you start knowing each other’s good and bad side as early as possible so that you can decide what the next step to take. Your differences will be discovered during premarital counseling. Sometimes, health issue like childbearing may be the problem, if your male partner gets to know about it as quickly as possible, can decide whether to stay with you or move on in life. It is not a big deal compare to the violence it may cause if he gets to know later in a marriage that you can’t conceive and you didn’t tell him.
• It Helps Shapes the Relationship: as couples, you may be too busy in life and may not have the time to even learn about how to manage a marriage together. If you apply for a premarital counseling class, you will be exposed to many wisdom and principles that will help your marriage to stay in good shape all the time. Your marriage will be based upon a specific foundation that navigates it in the right direction. Your expectations for each other will have been defined. Issues of anger and annoyance will have been resolved through a series of a mind-training exercise that you have gone through, therefore, this will reduce the future conflict that may occur in the future.
• It gives you the Opportunities to express your Feelings: you and I have our feelings, we have things we believe in. during premarital counseling, these differences will be addressed and the professional strategies needed to tackle them will be taught by the counselor in charge of your counseling.

What are those Questions to ask before you get married?

I have to realize that there is what is called self premarital questions. These questions should be asked and answered and the only way to do those so professionally is to seek the advice of a counselor. Here are the questions you should ask before you get married:

• Why do you want to get married? You must know the reason why you want to get married. It should be because you are fully prepared for it but not because people are pressurizing you to do so. If you marry while you are not yet prepared, such action may come back to hunt your feeling in the long run. This is the reason why this question is very necessary to be answered with sincerity before you marry.
• What is your plan concerning children? Some couples are always concerned about the number of children they wish to have. If you are the type, and you are considering your country economic situation to determine the number of children you may need at a specific period of time, it is recommended that you should have decided that before you marry.
• Will you be able to tolerate your partner’s attitude? This is another question you must answer in order to avoid unnecessary conflict in the future. During premarital counseling, you must have found a solution to this kind of problem; therefore it will no longer be a threat to your marriage.
• Are you in any debt or not? You may not want to marry while you know debt will not allow you to enjoy it. You must be willing to be free of debt before getting married. Remember, debt will not allow you to get rich and focus, you will leave in fear every day. An unfocused marriage cannot in any way work.
• How are we going to handle the household chores? You must decide between both of you, how you are going to handle the household chores. Some family used to divide the family responsibilities into two; the father can take the major part of the financial responsibilities while the mother takes care of the household routines such as cooking and bathing the children. If your partner is feminist or a career woman, it will be better you discuss appropriately how you should handle the home chores based on the level of your modern opinion which is opposite to my previous suggestion about how you can manage the household activities.

The Samples of Premarital Counseling to be expected:

Premarital counseling involves several categories of which some of them are listed below:

• Religion
• Emotion
• Career
• Communication
• Household
• Sex and Intimacy matters
• Kids
• Family and friends roles
• Finance matters.

Questions under Emotion

1. Why are we getting married soon?
2. Are we really compatible with each other?
3. Do you think marriage will enhance our maturity level?
4. We will be happier getting married than being unmarried?
5. What is the purpose of marriage?
6. If we get married, how shall we cope with each other?
7. How do we manage our anger problem if we get married?
8. Will I be able to tolerate the lady I am about to get married to?
9. How do you want us to live our lives in our marital home?
10. What do you think we should do to improve our marriage if we eventually get married?

Questions under Religion

1. What is my partner’s religious belief?
2. Can a person from her religion marry someone from my religion?
3. Hope there will be no clash in our home due to religion difference?

Questions under Communication

1. How do we solve problems together?
2. Do we communicate our difference together to find a solution for it?
3. How do we communicate to handle a conflict with maturity?
4. Can we joke with each other once in a while at a specific time and period?
5. Can we talk matters of the family with outsiders?
6. Should we raise our voices while fighting?

Questions under Career

1. How will our career after our marriage?
2. Shall I be able to allow my wife to go out for job leaving kids at home?
3. What kind of job is my would-be husband engaged?
4. What can we do to reach our common goals about a career?

Questions under Finance

1. Hope there is no debt, on the ground’ what about savings and investments?
2. How are we going to handle the household bills together?
3. What is the food budget for our daily diet?
4. How do we design our spending habit and then stick to it?

Questions under Sex and Intimacy matters

1. How am I my going to ensure the satisfaction of my partner’s sexual urge?
2. Are my physically fit to satisfy a woman in a sexual mood?
3. How comfortable am I talking about my sexual needs and wants?
4. Are we romantic enough for each other or we still need to be more satisfied than we are?

Questions under Family and Friends

1. What amount of our time should we give our family members and friends?
2. When often should we pay our family or friends a visit?
3. What is the role of our family and friends in our marriage?
4. Should we set a limit to how any one of our family or friends can participate in our marital issues?

Questions under Kids

1. How many kids do you think we should produce?
2. What kind of school will the children attend’ private or public?
3. How do we plan for the kids’ school fees?

Questions under Household

1. How should we manage the household chores?
2. Should we in any way get a house help for the children?
3. What if we train our children by ourselves?

We have written previous articles on premarital counseling, for this reason, you may like to explore them here.