Why Pre-Marital Counseling is Worth the Investment

Wedding are expensive. According to ValuePenguin, the average cost of a wedding in Orange County, CA in 2017 is $36,745 with most of those funds being spent on the venue, the ring, music, and photography.  Of course couples want to spend the money to make sure their day is memorable and their photographs accurately capture those memories, but while these things make for a beautiful and enjoyable wedding for their loved ones, some couples are forgetting to invest in the marriage. 

There are a few reasons why the wedding becomes the focus and takes away from the relationship itself. First of all, weddings are usually a huge event with many people. It's easy to become hyper-fixated on getting all the little details just right when you are wanting your special day to be memorable for friends and family. Secondly, when couples decide to get married, usually their relationship is in a pretty good place, otherwise why would they decide to spend forever together? Lastly, budgeting for a wedding can be stressful and overwhelming and when the focus is on saving and trying to stay within budget, there isn't much room for other "extras," especially ones that don't seem to be require immediate attention. 

With these factors considered, why should a couple invest in pre-marital counseling? After all, shouldn't the next step be the honeymoon, buying a house, or saving for children? Isn't it easier to deal with marital issues as they come up later down the road? The newlywed stage is supposed to be happy and blissful, who wants to bring up the tough stuff? Here are a few of the many reasons that pre-marital counseling is worth investing in before you tie the knot:

• Sets the foundation for your marriage. Engaging in pre-marital counseling with your partner will set the tone for a partnership of working together to tackle things as a team. A spouse is a teammate that you will have forever, counseling will help you learn the tools to keep you working together through the ups and downs in a relationship, rather than becoming adversaries when things get tough. 
• Allows you to tackle issues before they become insurmountable problems. There are little things in every relationship that can be tricky. When you are engaged it can be easy to overlook those things or assume they will change once you get married, this usually isn't the case. Bringing up these difficulties early on, in a safe place, can help you effectively address them before the problem becomes bigger and leads to marital conflict later on in the relationship.
• Helps you think about things that may come up down the road. Many couples discuss topics of children, parenting, marital roles, religion before getting engaged, but often they have not been adequately addressed or the reality of your differences hasn't yet caused issues because until now, you've been living separate lives. Pre-marital counseling will allow you the time and space to devote to really discussing your similarities and differences in these areas and figuring out how to navigate them together later on down the road when things inevitably get more complicated. 
• Helps set healthy expectations and boundaries. Most people grow up with some sort of idea of what marriage is like, this often comes from what we saw in our parents growing up and deciding what we'd like to do the same, or differently.  There are no two people who will have the exact same expectations of what this will look like and often these things don't come up until you hit a bump in the road. Identifying your different expectations early on will help set you up for a more successful partnership and give you the opportunity to build your own traditions, routines, and boundaries as a couple.
• Encourages you to set short and long term relationship goals. Getting married may seem like an end point that you have been looking forward to in your relationship, but it really should be looked at as the beginning of a new life together, a life that includes growth, change, new accomplishments, and goals. Sitting down together with a counselor will give you the opportunity to develop and discuss your short and long term goals and how you want to work together toward meeting those new and exciting milestones in your life with your spouse.

The benefits of pre-marital counseling can last long into a marriage, much longer than a great DJ or the perfect wedding venue and comes at a much lower financial cost. If you are planning on getting married and are interested in learning more about pre-marital counseling options, I'd love to speak with you further. 714-386-9809.