Counseling for Married Couples Before Ceremony Saves Relationships
Marriage and Family Success is Job One – Couples courting one another for a long time are more likely to have a successful marriage. Marriage advice found at seminars and retreats can save marital relationships.
Many marriages begin with a lovely couple, a beautiful ceremony, and some marriage advice from family and friends. Guests have to wonder if a relationship will last, and will the couple’s commitment endure under the pressures and challenges of everyday life since they meet each other on a random Chatroulette or offline. Some seem to think the way a couple handles courtship will determine the way the couple handles being married.
Some men may feel uncertainty in a relationship when they are part of a couple, but not committed to marriage.
An observer can learn a lot about the couple’s chances for a successful relationship from the way they act when they’re courting or dating. So discovering problems needs to be a natural part of the pre-marriage courtship.
Pre–Marriage Advice to Save Marriage
The length of a dating relationship or courtship has a positive effect on the marriage and family later on. For example, couples who dated for an average of 25 months resulted in marriages that lasted longer. The advice here seems to be to take longer in getting to know one another better before the marriage to make the marriage stronger later on when the relationship may already be strained.
Some will say a romantic courtship makes a stronger marriage. Even though a courtship is very romantic, it’s still no guarantee that the marriage will last forever. Huston seems to think that these highly romantic courtships do result in longer and stronger marriages, but may still eventually end in divorce. A man who feels smitten with his partner early on, and who becomes engaged sooner, will later be a husband who is more likely to stay in the marriage when things get rough.
Marriage Counseling Before Marriage
To many, the sensible approach has always been to get premarital counseling before getting married. The logic is that any potential problems are likely to show up and be dealt with beforehand. Huston argues that premarital problems are similar to a virus that “will surface in the marriage and erode the partners’ bond, making the relationship vulnerable.”
If this virus metaphor is true, then the rationale behind traditional marriage counseling before the couple begins their life together can have the potential to save marriages. It’s sort of like marital pre-screening for possible problems that might come up later down the line and become even more serious when combined with other stressful events in the life of a newly married couple.
Marriage Seminars for Husband and Wife
This need for discovering, identifying, and handling individual problems before a couple gets married is a sound idea. But what about the couple who has been married awhile, has had some issues, and now wants to fix the relationship? Both husband and wife already know they have problems, but they lack the necessary tools to solve those serious problems.
Marriage seminars might be just the thing for those married couples who need a serious relationship fix. Married couples who don’t get help can become hurt and resentful of their partners. Until the core problems are addressed, couples will continue to struggle with problems like broken trust, infidelity, and intimacy. Some couples who have attended a marriage seminar or retreat speak of changed lives and saved marriages.
Some of these seminars and retreats are defined as accelerated marriage seminars. In some relationships, the damage is so severe that healing of the marriage cannot take place without an immediate shot in the arm. These accelerated sessions speed up the healing processes and make room for healthy, positive growth and repair. Couples report coming away from these sessions without the bitterness, resentment, and anger that had plagued their marriage previously. Perhaps it’s time to look into getting some outside help.
Note: This article is for informational purposes only. The information provided herein is general and should not be substituted as advice from a qualified professional.
