Eight Essential Topics to Cover In Christian Premarital Counseling, Part 2

Part 1 of a 3-Part Essential Topics for Premarital Series

Starting Your Marriage Right with Christian Premarital Counseling

What do couples talk about in premarital counseling? What are the essential topics to discuss when preparing for your marriage, and how can a Christian counselor help facilitate the conversations? This is the second of three articles about the eight essential topics that couples should cover during premarital counseling. In my previous article, I explained the importance of understanding one another’s communication and conflict management styles. In this article, I will explore four more important topics to cover during premarital counseling: Family of Origin, Parenting, Spirituality, and Commitment.

Intentional conversation about these subjects not only offers an opportunity to clarify needs and values, it also presents couples with precious quality time in which intimacy can develop and love can deepen.

Family of Origin: Discovering Roots and Accepting In-Laws

As a marriage and family therapist, I conceptualize a person’s entire family coming in the room with my client, as a present part of them. Your family of origin is the foundational piece of who you are. Very often families have rules, expectations, taboos, patterns, and protocols that even family members aren’t aware of. Creating a genogram with a therapist (a method of mapping a client’s family holistically; not simply a genealogy) can shed a great deal of light on how one’s family operates, and provide mountains of insight into – and preparation for joining – a new family-in-law. Premarital counseling will likely include the highly important conversation of which family you will visit during which holidays. Sometimes, couples will try to avoid the negative cycles they have experienced in their own families. This requires that they observe and increase their awareness and that they recognize family members as unique individuals who are more than the “roles” they play. It also means that the couple cannot simply cut off their family in order to differentiate as an act of will.

Parenting: Your Plan – and God’s – For Your Family

How many children do you want to have? When do you want to have children? Do you think you’re ready to be a parent? What makes one ready to be a parent? Do you even want to have children? What does discipline look like to you? The reality of parenting is often far-removed from the present concerns of an engaged couple; it can be easy to have surface-level agreements without knowing the different aspects and deeper factors of being a parent. The topic of parenting is usually very important to both partners, and it can be all-to-easy to avoid possible conflicts by having little or no discussion. However, any differences you have will become readily apparent when you both share the task of parenting the same child. Common areas of disagreement are discipline, faith practice (see number 5), freedoms, closeness to child, having (and being) favorites, and family time vs. couple time. The sooner you can find common goals and begin discussing differences and ideals, the better – do not avoid your differences! By doing so, you will avoid debilitating disagreements and you will benefit from working together as a couple when your life is totally changed by the arrival of a child.

Spirituality: How Will You Grow In Christ Together?

Every human is spiritual – and every family has a spiritual story. Do you come from a tradition of staunchly rejecting the notion of any spiritual reality? Does your partner come from a tradition of liturgy and High-Church rituals as in Catholic or Episcopal churches? Do you come from a charismatic expression? Both? (Yes, there are charismatic Catholics.) In the Kingdom of God, these are all parts of one body – but they do not understand each other and love each other easily.

Especially in Seattle, it’s obvious that there a limitless directions to go with the concept of spirituality.  Many couples adopt a respectful tolerance of their partner’s totally dissimilar faith, or even make some integrations.  And many couples find this difficult to maintain when children are old enough to understand spiritual things.  Who is right?  How should the child be raised?  The Word of God says in Proverbs 22:6 to train a child in the way they should go!  And in 2 Corinthians 6:14, the Lord says to “not be unequally yoked” – and this is sound advice for any couple.  Yet, even having a similar faith tradition does not mean having the same level of faith or spirituality. The term “equally yoked” could have more than one implication.

This discussion is highly complex and perhaps anxiety producing.  Spirituality and faith, especially for a follower of Christ, is central to our existence.  Agreeing on essentials and understanding the particulars of your faith is important, and a bit challenging.  Premarital counseling should guide a couple through this conversation, along with presenting thoughts like: the coming months being your last season of relating to God as a single person, what ‘ministry’ means to each partner in terms of life plans, and what ‘normal’ is for each partner regarding devotions, prayer, gatherings, and fellowship, etc.

Commitment: A Conversation about Values

Why take anything for granted when you are about to commit your life to someone? Wouldn’t it be nice to take time to have a good conversation about what it means to make marital vows, what it means to each partner, to their families and friends, and to God? It is freeing and empowering to process feelings of hesitancy or urgency about stepping into the unknown – they are normal after all! – and to come afresh to a life-long commitment with a new perspective. Some couples do decide in premarital counseling to either postpone or to break off their engagement. It will bless your marriage to mean your vows with all of your heart after gaining deeper knowledge about the partner you are making the vow to. It will bless your marriage to know that your partner made those same vows with the same depth of heart. It will bless your marriage to create rich meaning around the marital vows and commitment.

A Christian Premarital Counselor Can Facilitate Conversation

It is critical that couples are completely honest with themselves and each other as they set out on a lifetime together. These conversations are essential, and yet they can be difficult to start. If you and your spouse-to-be are having a hard time knowing what questions to ask or how to uncover one another’s expectations for the marriage. I would be delighted to speak with you to start your marriage on the right path. Christian counseling can help couples cultivate a marriage built on trust, openness, and intimacy. Premarital counseling uses therapeutic methods and Biblical wisdom to help you and your partner discover more and more about one another as you prepare for your life together.

Photos
Family Silhouetted ” by Vlado  and “Ring” by Salvatore Vuono