Table of Contents
Preparing for Happy Marriage © Martyn Carruthers
Do you want to prevent many marriage problems?
Consider resolving any emotional issues and
unwanted habits before you get married!
Do you need Premarital Coaching?
Probably. Your love for each other, however heavenly it seems now, will soon be grounded by relationship skills and life experience. Our premarital and marriage counseling can help you build a stronger foundation for your partnership.
Some key issues often include: leaving your parents, fully ending previous relationships, establishing roles and defining partnership goals.
Most young adults want happy partnership, yet they may not understand how quickly sexual attraction and infatuation can fade. They may not know how to develop shared values and adult companionship.
We see partnership as teamwork, where two people create an intimate space in which they can nourish yourselves, and provide a home for children and important projects. If either of you lack friendship or teamwork skills, then your partnership will likely suffer until you develop them.
An important question you need to answer is,
“How can I be SURE that (s)he is right for me?“
Women seem to have almost unlimited capacity for forgiveness. (Since it is usually
men who need forgiveness, this must be a racial survival trait.) Robert Heinlein
Soul Mates . Predictable Partnership . Space for Love
Our Couple & Marriage Coaching
Partners are not property – partners who think otherwise will suffer. But few people learn from others’ experience – most people learn about partnership the hard way.
You can live and learn … or you can forget about happiness.
Our couple and marriage coaching is effective. We find that six hours is normal for premarital couples. Most couples use this time to clarify partnership issues and to clean up their relationships with their parents and any past-partners.
Each year, few couples decide that their beliefs, values and goals are incompatible for long-term partnership – and choose friendship instead.
Our standard premarital couple counseling is for six hours. We first focus on evaluating values and sharing expectations. Our counseling includes increasing independence from parents, finishing unfinished business with past partners and dealing with unstable relatives or unsupportive friends. This includes evaluating and combining individual and couple goals such as:
- changing or ending previous relationships
- what is acceptable in extramarital relationships?
- are social goals are similar or at least compatible?
- evaluating mutual friends and unacceptable friends
- change or end habits more appropriate for single people
- how much time for entertainment and shared recreation?
- partnership roles: individual and shared tasks and chores
- individual rights, (decisions, boundaries, when to seek help)
- in-laws (separation; contact; celebrations & rituals; financial help)
- finances (support; budget; decisions; savings; careers; accounts)
- religion (importance; involvement; disagreement; financial support)
- children (plans; limits; alternatives; child care; discipline; education)
Our couple counseling is not just discussing issues, rather we provoke objections and doubts, and we help you define poorly formed goals.
We can help you explore your objections, abstract goals, conflicts, negative goals and inappropriate bonds to parents or past-partners.
A few sessions of our individual coaching can manage many entanglements, disappointments and guilt.
Evaluating Partnership . Enjoying Partnership
Premarital Coaching 1
We can help you test your compatibility by comparing your beliefs and values. We discuss many key issues such as where to live, how many children and how you want to raise them.
If you have only met each other in romantic conditions, you might make some mild stress tests. Can you discuss your differences – your different opinions about religion, sex, politics and money? Can you discuss how to furnish a home together, or put up wallpaper together without a fight?
If you know your strengths and weaknesses as a couple, you can build on your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses. Many weaknesses are due to relationship problems … unhealthy enmeshments with parents or ex-partners, etc, and to bad relationship habits.
Premarital Coaching 2
We can help you change your entanglements with parents and past-partners, etc We can help you disentangle. A coach can help you check that your love for each other is not based on some wild transference to a relative or media figure.
We can help you manage transferences, dysfunctional habits and relationship bonds to parents or past partners etc.
Entanglements . Mother-Son Bonds . Father-Daughter Bonds
Systemic diagnosis is usually fast and fun for both of you, and prepares you for …
Premarital Coaching 3
Our marriage coaching can help you explore your relationship strengths and weaknesses, not only now but also in your predictable future. Dissolve conflicts before the conflicts dissolve your happiness!
We can help you explore the long-term aspects of living together or sharing a lifetime together.
