Premarital Counseling

Navigating Uncertainty

Preparing for your wedding day can be exciting, but it can also a stressful time. Whether your wedding is set or you haven’t committed to a date, you may have some long-standing challenges in your relationship that you are looking to resolve before your big day. This may involve issues such as distrust or lack of intimacy, conflicting values or lifestyles, unaddressed mental health concerns, cultural or religious differences, or poor communication. Maybe you have conflicting ideas about how you’d hope to celebrate your marriage, perhaps because of family or personal expectations. Another reason to seek pre-marital counseling is if you’re experiencing pre-wedding jitters or uncertainty about whether to move forward with the marriage at all. These are all common experiences that couples face before tying the knot, but can be understood and worked through in couples therapy.

Emotional Honesty & Expressing Relationship Needs

Couples therapy can consist of a variety of approaches depending on the nature of the premarital concern. Discernment counseling is a common approach for couples who are at a crossroads in their relationship. The goal of this therapy approach is to collaboratively determine whether to stay or end the relationship. Alternatively, your goal may be to stay together, but make a decision about whether to postpone or move forward with your wedding. Or you both are 100% confident about getting married, but hope to address any ongoing concerns prior to committing to marriage.

In all of the above examples, couples therapy allows both partners to identify their own needs independent of the expectations of their significant other. This can sometimes be more challenging than it sounds. After all, we often prioritize the wants, needs, and desires of the people we love the most! Emotional honesty is a must, even if you’re fearful that your partner may feel hurt by hearing your truth. Once you both understand and empathize with each other’s emotional and attachment needs, therapy shifts toward assisting you both in effectively communicating those needs to one another. What are your non-negotiables, or the needs you have that must be met before committing to spending the rest of your lives together? Communicating this in a non-defensive, sincere way allows you both the opportunity to discover what your loved one is willing and able to do for you and the relationship. If you are unsure whether to move forward in the relationship, the important thing to remember here is that success in discernment counseling is not determined by whether you decide to marry or not, but whether the decision you make is what’s best for you!