Why Choose Premarital Counseling?

Why choose premarital counseling?

Marriage can be a wonderful and challenging life experience. It makes sense that before embarking on any major life experience, we get some proper training; i.e. becoming a doctor, lawyer, plumber, IT specialist, accountant, teacher.. you get the idea. So, why does it not make sense to receive proper training on how to be a mother, father, husband and wife?

We do receive some training very early on in our lives- we learn by watching OUR parents and caretakers and amazingly, we learn the ins and outs of these roles by the time we enter kindergarden! And as we grow, any major life experiences or traumas may change the way we act, think about, or see the world and our role in it. But what we learn as children is consistently reinforced by the life we live and people and environments we live around. As adolescents, young adults, and finally adults we experiment with these teachings when we embark on our own relationships. Sometimes, painfully, we find that the skills we learned as children are NOT the best at helping us maintain healthy, long-lasting connections.

Wouldn't it be great to learn how to change our unhealthy ways

BEFORE we suffer through breakup and divorce?

Let me also mention the current US divorce statistics:

The current US trends show that approximately 50% of all marriages end in divorce. The probability of a first marriage ending in separation or divorce within 5 years is 20 percent, but the probability of a premarital cohabitation breaking up within 5 years is 49 percent. After 10 years, the probability of a first marriage ending is 33 percent, compared with 62 percent for cohabitations. And the percentage goes up with 2nd and 3rd marriages, and so forth.

For a society that regards marriage and monogamy as highly desirable,

these statistics are pretty disappointing.

My personal wish is for each individual to be as autonomous as possible before entering a long term relationship. Since that doesn't happen often enough due to the wonder of falling in love and the sometimes damaging legacy we live as children of parents of parents who have learned bad habits; interventions like individual counseling, premarital counseling, and marital counseling can be life-savers.