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WAIT! Before You Say I Do, Read This
Regardless of how supernatural your engagement process was, you need
premarital counseling before you tie the knot.
When it comes to the need for ongoing advice and direction, there is
perhaps no circumstance more eminently qualified than a relationship leading to
marriage.
The Bible says that “in a multitude of counselors there is safety” (Prov.
24:6, NKJV). The first portion of this verse refers to waging war, and although
no couple wants their love relationship to be a battlefield, a lifelong marriage
is certainly worth fighting for.
Couples who choose to obtain premartial counseling can build a foundation
for success, as Proverbs 15:22 promises: “Refuse good advice and watch your
plans fail; take good counsel and watch them succeed” (The Message).
Counselor and speaker Michael Smalley encourages couples to receive outside
input before marrying. He calls it premarital education and says one key
component for counseling should be conflict resolution. “Before they get
married, there should be little—low conflict—but the problem is, you get married
and [conflict] comes.”
He explains that counseling should offer conflict-resolution training and
help couples discuss the big issues. In their book More Than a Match, Smalley
and wife Amy, who both have family and marriage counseling degrees, discuss the
importance of getting in-depth premarital counseling—something they didn’t
receive.
Michael Smalley believes counseling should come even earlier, during
pre-engagement. He explains that the average age for men and women to get
married today is 28 and 27, respectively.
“And the reality is,” he says, “you don’t need to be goofing around with
anyone you don’t intend to marry. I don’t think that it’s a bad idea to go
through the same kind of premarital education before you get engaged.”
According to the Smalleys, the five main topics couples should discuss
before marriage are spiritual beliefs, personality issues, financial management,
children and parenting, and sexual expectations. A third party can help guide a
couple’s discussion and point out areas of weakness a couple could miss, Amy
writes.
An engaged man and woman, Michael Smalley notes, do not have a realistic
view of each other. “The reason you need a third party is to have someone who’s
not caught up in all the hoopla. You cannot honestly evaluate your relationship
[during engagement].”
He points out that the point of premarital education is not about seeking
perfection. “It’s about enlightenment,” he adds. “It is not about, ‘OK, are we
perfect?’ Because you won’t be.”
Steve Prokopchak, pastoral overseer for Dove Christian Fellowship
International and co-author of Called Together, also agrees that premarital
counseling is imperative. Dove churches require couples to attend premarital and
even post-marital sessions.
He trains couples who are already in healthy marriages to counsel couples.
These relationships, he explains, typically develop into lasting friendships,
offering newlyweds someone whom they can trust and in whom they can confide on
an ongoing basis.
Prokopchak says the post-marital requirement was developed because the
highest incidence of divorce is within the first year of marriage. Newlyweds
meet for counseling three months and nine months after the wedding.
Many of these couples say they thought the topics discussed in premarital
sessions wouldn’t be problems in their own relationship. But they soon realize
that the issues do apply to them. The post-marital counseling helps them walk
out the resolutions to their problems.
As important as premarital counseling is, there is a stigma attached. If we
need counseling, then there is a problem in our relationship, and we shouldn’t
even proceed, the thinking goes.
To people who feel this way, Prokopchak poses a question, “Would you get on
a plane that is going to 35,000 feet if the pilot says, ‘I don’t think I need
training to do this’?”
Premarital counseling, he says, is not about needing counseling; it is
about using the Word of God to “build the foundation that the enemy is trying to
destroy today.”
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