Well as of tonight Geoff and I are in search of some pre-marriage counselors… nope nothing’s gone horribly wrong in our relationship (it’s going quite alright thank you!) but we had it all nicely lined up and were on a bit fat waiting list and now (as I’m inclined to say at the minute), we have been shafted.
Of course the couple were nice about it, but as it is, we’ve already left it late because we’ve been waiting and now we have to go find someone else.
There is one potential up our sleeve – they live a bit away but it’s doable, but some prayer would be nice. We’re 9 weeks out from getting married (or so I’m told) and it’s one of the things we are really keen on doing and think is important.
Pretty sure we’ll wind up doing the Prepare course. Anyone done this one?
it’s well worth the sacrifice/effort to get on a course if you can -we did marriage prep that our church ran and it was great for being honest, getting prayer and talking through challenges, hopes etc. I think what we learnt has saved our marriage many times over, proving that it was not a waste of time, lol.
What is the saddest thing for me is the number of friends who didn’t get marriage prep have run into problems that would have been fairly simple to work through before they got married but now look like making their marriages fail 🙁
Bec, we did a survey which I *think* was the first part of Prepare, but that was all – it was too stressful and difficult to arrange a decent course when we were living in different states (or territories, in his case). I’ve heard excellent things from people I respect about Prepare, so that’s one of the ones we will be looking into when we have a chance. I’ve also heard excellent things about Relationships Australia, Centacare’s courses (I think we’ll do a weekend one).
I’m actually a big fan of doing “formal” course with people who specialise in this area, rather than just chatting to an older couple (I’m not sure whether that’s what you’ve been looking at?) There’s so much dodgy “Christian” counselling out there, and a lot of my friends have done “pre-marriage counselling” with people who weren’t particularly well trained and so didn’t get to the real issues. I am horrified by some of the issues that were not identified prior to marriage.
That might sound a bit rich coming from someone who hasn’t “got around” to doing a course yet, but our minister had talked through some personality tests we’d done, and there were no big surprises. We are definitely going to do something more extensive and formal in the near future, so I’d love to hear about your experiences.
I don’t think this should necessarily be seen as a “one-off” either – I know plenty of people who rave about the benefits of doing marriage/relationship courses every few years.
Well we’re all set! Dad key’d up us doing Prepare (which is a formal thing that people do training for) with our old pastor and his wife. We’re pretty time constrained as they are heading off to Canada so we’ll do the survey and then have time for about 2 extra sessions maybe three. So that’ll at least get us started. Meanwhile, I shall continue to read marriage books and what not… ahh a whole new band of literature (most of it fuzzy crap) opened to me!
It sounds like you’re doing something similar to what we did – a couple of surveys and then a few sessions talking about them. It was worth doing, even just for confidence reasons – the surveys threw up a few issues, but they were all things we were well aware of! Your post has inspired me to look into doing something again – I reckon we might do one of the FOCCUS weekend courses…
Prepare is really good if you engage with it openly and honestly.
Let me know if yor new arrangements fall through and I’ll take you through it.
MG