Pre-Marital Counselling

DTR now offer pre-marital counselling

While you’re planning your wedding, are you also preparing for your marriage? According to a survey published in the Journal of Family Psychology, couples with premarital education reported higher levels of marital satisfaction and experienced a 30 per cent decline in the likelihood of divorce over five years.

If you’re getting married in a house of worship, then you might already have faith-based marriage classes booked in your schedule, since some places of worship mandate them. And if you’re not among the engaged couples required to get counselling, then you may be curious about whether or not it’s worth taking the plunge.

DTR’s pre-marital counselling can help you both build a solid foundation for your future together.

So what are the benefits of DTR’s pre-marital counselling?

It will create a positive marriage resolution. It’s easy to get emotional when discussing heavy-duty topics like money, sex, and kids. A DTR counsellor can help guide the conversation and prevent you and your partner from going off on a tangent, thereby losing focus and not accomplishing anything.

It will help you both to learn (or improve) conflict resolution skills. If you’ve had some major tiffs or blowouts in the past (and who hasn’t?) then you both know how you tend to react during arguments, whether it’s wielding the silent treatment and pouting or yelling and name-calling. If you’re being honest with yourself, then there’s probably room for improvement. A DTR counsellor will teach you how to listen and communicate more effectively; more specifically, they’ll also advise you what to say (and not say) in order to reach a happy solution.

It will let you both set realistic expectations about timing. For example, if you come to an agreement that the kids topic is off the table for two years, then you won’t be left anxious or frustrated when you want to delve into that plan and your partner isn’t ready. This also applies to major purchases like buying a house.

Pre-marital counselling will ensure that you avoid toxic resentments and clear the air about resentments you’ve been hanging onto throughout your relationship. A DTR counsellor will help you resolve these issues and free yourselves from them so that they don’t cause massive damage later on in your marriage.

Pre-marital counselling will dismantle fears about marriage. One or both of you might come from a divorced family, or from a dysfunctional background where fighting and manipulation was the norm. Pre-marital counselling can teach both of you how to make peace with your past and break the cycle.

Pre-marital counselling will help you both Identify the “seeds” of future marital stress. With an experienced outsider’s perspective, you can both learn which behaviours and habits you need to adjust or quit.

Pre-marital counselling will assist you both to unearth any additional problems before your marriage. It can be unnerving to begin the process of pre-marital counselling because you and/or your groom/partner might worry that examining your relationship under a microscope can lead to more stress and issues. In fact, although this can be hurtful in the short term, it can be very helpful in the long run.

To conclude:

Being humbled. It’s neither easy nor fun to learn that you have less-than-stellar communication skills or find out that your groom/partner isn’t happy with your sex life. Even something as simple as hearing that he or she’d like more time to themselves when he/she gets home from work can make you feel scolded, so you need to be prepared for some tough truths. It’s important for you and your future spouse/partner to remove your egos from the equation and allow yourselves to be open to constructive criticism, with the knowledge that in the process, you’ll become a better husband/wife/partner.

As challenging as pre-marital counselling can be, remember it’s all for the best and you’re putting in the effort that’s required to make your marriage work.

Contact us to find out more about how we can help you with Pre-Marital Counselling