Premarital Counseling
Premarital counseling is a type of therapy that helps couples prepare for marriage.
Premarital counseling helps couples prepare for marriage. Couples with premarital education reported higher levels of marital satisfaction and experienced a 30 percent decline in the likelihood of divorce over five years. Quality premarital preparation, like PREPARE/ENRICH, can reduce the risk of divorce, and increase relationship skills and satisfaction.
Premarital counseling helps partners improve their ability to communicate, set realistic expectations for marriage and develop conflict-resolution skills. Premarital counseling can help ensure that you and your partner have a strong, healthy relationship — giving you a better chance for a stable and satisfying marriage. This kind of counseling can also help you identify and address challenges that could become problems during marriage.
PREPARE/ENRICH will help you:
- Identify relationship strength and growth areas.
- Explore personality traits.
- Review family backgrounds.
- Strengthen communication skills.
- Resolve conflicts and reduce stress & anxiety.
- Collaboratively address financial issues.
- Develop personal, couple, and family goals.
PREPARE/ENRICH begins with a customized couples assessment completed online that identifies a couple’s strength and growth areas. Topics covered by the assessment include communication, conflict resolution, roles, sexual intimacy, finances, and spiritual beliefs.
The assessment takes about 30-45 minutes to complete. However, PREPARE/ENRICH is not just any assessment: the items you respond to are based on research and are intended to help you identify the unique strengths and potential growth areas of your premarital relationship.
Once complete the assessment is followed by 5-6 sessions to go over the results. In these sessions we will explore strengths, address growth areas, improve communication skills, and help resolve any potential conflicts.