Premarital Counseling
Premarital Counseling
Marriage is a remarkable journey of love between two people who have passionately committed to saying YES to each other for life. Yet, many couples spend more time and money planning their wedding day than preparing for a lifetime together.
Premarital counseling is highly recommended for couples planning to marry. This education and marriage skills training can significantly contribute to lasting love and stability while fostering a deep, secure bond. Research shows that happily married couples tend to live longer, enjoy greater emotional well-being, and experience a more fulfilling sexual relationship. Moreover, children raised in a stable, loving, and safe family environment are less likely to encounter social problems.
What Premarital Counseling Is NOT:
Let’s clear this up right away: Premarital counseling is NOT some dreadful experience where you’re trapped in a small room with a jaded counselor who nitpicks your relationship, tells you you’re fundamentally incompatible, and tries to convince you that maybe marriage isn’t the best idea.
It’s understandable to feel a little uneasy about premarital counseling. Some couples worry it will magnify all the cracks and flaws in their relationship at a time when they should be happy and excited about their future together—fearing that it might even cause someone to get cold feet.
I’m here to support, strengthen, and affirm your relationship through positive premarital counseling.
Premarital counseling is what couples do when they care deeply about their relationship and want to make it as strong and fulfilling as possible. It’s an opportunity to learn skills and strategies that can help you prevent potential issues down the road. We celebrate your relationship, identify its strengths, and then use those strengths to make your bond even stronger. Honestly, premarital counseling might be better described as “Premarital Coaching.” My goal is to help you turn a good relationship into a great one.
How? By teaching you how to get on the same page and create agreement, how to discuss challenging issues productively, how to keep the positive vibes alive in your marriage, and how to work together as a team through the ups and downs of life. None of these things happen by accident—they require intentional effort from both of you.
Good, evidence-based premarital counseling generally starts with an assessment and incorporates proven therapeutic models. I use Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Prepare/Enrich, and Transformational Couples Therapy (TCT) to help couples get their marriage off to a great start. These approaches foster deep relational intimacy and help you build skills for navigating married life together. TCT, in particular, focuses on amplifying the positive moments in your relationship and using them to build an even stronger connection, ensuring that your marriage is rooted in love, understanding, and mutual growth.
Emotionally Focused Therapy?
EFT’s main goals are to expand and reorganize important emotional responses, implement and foster the creation of a secure bond between partners and help shift each partner’s position of interaction while initiating new cycles of interaction that are more beneficial. Emotionally Focused Therapy helps create secure, loving and lasting bonds between partners and strives to reinforce the positive bonds that already exist. EFT works to intervene where needed and create change to help relationships work more effectively through a spirit of love, mutuality and reciprocity.
What is PREPARE/ENRICH?
PREPARE/ENRICH is a customized couple assessment completed online that identifies a couple’s strength and growth areas. It is one of the most widely used programs for premarital counseling and premarital education. It is also used for marriage counseling, marriage enrichment, and dating couples considering engagement. Based on a couple’s assessment results, a trained facilitator provides 4-8 feedback sessions in which the facilitator helps the couple discuss and understand their results as they are taught proven relationship skills.
A well-established approach
PREPARE/ENRICH has been helping couples understand and strengthen their relationships since 1980. The assessment is a starting point for meaningful conversations, personalized feedback, and practical relationship skills.
What are the Major Goals of the PREPARE/ENRICH Program?
There are several goals of the PREPARE/ENRICH Program. In order to achieve these goals there are exercises designed to help couples improve their relationship skills. The program helps couples:
- Explore strength and growth areas
- Strengthen communication skills
- Identify and manage major stressors
- Resolve conflict using the Ten Step Model
- Develop a more balanced relationship
- Explore family of origin issues
- Discuss financial planning and budgeting
- Establish personal, couple and family goals
- Understand and appreciate personality differences
What relationship areas are assessed by the Inventory?
12 Relationship Scales — communication, conflict resolution, roles, sexuality, finances, spiritual beliefs and more
5 SCOPE Personality Scales
4 Couple and Family Scales — based on the Circumplex Model
4 Relationship Dynamic Scales
Is the PREPARE/ENRICH Program Valid & Reliable?
PREPARE/ENRICH has a substantial research history supporting the reliability and validity of its assessment. Its research library includes studies of premarital couples, relationship satisfaction, communication, and family dynamics.
The practical value is in what we do with that information: understanding your strengths, exploring areas that need attention, and having useful conversations about your future together.
For the research behind the assessment, visit the PREPARE/ENRICH Research Articles.
Who Uses PREPARE/ENRICH?
PREPARE/ENRICH is used by trained therapists, clergy, mentors, and marriage educators to help couples understand their relationship and build on its strengths.
Couples complete the assessment and explore their results with a trained facilitator, turning those insights into conversations and practical skills.
Premarital Counseling Fees
There is also a $35 fee for the PREPARE/ENRICH assessment.
Ready to prepare for your life together? Get in touch to schedule a consultation.