Planning a wedding getting your relationship ready
Planning a wedding. Is premarital counseling right for you?
Many women have fantasized about their wedding day for many years before actually getting to experience it, so it’s no shock that some women charge towards the day full speed ahead without taking the time to enjoy the process.
You need to take a step back and realize that instead of heading towards a new chapter in your life you are currently smack in the middle of one you should be enjoying too: the engagement.
Don’t let this time slip by unnoticed; being engaged has the potential to be a lot of fun and is also the very best time to examine your readiness for the huge step you and your fiancé are about to take with each other.
Premarital counseling as part of planning a wedding can be a great idea.
You may have found the perfect man for you. He may be everything you would ever want and more, so you may not have even considered premarital counseling. Some religions require premarital counseling before blessing the marriage, and that is for good reason.
Premarital counseling can reveal topics which may not have otherwise popped up in conversation. Topics like the aforementioned finances, religion, and future aspirations are the sorts of things which will be brought up in the counseling session.
Some counselors have couples take pre-marriage inventory tests, which are simple ways to discover if there are indeed some topics which should be explored prior to taking your vows. Don’t worry; premarital counseling sessions are not occasions to gripe about your fiancé’s annoying habits, nor are they designed to reduce you to tears as you sob about how he leaves the toilet seat up. Premarital counseling sessions are designed to reveal any significant issues which need to be explored in order to ensure the best start to a healthy marriage.
If you need a venue where you can sob and lament about the ills of your relationship then you need regular couples counseling instead of premarital counseling, or better yet you may need to think more intently about if this is truly the man for you.
This is it, really. You should think of marriage in a couple of different ways. Sure, it’s a beautiful joining of two people where they no longer simply live for themselves but instead for each other. Marriage is also a legal agreement though. You are legally joining together to form one entity: Mister and Missus Insert-your-name-here. You simply can’t enter into any sort of legal agreement lightly, and marriage is no exception.
In theory, you are supposed to be married to this person until death do you part. You should never think about marriage in another light. If you have a thought in the back of your mind that if this marriage doesn’t work out you can always divorce and start all over again with a different partner, then you should really take some time to examine your motives. Marriage should be a decision which you enter into with the intention of the arrangement being permanent.
Of course there are very valid reasons for eventual divorces, and in reality we know not every marriage lasts. The point is that you should only be getting married if you intend on being with this person forever.
Entering into marriage with any other thought in mind is not only a mockery of the establishment of marriage, but it also leads to a frame of mind which may breed a less than healthy relationship. If both members of a couple are both of the mind that this relationship is forever they are more likely to work at the success of the marriage.
Do you have unfinished business that needs to be dealt with as part of planning your wedding?
Many people have a relationship from their past which they often think about. Whether the relationship dissolved without a definite goodbye or if there are still residual feelings about the other person you should really attempt to get some closure before getting married.
It may be as simple as deciding in your mind to let go of a past love, or maybe as complicated as contacting someone from a previous relationship to resolve unfinished business. This is the time to take care of these things, though, instead of waiting until you have already gotten married and then wonder if these issues are causing havoc in your current relationship. It is best to start out your marriage with a clean emotional slate with regard to emotional baggage; it gives your marriage the best possibility of surviving healthily.
Unfinished business may also include some emotional baggage which doesn’t necessarily have to do with a romantic relationship from the past. There may be unresolved issues from your past that still affect you today which you should face head on.
If you find you have trouble trusting people because of past experiences, or if you have a propensity towards avoiding emotional intimacy, or for any other number of issues which can be detrimental to your future marriage, you should do your best to resolve them before marriage.
This may mean some counseling for you, or some major soul searching, or whatever it takes to get to the point to where you can be the best spouse possible.
Even if you decide you are not going to want to go through formal pre-marital counseling I do strongly suggest and highly recommend one particular book. It is simply a large collection of questions which you can ask each other but it brings out issues which you may never have thought about.
Lets imagine that you have strongly held views on a particular issue however your spouse has equally strong issues but in the opposing direction. You are already into your marriage when the issue comes up in your relationship and your spouse takes a disastrous decision not knowing your views on that matter. What do you do?
Simple take the opportunity to discuss it in advance so you both know the others person’s point of view before upsetting each other by taking steps the other person hates. At least think about asking those questions of each other. It can also give you a deeper understanding of each other and surely that is a great thing in any relationship, isn’t it? Http://BeRomantic.com/1000Questions
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Planning a Romantic Wedding
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