DIY Premarital Counseling Session #1: Your Story

Disclaimer: This DIY Premarital Counseling is NOT supposed to take the place of counseling with a professional counselor or pastor. However, if you want to use these sessions alongside what you are doing with your counselor, perhaps they will be helpful.  And if you aren't getting any kind of counseling, please do--and perhaps this will be a step for you.  As a licensed pastor and through my work as a pastor at a university, I do premarital counseling and I want to share some of what I do. I am not a professional counselor.

Congratulations! The Big Day is ahead and you are Getting Hitched.   Each session is broken down into DO (your homework), TALK ABOUT (what to talk through with your partner), and REFLECT & SHARE (further conversation with your partner or if you are meeting with a mentor couple--you can use this with them). A mentor couple who will journey with you over the next 6 sessions is a great idea.  Look for someone who has been married for 10+ years and who has a mature Christian faith.

Storytelling:  Weaving your marriage narrative of two becoming one.  

Part of having a story as a couple together is recognizing the unique stories that each of you bring. Telling the stories of our lives to each other and to others is foundational to building a rich marriage. Listening to other’s marriage stories helps you develop an imagination for what your marriage may or may not be like.Interview one couple who has been married less than 5 years, one couple who has been married 5-10 years, and one couple who have been married more than 10 years.

Do:

In order for you to hear others’ marriage stories, interview three couples and ask them the following questions:

1.  What surprised you about marriage?  What did you think that you had figured out that you realized later you did not as a couple?

2.  What have you learned about yourself through being married?

3.  What are some of the most challenging aspects of marriage for each of you?

4.  How do you show the other love?

5.  How do you resolve conflict?   How do you make decisions?

6.  Who is in charge? Do you make decisions collaboratively?  Does the "buck stop" with one person?

7.  How do you split household management?

8.  How did you know it with time to have children (for those with children)? How was the transition with step-children (with those bringing children into the marriage)?

9.  What has been challenging about your sexual relationship?

10. What do you wish you had known before getting married?

TALK ABOUT:

After each interview, talk with each other about what surprised you about what you heard from your interviews.  What did you hear that is what you expected?  How is it different or the same as the marriages that you have seen around you?  What truth and experiences from these marriages that are helpful for you as you prepare to be married? Did you hear about any pitfalls that you want to avoid?

REFLECT & SHARE:

Draw a long line that represents your life.  Along the line, mark the experiences that have influenced you significantly (for good or for hard). No experience is wasted and God will use all of them to develop your character and grow you in maturity.

Share your “life line” and the experiences that it marks.  Were they any that your partner has not yet heard you tell the story about?