Adventures in Premarital Counseling

Last week, my wife and I celebrated our 37th anniversary. We never had the benefit of premarital counseling (PMC), which was not very widespread back in the 1980s; in fact, I hadn’t even heard of it at that time, and our church didn’t provide it. Thankfully, however, it has become much more common in the last 30 years. In fact, for those couples who want to be married by a pastor, a majority of American churches have now made PMC a requirement.

Much of PMC is done by pastors, including at my own church. However, some churches have a well-developed program and curriculum that incorporates lay leadership; this used to be true of my previous church. One of my pastors there trained me to take premarital couples through a personality test (the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis) as well as a questionnaire assessment called the Prepare/Enrich. The church had well over 2000 members at that time, and the number of couples (usually young and never married) getting married there was initially 20-30 per year; over time, as our church started shrinking (which included a change in church leadership), that number went down to 6-8 per year. After I went over the two tests with the couple, I would “hand them off” to a mentoring couple; we had a list of about ten, including my wife and myself. The premarital couple could request a specific couple in the church but were never shown a list. The mentoring couple would then take the premarital couple through an 8-part curriculum (developed by one of our pastors) covering the areas of finances, communication and conflict resolution, spiritual leadership, and more.

The first time that a premarital couple met with the mentoring couple, they would be asked (using a five-phrase “scale”) where they were in terms of their physical relationship. If they were currently sleeping together, they would have to agree to stop. If they refused to agree, the process would stop, and the church would not marry them. In the majority of cases, the couple was not sleeping together, and there was only one couple (over the ten years that I was part of the process) that refused to stop sleeping together; the mentoring couple reported to me that this couple got up and left, never to return! They probably got married elsewhere in our city, but since ~70 churches here had agreed to require premarital counseling, that couple would have had a hard time finding a pastor to marry them.

Some of the premarital couples seemed to regard PMC as a “hoop” to jump through. However, I discovered that most of them took it seriously. Here are some couples that stand out in my memory.

• The woman breaks down in tears multiple times while I’m going over the two tests with them. In fact, at one point, she leaves the room for a few minutes. The man looks rather bewildered, but I tell him that all couples have their strong displays of emotion at times. (I don’t tell him that in all my years of doing this, that I had never seen someone walk out!) When she comes back, we finish going over the tests. A few months later, after completing the premarital process, they get married, and they are still together 20+ years later!
• The woman becomes quiet after a while, giving short responses to my comments and questions, while the man is more talkative. I decide to finish going over one test with them and then leave the other one for another day. When they walk in for the second time the next day, they are carrying three cups of coffee. I thank them for the coffee, but it is obvious that they have been in conflict; the atmosphere is quietly tense between them. We manage to finish going over the second test; the mentoring couple that I assign them to tells me later that the young man and woman hadn’t known each other very long (which I knew already), so the premarital process would be especially important for them.
• The man and woman get into an argument right in front of me; thankfully, they face each other and don’t, for example, do any name calling. After a couple minutes, the man looks at me and asks rather challengingly, “Are you here just to listen to us argue, or do you have some insight?” I tell the woman that her intended is often not looking for a solution to a problem but just wants to be heard. He nods (whew!), and we continue with the tests.
• A couple is obviously in conflict before we even start going over the first test; this continues throughout both tests. Later, I talk to my wife about this couple, telling her that this couple is “a conflict waiting to happen.” In spite of (or was it because of?!) this, we agree to mentor them. We take them through the eight-part curriculum, and they decide they are not ready to get married. I suppose some people might regard that as a “failure,” but my wife and I thought exactly the opposite; PMC had shown this couple that they weren’t ready to get married–and it was their decision not to at that time. Several years later, however, we found out they did get married!
• While I’m going through the tests, the woman reveals that she doesn’t want to have kids; however, her intended does want to. My wife and I mentor them, and during the process, the man says that he wants to marry her even if they never have kids. However, after they have been married a couple years, she changes her mind; they now have three kids!
• I had never asked a couple about abuse, but there was something nagging at me about this young woman; I had the strong impression that she had experienced it at some point in her life. I take a deep breath after finishing the tests and ask her if she has ever experienced physical abuse. She breaks down, and they tell me that yes, she had experienced it in a previous relationship. The next day, the man sees me at church, and he thanks me for bringing that up the day before; he says it will help his intended heal.
• My family and I are preparing to take our two kids (13 and 10 at that time) for a few weeks to the Third World country where my son was born; I have secured a summer teaching contract there, and we want our kids to experience living in that country. A few days before we leave, I am going over the tests with a couple, and unbeknownst to me, they were told by one of our pastors that my family and I are leaving the country in a few days. Even though they are only 18 (just graduated from high school!) and 19, they are remarkably mature; they express their thanks to me for meeting with them, and they say that they will pray for me and my family. I feel like I’m going to cry.

One thing that is probably no surprise is that conflict was a common aspect of the premarital couples that I met with over the years. That, in fact, is the wisdom of requiring premarital counseling; couples can get a good start in learning how to deal with conflict before they get married. By God’s grace, my wife and I have been blessed in our marriage, but we would definitely have benefited from PMC 37+ years ago! If you are not married but plan to get married, I recommend that you and your intended get PMC, regardless of whether it is required or not. You will be glad that you did.