Christian Premarital Counseling: The Framework for Life’s Storms 

Oh, the naivety of young love. If you’ve been married for a while, this article is not for you. You already know the pitfalls that can come when two become one. You already know, probably firsthand, the challenges that newly married couples face, even those who think that love conquers all. According to John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  But if you’re considering marriage or are already engaged, then please continue to read. Please. For the sake of your marriage and your future and your love and your romantic partner and your family. Please continue to read about the benefits of Christian premarital counseling.

Does Love Conquer All?

No. It most certainly does not. At least not in the way you think it does. God’s love does conquer all. His love restored human communion with the Creator of the universe and saved us all from eternal damnation.  But does your romantic love have the ability to transcend time, change outcomes, and restore all things? Not so much.

Your love for your partner, as pure and intense and selfless as it may seem, does not conquer all the pitfalls you will face during your marriage. Human love, while it is a beautiful, powerful thing, is still fallible, just like the people experiencing it. Love is a good start. It’s a great foundation. It’s even what motivates you to pursue a deeper connection with each other, but it has its limitations.

Assuming that all the obstacles of marriage will be solved by the love you share is naïve. Love will give you the motivation to try to find a solution to your issues, but it will not give you the tools.

You Need Tools: Benefits of Christian Premarital Counseling

You wouldn’t build a house without the right equipment, a blueprint, and some experts in the field. When you get married, you are building a house of sorts. Not a physical building, of course, but the house where your life story will live. Where your heart dwells and where your future will thrive or die.

When you build a house, the most important, fundamental part is the foundation. And as an engaged (or potentially engaged) couple, you need to build a solid, unshakable foundation on which to build the house of your marriage.

Christian premarital counseling gives you the tools to build that firm foundation. It shows you effective ways to communicate with each other and helps you understand your and your partner’s expectations. The costs of happiness in most relationships are attributed to broken communication and financial stress and strain. Having such a framework helps you frame whether these expectations are reasonable, biblical, and healthy.

Your counselor will help you talk about sensitive topics like physical intimacy, past relationships, integration of families, financial issues, and future plans without letting tension erode the relationship.

The Practical Skills You’ll Learn

Some people think that premarital counseling is just a designated place to talk about problems in the relationship. But the reality is that it goes way beyond that by giving you the methodology to solve them. You’ll learn skills for identifying your negative interaction cycle, such as pursue and withdraw, how to use “I Statements” effectively, and a guide to structured problem-solving that helps to keep emotional reactions in check.

Discovering new and interesting things about your partner is what keeps the spark lit. Through premarital counseling, you will learn how to maintain curiosity about your partner. While becoming “comfortable” with each other is often the goal because it can bring peace, the unfortunate flip side to that story is that it can also lead to boredom if curiosity isn’t maintained.

That’s why it’s important to continue to see your partner as an evolving person with new ideas, dreams, and challenges. Premarital counseling equips you with techniques to continuously ask intentional, open-ended questions to keep the interest and intrigue alive and help keep the fires burning.

Expectations Vs. Reality

Everyone has their vision of ideal love. As a child, you might read fairy tales about a prince and a charming maiden who live “happily ever after.” But that expectation is rooted in fantasy, not reality. The reality is that even people in the healthiest relationships who carry unspoken expectations are setting themselves and their intended up for disaster.

What a “good spouse” does, how holidays should work, how often you see family, how affection is shown, who handles what at home… the list goes on and on. Most people don’t even know that they have these subtle and hidden expectations until they’re not met because they’re often wrapped in their memories and experiences.

Much of what you learn to be “absolute truths” and relational structures is established in your childhood. How did your dad treat your mom? Did your parental figures act romantic toward each other, or did they live as roommates? How were chores divided? By traditional gender roles?

Premarital counseling helps you drag those hidden expectations out into the light. You’ll talk about your expectations surrounding communication, conflict (and resolution), chores, faith, money, emotional needs, and even how each of you defines respect. Even when you know what your partner expects, meeting those expectations can be difficult. But if you at least understand each other better, you can strive toward meeting or negotiating them.

Preparing for Life’s Storms with Christian Premarital Counseling in Washington

Every couple walks into their engagement with excitement, hope, and a few stars in their eyes. And that optimism is a beautiful thing because God did design love to be joyful. But life, even really good lives, isn’t immune to pitfalls and obstacles. Eventually, illness, financial strain, job loss, grief, infertility, parenting challenges, spiritual drought, or just the stresses and exhaustion of everyday life can shake even the strongest couples.

Christian premarital counseling in Washington state gives you the chance to talk honestly about how you each handle stress, disappointment, and fear before you’re standing in the thick of it. You’ll learn how to support each other during hardship without shutting down or getting angry, blaming, or withdrawing. You’ll learn how to lean on each other instead of letting these things pull you apart.

Dealing With Others

When you’re in love, it feels like you and your spouse are on your own little continent, where the whole world fades into the background, and it seems like nothing and no one else matters. But that’s not reality. Marriage doesn’t happen in a vacuum. As wonderful as that “just us” bubble feels now, real life will eventually burst it.

You will interact with people of the opposite sex. So will your partner. Premarital counseling will help you decide on boundaries with the opposite sex now, while you’re still in the “honeymoon phase.” You will learn how to handle these relationships with transparency and in ways that meet each other’s needs and help you and your partner feel secure.

You will also learn how to handle relationships with in-laws, coworkers, friends, church members, neighbors, and people your spouse knew long before they knew you, because all of these connections, healthy and complicated, will influence your marriage in some way.

You Need God

God wants to help you have a successful marriage.

God is the author of love, even romantic love. He created Eve as a special gift to Adam. The Bible is full of stories of commitment and covenant. Christ’s sacrificial and selfless love for the church is the ultimate template for how a husband is to love his wife (Ephesians 5).

Chrisitan premarital counseling can be part of God’s plan to help your future marriage succeed. In Proverbs, it says, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22 NIV). And that’s really the heart of premarital counseling. That’s really the heart of God.

You don’t have to walk blindly and figure life out on your own. God wants to walk with you into this big life-changing thing called marriage. And to that end, He has placed resources around you, tools, such as counselors, mentors, and of course, the Bible. He has offered His Holy Spirit as a guide. You just have to choose to accept the help and the wisdom He has made available to you.

What To Do When Love Doesn’t Conquer All

You need to acknowledge that your human love, as beautiful and intense as it is, is insufficient by itself. You need to willingly bring outside wisdom, both human (counseling) and divine (Scripture and the Holy Spirit), into your union before the crisis hits.

When you make the conscious decision to pursue premarital counseling, you are honoring God by seeking the “many advisers” He promised would lead to success. You’re committing to building your house not just on good feelings and mutual interests, but on the Solid Rock of eternal wisdom and covenant love.

Contact us today to schedule a Christian premarital counseling appointment with a Christian counselor in Washington state who can help you begin your marriage on a strong foundation.