People often associate pre-marital counselling with couples with relationship issues or for those who are required by their congregation to attend. But the truth is, any couple can benefit from premarital counselling.

 

A wedding lasts for a day, but a marriage lasts for a lifetime.

 

While many couples would agree that it takes more than a spark to keep a relationship going, the thing that most couple lack is the skills to keep the love alive.

 

The greatest challenge that hinders couples from undergoing pre-marital counselling is fear.  Couples worry that going to counselling means there’s something wrong with their relationship. Hence, it creates a need to remove this social stigma through a reframing of perspective. Rather than seeing it as a treatment session, couples should instead view it as an opportunity to avoid relationship bumps that could impair the relationship seriously in later phases of life. Only by tackling issues in the early stages of your relationships, it allows better growth and progressions. As they always say: prevention is better than cure.

 

Most couples also face the obstacle of time. Living in a fast-paced society has resulted in the increasing workload of many working adults. As such, time is of essence in this modern day.  The highly stressful environment in Singapore has discouraged many couples from taking time off from work to take care of their personal well-being and in turn, it leads to a build-up of underlying emotions and tensions between both parties that might not be discovered until years later.

 

Therefore, it is crucial that every couples makes the extra effort to learn about the things that work in a relationship and the things that causes setbacks in the relationship as well as to master helpful tools that would come in handy in future.

 

By attending counselling sessions, it is also an indirect manner of showing your other half how serious and committed you are in making this relationship last.

 

Benefits of pre-marital counselling

• Safe Haven

  Pre-counselling sessions aim to create an environment of understanding and safety so that it achieves the purpose of assisting couples in navigating important questions about their lives together.

• Sensitive Topics

  During the sessions, couples talk about the importance of marriage in their lives and explore possible outlooks of their marriage. Sensitive topics such as money, religion, parenting, in-law relationships, etc. would also be touched upon in order to provide couples with a more holistic and comprehensive perspective of marriage.

• Knowing yourself better

  Through counselling, couples better understand their own motivations for getting married and recognize what they want from a partnership thereby identifying their own needs.

 

• Setting realistic expectations

  Another important factor that pre-marital counselling taps on is the role and division of labour of both individuals. Since misunderstanding tends to stem from the most trivial problems in our daily lives, by spelling out our own expectations of the other party allows such matters to be resolved even before it arises.

 

Every engaged couple definitely looks forward to a long, healthy and happy marriage life. To make it happen, it boils down to the effort of working hand in hand to communicate and understand one another.

 

With love,

Aiido

Article was written by Eunice Chiam

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For engaged couples and newlyweds, strengthen your relationship by attending a Marriage Preparation Program.

The course covers topics on communication, roles and expectations, conflict resolution, financial management and others, explored in a conducive setting with qualified facilitators.

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