pre-marital counseling question!?

Question

I'm getting married in May of 2008. My pastor at the church I attend is the one who is going to marry us. In the application to getting married at my church it states that you must meet with the pastor 2-4 times before the ceremony for pre-marital counseling.
So my question is... for those of you who have had to do this... what goes on during this meetings with the pastor. What kind of stuff is he going to address with you. and why do you think this is mandatory?

Answer 1

It's pretty boring.....you basically have a guy sit across the table from you to judge whether or not he sees it fit that you are prepared to get married....personally, since I rarely care what other people think anyways, I found it a waste of time.

He'll ask you what you're thoughts are on money, children, distribution of houseworks/income/means, what your goals are for the future....blah blah.

My fiance and I have already discussed this stuff on our own, and know exactly where we stand, so we only had to go to one meeting LOL.

A lot of churches do this because they get tired of marrying people then having them divorce a year later. This is there way of making sure you're very, very seriously committed to the idea of getting married.

Note- some pre-martial counseling advises you to hold off on sex until the wedding night (this isn't a problem for me, both the HTB and I are virgins), but if I weren't, I'd have an issue with this one...after all, it's YOUR body...

All in all, it's not too painful, just boring.

Good luck and congrats :)

Answer 2

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Answer 3

I'm not sure if you're doing this...but my fiance went to a 'pre-marital seminar' at our church. It was an entire day of stories and videos and 'sharing' things about our relationship (there were about 8 other couples). At the end, the guys were separated from the girls, and each of us were asked to fill out questionnaires. Most questions were pretty easy, like 'how many kids do you want, will someone stay home with the children?' A few weeks after the seminar, we met with our pastor for the first time and from then on we had about 5 meetings in which we discussed the questionnaire and our answers (a computer analyzed the answers to see how compatible we were). If we were incompatible on something, we'd go into greater detail and find out why one of us answered differently. It was really interesting, and fun to see that my husband had a lot of the same morals that I do!

Answer 4

Typically pastors will give both of you a quiz of some sort. You then compare your answers. Points where you differ are then points of discussion. They are all issues that come up with couples in marriage. Child discipline, money, where do you expect to spend thanksgivings & christmases, etc. There are (typically) of course a few about sex, but honestly not anything too intrusive. The point is to make sure you are on the same page here. There are a lot of things people don't think about talking about and then they get married and they have major differences. The pastor typically is not trying to tell you what is right or wrong - that's up to you, but he wants to make sure that you have talked about it and have reached compromises that you both really can live with.

Another aspect is typically they require you to make out a budget. They will give you feed back here if you're unrealistic. If your food budget is largely based on the price of Raman Noodles and Macaronni and Cheese, they are going to say "is that really realistic?" You're going to eat Mac & Cheese 5 days a week so that you can put money towards a stereo? Again, his job is not to tell you how to spend your money, but he is there with some life expeirence (and the experience of counseling other couples who have had issues and didn't talk about this up front), to ask the right questions. If that stereo really is that important to the both of you, maybe you are willing to skimp on food?

It really is good. Couples who have had counseling have a lower divorce rate. He wants to make sure that you really are ready before he gives his blessing to your union. If you really aren't ready, he may encourage you to hold off, maybe delay by 6 months and work the issues out, etc.?

PS: I was engaged to a girl and we went to counseling, and it was a wake up call. We had some very different views and it would have been a disaster. However, when my wife and I got married, we discussed everything, and the quizzes were pretty much lock step. The pastor was a little disappointed because he had nothing to counsel us on. Finally one day we had one question we disagreed on. When I gave my answer, my wife said "what?" Within 10 seconds we had discussed it and realized that she had misread the question and we actually completely agreed. Should have seen the look on the pastor's face. He was so crestfallen. He thought he finally had something to work on us with, but without his prompting not only did we solve it, but we never really had an issue in the first place. :-)

Answer 5

Pre-marital counselling is awesome - EVERYONE should be mandated to do it.
No matter how well you think the two of you know each other, a pastor/minister is just SO experienced and trained, he'll bring up things you two haven't thought of yet.
His duty is to make sure the two of you are well-prepared, so you know what wonderful things - as well as challenges - are ahead of you!
Embrace doing this, and you'll get a LOT out of it!
Good luck!

Answer 6

RE:
pre-marital counseling question!?
I'm getting married in May of 2008. My pastor at the church I attend is the one who is going to marry us. In the application to getting married at my church it states that you must meet with the pastor 2-4 times before the ceremony for pre-marital counseling.
So my question is... for those of...

Answer 7

I know when my husband and I went through ours the pastor had brought up the issue of in laws. Being that my in laws go to that church he knew what I was up against.

He asked us often if we had any issues or concerns we wanted to discuss prior to the wedding. Talked about the fact that while our parents love us and want what's best for us, any advice given should be taken with a grain of salt and that OUR relationship was a separate entity from our parents.

When we began the pastor told us he reserved the right to deny marrying us after counseling was through. He said he only married couples he felt would really last and had the right motives for marriage. I guess we past the test. lol

Answer 8

This is all basically to prepare you for marriage.

The church wants to make sure that you are both entering into the union freely and are "compatible." They also help iron out issues that you may not have addressed and help bring to light some things you may not already know about each other. It's a really good opportunity to get to know your partner even better and start your marriage off on the right foot.

My husband and I dreaded this, but found it enjoyable. So, don't be nervous and enjoy it all.

Answer 9

an ex fiance and i went to a church i always wanted to get married at and talked to the pastor. we decided not to go there because he told us if we were living together we had to move away from each other and to not have any more sex until after the wedding. yeah, right. i understand that in the churches eyes we were living in sin, but come on, even if we agreed to move out, i would had to move back home and he had no where to go because he moved by me to be closer, we lived three hours apart. so that is as far as we got in pre marital counseling.

Answer 10

We were married Catholic, so it may be different. We had to take a self survey to find out how we felt on different subjects (religion, children, money, intimacy, professions). These were done individually and then they were compared to see how compatible we were with each other on these views. I am so glad that we took the time to meet with our priest and walk through the issues. It really opens up communication lines. For us, it was really easy. We talked through a lot of things while we were dating, so we scored really high.

It is nothing to be worried about, they just want to make sure you have put enough thought into the marriage and they are trying to give you the tools to deal with any problems that may arise. So talk with each other and best of luck!