Followup on Dreamgirl''s 7 Things

[ShalaJ]

First of all, bravo on that post Dreamgirl. I think way too many girls (in general, not specific to this forum) put more effort into preparing for their wedding than preparing for their marriage. It''s important for us all to go into this with a keen awareness that after the ring and the dress and the wedding and party, there''s a real life to live, and it won''t always be beautiful and romantic.

So my question to all you lovely LIW''s is this: What have/will you and your FF do to prepare for married life? Premarital counseling (religious or otherwise)? Marriage Education courses? Develop relationships with mentor-type couples? Personally I''d like to do a marriage education course, but I''d love to hear from you ladies what your experiences have been.

 

[MrsHToBe]

We won''t prepare at all. As of right now, we won''t be married for another couple of years, putting our relationship around the 10+ year mark. We''ve also been living together for years, and have a 4-year-old DD, so we have lots of experience with being together, etc.

 

[ShalaJ]

I agree than in your circumstances any of those marriage prep courses designed for the (for lack of a better term) less-experienced couples would be redundant.

My FF and I have been together 3.5 years and lived together 1.5. I think what I''d hope to get out of an education class would be stuff like how to manage household finances, planning our family, how to deal with things as a couple (coping with tragedies such as loss of parents, etc.)

Is there anyone on here who has actually taken any marriage prep courses already?

 

[mrscushion]

Hi Shala! My SO and I worked through a book called The Ten Conversations You Must Have Before You Get Married by Guy Grenier. The book, which covers ten major areas like "children," "money," or "location," asks you to have conversations on topics like where you want to live, the life style each partner aspires to you, whether you want children, how you want to raise them, each partner''s career expectations and aspirations and what they might mean for the relationship, whether you expect to take care of aging family members and to what extent, etc., etc. SO and I were able to breeze through most of the chapters, but there were one or two we went through in depth. I would expect that to be similar for most couples. Having those purposeful talks, guided by the book, was helpful to us.

I like the idea of pre-marital "counseling" / marriage prep sessions, particularly if they''re focused on teaching the couple effective conflict resolution techniques, as I think those are key. I''m really not sure SO and I need it, but I think I''ll look into it anyway once we get engaged.

 

[Pandora II]

We waited till our mid-30''s to get married and lived together for 4 years before we actually married. I''d had several long-term ''living together'' relationships before I met DH and we''d both been supporting ourselves for 14 years plus. We also owned our own home and had secure finances before we married. We''d coped with major illness, redundancy, mental illness and a fair few other challenges with no problems at all.

I think that probably gave us more of an idea than any course would - since we got married the only thing that has changed is that I''m expecting a baby in May.

Now that we are clueless about - and so we''re going on a course

.

(I hear they don''t get delivered with DVDs

)

 

[ShalaJ]

Date: 1/3/2009 9:10:13 PM
Author: Pandora II
We waited till our mid-30''s to get married and lived together for 4 years before we actually married. I''d had several long-term ''living together'' relationships before I met DH and we''d both been supporting ourselves for 14 years plus. We also owned our own home and had secure finances before we married. We''d coped with major illness, redundancy, mental illness and a fair few other challenges with no problems at all.


I think that probably gave us more of an idea than any course would - since we got married the only thing that has changed is that I''m expecting a baby in May.


Now that we are clueless about - and so we''re going on a course

.


(I hear they don''t get delivered with DVDs

)

So happy to hear that! And congratulations! One of the reasons I''m interested to hear about this topic from my fellow LIW''s is because it came up frequently in discussions in my college classes (I was a Family Studies major). We had many debates about why so many young couples go into marriage unprepared, and how some people do more research before they buy a tv than before they raise a child. Some things we''re not born knowing how to do.

 

[Smurfysmiles]

We''ve already brought up all the important issues but we also are doing a 12 hour marriage counseling course required by the church.

 

[Smurfysmiles]

I''d also like to point out that marriage counseling is still fairly new in the whole scope of everything. I''m not saying it''s a bad thing, but something to remember is that people have been raising families and getting married for a VERY long time, loooong before we had any of these books and dvds, and I''d put 1000 bucks down saying that not every one was them was miserable. We do have some things we knew to discuss before we got engaged but some things have not come up just because it hasn''t been brought up in a conversation. I don''t think if we don''t get to one or two things before the actual wedding that the marriage will be doomed.

Ok, just wanted to throw that out there lol

 

[princesss]

I really want to take a pre-marital counseling class/weekend/whatever. BF and I are really good at communicating for the most part, but I'd like an environment where we are forced to talk about the big issues, and where we learn a little bit more about the way we each communicate. We are VERY different people (and very similar people at the same time) so it'd be really nice to learn the expectations we each have going into marriage and raising kids before we get there, you know?

ETA: Obviously we already talk about these things, but I feel like we go more in depth with a mediator when we're forced to think about situations we wouldn't come up with in our own talks.

 

[Rhea]

We didn''t take any courses or classes. We had never lived together, or even in the same country. Now DH and I discussed doing something, but since we couldn''t be in the same country for longer than visits it didn''t seem worthwhile and most places we contacted didn''t do a martial course where only one part of the couple attended.

I did Family Studies in university too! I also attended some counseling on my own, but that was mostly to help with an international move, which I''ve found much harder than being married.

 

[musey]

Date: 1/3/2009 9:10:13 PM
Author: Pandora II
We waited till our mid-30's to get married and lived together for 4 years before we actually married. I'd had several long-term 'living together' relationships before I met DH and we'd both been supporting ourselves for 14 years plus. We also owned our own home and had secure finances before we married. We'd coped with major illness, redundancy, mental illness and a fair few other challenges with no problems at all.

I think that probably gave us more of an idea than any course would - since we got married the only thing that has changed is that I'm expecting a baby in May.

Ditto. Except for the expecting a baby part. The only thing that's changed for us since the wedding is that we've gone from splitting everything 50/50 to pooled finances, which has ended up being the same thing minus relieved tension on whoever may be making less money at the time.

We were married at 24 and had been living together for 2.5 years at that point (together just under 5). The cohabitation, at least the way we did it, was as good a preparation as we could've gotten for general married life. It's the big stuff, like children and other life events, that we'll need a little guidance with down the road. Rather than get wrapped up in that stuff now, long before we'll need the information, we plan to seek whatever training and therapy may benefit us once we're in or approaching the situation. Sorta like cramming for a test that you'll take many years in the future vs. studying right before and having a cheat sheet during

 

[Dreamgirl]

Date: 1/3/2009 6:28:00 PM
Author:ShalaJ
First of all, bravo on that post Dreamgirl. I think way too many girls (in general, not specific to this forum) put more effort into preparing for their wedding than preparing for their marriage. It's important for us all to go into this with a keen awareness that after the ring and the dress and the wedding and party, there's a real life to live, and it won't always be beautiful and romantic.

So my question to all you lovely LIW's is this: What have/will you and your FF do to prepare for married life? Premarital counseling (religious or otherwise)? Marriage Education courses? Develop relationships with mentor-type couples? Personally I'd like to do a marriage education course, but I'd love to hear from you ladies what your experiences have been.

Well thank you! For those of you wondering what post Shala is talking about, you can find it: here

We probably wont take courses or counseling before marriage. After being together 10.5 years (still not engaged) I think we know each other pretty well. We know what drives each other mad and just how far you have to push buttons to fly off the handle. We know what makes each other laugh, cry and dance with joy! We have been through a LOT through our time together and I think we have survived everything well. I think our relationship has been a 'preparing for marriage' course all on it's own. I myself need to work on growing up a bit more (27, but don't we always grow up thru life...) and I'll be ready to go! He needs to find a better job (looking) and save up more money. I think that's all the preparing we need to do as of now....

 

[tessari]

I don''t think we''ll do anything like that...but I know what you mean, I almost want to elope bc I want to get to the marraige part and focus on that instead of the wedding part.

As far as talking about facing challenges: we sort of did that, went over a list of things. But with issues like having elderly parents move in, money issues, etc. a person can say one thing and then behave completely differently once faced with the challenge. So I guess that''s one thing to expect.