Premarital Counseling

premarital   counseling

ready for premarital counseling?

is your relationship sustainable?

  • Is the excitement you feel about starting a new life with someone dampened at all by wondering exactly how it will work?
  • Does it seem like things might work out better for one of you than the other? (Or does your partner fear that?)
  • Are you at all aware of the possible red flags you might have missed (or are ignoring) about your relationship that could come back to bite you in the ass later?
  • Is anyone (yourself included) trying to convince you that the relationship problems you aren’t currently addressing will go away?
  • Can you say for certain that the communication style you now employ as a couple is sustainable for the future?
  • Do you desire a closer more intimate relationship with your partner but fear it’s just not possible?
  • Would you like to feel more confident going forward with your partner knowing you have valuable communication tools in place?

Making the commitment to live together is a big deal. Whether you’re getting married or moving in together without the legalities, cohabitation with another human can really bring up our shit. To paraphrase a wise text, love brings up everything unlike itself in order to be healed. So if it’s inevitable that it’s going to be coming up, isn’t it wise to be well prepared? Premarital counseling can really help.

No matter how compatible you are, working on being good partners as early as you possibly can reaps exponential rewards.

Old myths about marriage and spousal partnership abound, and some can serve to slow or stop our growth. All that “happily ever after” stuff masks the very real fact that sustaining a healthy committed relationship is always going to include some hard work. Notions like “the one” and “soul mate” are interesting concepts anecdotally but have little to do with the actuality of one human being in close relationship with another. Other romantic myths such as “If we’re meant to be with each other we shouldn’t need premarital counseling” are likewise as unhelpful as they are incorrect.

The work it takes to make a relationship really work for both parties is ongoing, but the good news is that with the right tools it actually gets progressively easier (and more fun). And the benefit for doing this type of work early (as opposed to later) is that you get just that much more time to really enjoy being together.

Call me at 323 422-7366 or email me at scottjohnsonmft@gmail.com to set up a free initial consultation.