Premarital Counseling
in Houston, TX and Online
Getting Married? Premarital counseling will teach you skills to build a strong, healthy, loving marital foundation.
Premarital counseling is an opportunity for you and your partner to discuss your values in key areas of your relationship. While you are both preparing for marriage, excited and in love, before problems present themselves. Like anything else you might plan for, premarital counseling is an opportunity to discuss and plan for things you will encounter in the future. By working through things ahead of time, you can save yourself unpleasant arguments, hurt feelings, and disconnection in your relationship. We can’t expect anyone to know what we’re thinking, what we need, no matter how many sentences they can finish for us!
Build Communication Skills & Understand Your Attachment Style
The reality is that you and your partner have different perspectives, no matter how similar you feel to one another. Learning how to understand and communicate from those different perspectives is a huge skill that can save your marriage. Premarital counseling helps couples improve communication skills. You may not even realize now how deep your differences go (remember – differences are not a bad thing!). Your culture, upbringing, and personal style can differ. From valuing the importance of eating veggies with every meal, where you spend your money, to how you teach your child a work ethic. You also have preferences for the way you receive and give love. And preferences for how you prefer to connect with others. Understanding your own preferences and that of your partner can increase your connection and ability to give and receive the love you each prefer.
Learn Research Based Relationship Skills
Build Your Foundation With Premarital Counseling
Relationship counseling has an extensive history of research into what works and doesn’t work in marriage. Researchers can even predict divorce based on a few behaviors. Through premarital counseling you and your partner will explore your common behavior patterns and ways of connecting and communicating with one another. Relationships are dynamic and change over time. The honeymoon phase bonds us together and keeps us excited about our partner. Later, the excitement may wane, but the love deepens into a long-term romantic love. Relationships settle into patterns, some healthy, some not so healthy. The relationship you have is the one you actively create with your partner over time. Creating a loving, lasting, healthy relationship takes commitment, trust, and the willingness to look at yourself and not just your partner. When both of you are willing to do this you can create the relationship you want for the long haul.
Premarital counseling questions for exploration in your counseling sessions
Through premarital counseling at Eddins Counseling Group in Houston, Texas, you may consider many questions that explore the values each of you has regarding topics such as parenting, discipline and religion. The following topics are common areas of exploration:
Your love for your partner.
What drew you together? What are your relationship strengths?
Your goals and expectations and plan for the future.
Through premarital counseling you will discuss a shared vision for your future together. You’ll also want to discuss and explore your day to day expectations of your partner, particularly through life changes such as having children. What gender role expectations do you have and how have your family’s gender roles impacted your beliefs and expectations?
Relationships with family members.
No matter what, the bond between you as a couple is the most important. Other than that, you may want to explore relationships with family members, boundaries, how you spend your time together, how you will spend holidays together.
How you approach problems and what you need in times of stress.
You will have stress. However, everyone handles things differently and it can be useful to know what both your needs are and your partner’s.
Life and family building.
You can discuss expectations ranging from where you’d like to settle down, career plans, and whether you’d like to build a family and what that might look like. What do you hope married life will look like?
How will you handle finances.
It’s important to understand both how you and your partner manage money, what your priorities and goals are as well as how you plan on managing it together. Exploring each of your relationship with money ahead of time can circumvent one of the most common areas of disagreements for couples. Consider joint accounts, retirement, budgeting, savings, debts, and major purchases you value such as where to live, children’s education, parental support, etc.
Spirituality.
What are your religious preferences, religious beliefs, traditions, values. Do you plan to take the kids to church? Which one? Every Sunday? Not at all?
Discipline.
What consequences will you provide your children? How will you handle conflict, disagreements, and misbehavior?
Intimacy and connection.
What makes you feel loved? What does your partner do that makes you feel connected? What would you like your intimacy and sex life with one another to be like?
Conflict resolution.
How do you approach problems and important decisions to be made? How will you resolve conflict? What is your experience with conflict? In premarital counseling, you can also explore conflict resolution styles based on each of your unique personality types and learn effective strategies for working together when disagreements present themselves.
Premarital Counseling FAQ's
Premarital counseling helps couples clarify their relationship values and beliefs. It also helps couples to build skills for ongoing communication and discussion.
Before you decide to tie the knot, you may want to test the ropes. Marriage is an incredible commitment and is not to be taken lightly. When you are falling in love and deciding to commit, you may not be so quick to work through issues that arise.
That’s not abnormal, but it’s not the best strategy for longevity. In premarital counseling, you will be proactively breaking down unhealthy behaviors and patterns that could jeopardize your marriage.
Did you know the average marriage lasts 7 years? Did you also know that the average partner waits 6 years to bring up any complaints?
At first, the problem isn’t that bad and then it becomes annoying. Before you know it, you are filing for divorce and you don’t even recognize the person you married.
Premarital counseling prepares you for the long haul.
Plan Ahead for Handling Differences Along the Way
Though it may not seem important now, or easy to say, “I’m sure that will be easy for us,” it’s much better to talk through these things with your future spouse now.
Once you’re actually faced with value dilemmas as a couple, your relationship may be stressed due to finances or other reasons or you may be shocked to find out that you don’t agree.
Exploring premarital questions isn’t about stirring the pot, but rather thinking through things and becoming aware of the little things you might not have even realized you care about. It's also as simple as setting realistic expectations for both of you.
Having these difficult conversations now in an open, loving way paves the road for a healthy, long-term relationship.
You may also get started with a couple assessment to see where each of you fall on core life dimensions. Personality assessments are also available.
Premarital counseling sessions build a foundation for a successful marriage.
They’re important not only because they give you another glimpse into your compatibility, but because they will affect the lives of your future children. If you are on opposite sides of the fence in a lot of ways when it comes to parenting, your future family life will be strengthened and enhanced by premarital relationship counseling.
Counseling sessions help couples identify and explore answers to these questions and plan for handling differences along the way.
Engaged couples taking the time to explore these questions prior to marriage find it easier to successfully navigate challenges that arise later in their relationship.
Strengthen Your Relationship Bond
One of the best benefits to premarital counseling is that it can strengthen the bond you have with one another.
Learning how to communicate with one another in an effective way, understanding your own and your partner’s needs and how to meet them, and simply talking together about the big things can reinforce and strengthen the connection you have.
Build a Healthy Relationship Bond
Having a stable, healthy relationship has been shown to positively impact:
- your physical health,
- your mental health,
- increased resiliency and of course,
- your quality of life.
Investing in a solid foundation is well worth it for the long-term!
A healthy marriage contributes to a healthy life. Engaging in premarital counseling can help protect your relationship for long-term success.
If one or both of you already has children, parenting issues or questions about blending a family or step-parenting may have already surfaced. It can be confusing both for parents and children!
Premarital therapy incorporates skills common to couples therapy, marriage counseling and family therapy on roles and relationships, effective parenting, communication skills, and boundary setting.
Marrying couples may also want to discuss co-parenting and how to involve your partner in the process. It’s normal to experience difficult emotions when blending a family. It can be helpful to process these and ensure you have a solid foundation as you build your family together.
Pre marriage counseling can address your questions and concerns about blending a family, step-parenting and how to help your children transition smoothly. There are a number of factors to explore such as rituals and traditions, roles and responsibilities, managing schedules and time together, relationship expectations and parenting issues, difficulty accepting a new parent, and of course changes in family relationships.
Learning communication skills from the beginning and ways to strengthen the bonds with children and each other can go a long way in establishing a solid foundation for your new family.
Our premarital counseling providers are licensed therapists with specialized marriage and family counseling and couples counseling training. They have worked extensively with couples at various stages of their relationship. They understand the roadblocks couples often encounter along the way as well as the benefit of building communication skills, coping skills, and conflict resolution skills from the beginning.
Further, learning to utilize couples counseling and relationship coaching as a resource is an excellent tool for your marriage.
Think of it as going to the doctor when you get sick. We aren’t taught relationship skills in school. It’s normal to experience bumps along the way when you’re communicating, bonding and partnering with another person. Relationship counseling is there to teach you skills you haven’t learned elsewhere.
We are proud members of Twogether In Texas for premarital counseling. Partnering with this program means your marriage license fee is waived upon completion of pre marriage counseling.
Premarital Counseling Online
Premarital counseling services are also available online. If you and your partner are ready to get started with premarital counseling, but find distance, traffic or scheduling difficult, online counseling may be more convenient. Your pre marriage counselor will provide you with a secure video link to use for online therapy sessions. You will need to have access to a reliable internet connection and computer. For more information, contact us at 832-559-2622.
How to Get Started with Premarital Counseling
If you and your partner are ready to meet with a premarital counselor in Houston, TX give us a call or click below to schedule an appointment. Eddins Counseling Group understands the importance of a strong foundation before getting married. We want to help you establish that! You can also waive your marriage license fee by participating in premarital counseling sessions. Ask us for more information.
Get Help From a Specialist in Premarital Counseling
An Phong “AP” Vo
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BOOK AN APPOINTMENTVanessa Guidry
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BOOK AN APPOINTMENTWhat Clients Are Saying
Online Sessions Going Well
It has been easy with the online video chat, the counselor has a good mix of listening to us and talking.