Anita Jacob

Ahhh, the sweetness of young love. The joy and excitement of choosing to get married, the venue to book, the dress to find, the flavour of the cake and the flowers to decide on.

Often with all the planning that happens, little attention is paid to the couple actually preparing for the long road of marriage. The couple may think, “we’ll figure it out along the way”, or “ we know we belong together, so that should be enough!” Unfortunately, when the excitement dies down and the marriage journey begins, this often proves not to be enough. That’s why premarital counselling is so important as it creates a space for couples to take a breath and think about the practicalities and emotions that come with planning for marriage.

The couples that come to me prior to marriage have less baggage and resentments built up because there isn’t yet a sense of failed expectations and hurt associated with these. They are able to say what they hope for and together can talk about their differences and hear each other. Those who come after being married for some time carry hurt and resentments, having had expectations of how things would be and now finding that they are disappointed. Often they seem disillusioned because they didn’t think the problems others experienced, would be their experience, too. They assumed they would be able to figure it out, or they just hadn’t thought that people really argue about these things.

Some of the topics that often come up include:

• Communication – shutting down versus engaging more when upset, or rituals around connection and how much communication is expected.
• Finances – is there a budget? How do individual expenses factor into the family budget? Some couples have shared accounts, others have individual accounts, and some have both with a ‘pocket money’ account for each person.
• Family – How much should family be involved? There are so many different thoughts about this as everyone has different relationships with their families. She might want to talk to her mother every day and tell her all about everything that’s happening in the marriage. He may be more private and value more time with just the two of them, wanting to figure things out without outside influence. Seeing family once a month would be fine with him, but seeing them every week would be her preference.
• Chores – I’m sure this one comes as no surprise Who does what? How often? Is there a specific way each task should be done? What if both of you work stressful jobs or long hours? What if only one of you does – do the chores automatically fall on the other one?

There are so many more issues that all couples face, but these are some of the ones I see most often. On the surface, you’d think just talking about things would be enough to solve them and be good. Unfortunately, because we have so much we bring into marriage, it’s not that simple. We assume that because our family did something a certain way, that’s the way it ought to be done… so when our partner does it very differently, it’s not as simple as just talking about which way is right.

If you are preparing to get married or love someone who is preparing for this journey, please encourage them to do a few sessions of premarital counselling, just to address some of these issues and possibly others.