Premarital Counseling Questions and Answers
Why do we need premarital?
Some couples wonder about the importance of premarital counseling. With a long wedding planning checklist, the focus on The Big Day can seem more important than the relationship the wedding is to celebrate. Once the wedding day is over, couples who have had the pleasure using one of Austin’s premarital counseling programs say that there are definitely advantages of premarital therapy.
Identifying your relationships unique strengths- similar to a personality test for your relationship- is one huge advantage of premarital therapy. Most engaged couples will say “we love each other!” which is great- but lets get more specific on what you are already naturally really good at doing. Maybe its communication. Maybe you already compliment each other well when it comes to your finances, and you trust each other to do what you are each better at with money. Maybe your friends and family are super supportive of your relationship. Identifying and exploring what you are already doing well is important in the beginning of a lifelong commitment- possibly even more important than another key component of premarital counseling.
Identifying and addressing your relationship’s growth areas is helpful for any couple. To take the responsibility to learn about your growth areas and how to improve in them at the beginning of your lifelong commitment shows real devotion to the success of your marriage. Not to mention, it is so much easier to find out your growth areas before they cause arguments and grief. In premarital therapy, discovering growth areas and beginning to grow in those areas with the help of a relationship professional means you and your soon-to-be spouse are solving problems before they begin.
Here’s something else worth considering:
Because you can reduce your risk of divorce by 30%.
Of course you aren’t thinking about divorce as you pick out wedding colors, venues, and wedding cake flavors. But, it’s worth noting, isn’t it?
What will we do in premarital counseling?
Depending upon who you choose to work with your relationship, the work you do in your premarital counseling program will vary.
Clergy will likely have a religious focus. Couples who do their premarital counseling with their minister or their wedding officiant may be interested in preparing their relationship for long-term commitment based on their faith and spiritual beliefs.
Marriage and Family Therapists who provide premarital therapy will likely have more of a relational focus, working with you on the dynamics of your relationship and your families of origin.
Check to see if your premarital counselor is trained in Prepare-Enrich, as they should be able to offer you a structured approach to exploring your relationships strengths and weaknesses using your faith or religious background(s) OR not. Many clergy and psychotherapists are trained using this tool, so when you are shopping around, ask if this is how the premarital counseling program is structured.
How does couples therapy work with insurance?
Using insurance for therapy has several drawbacks.
- Security and identity are drastically compromised when a person’s submits health claims through insurance. Some statistics indicate that data hacking and information technology breaches now account for most confidentiality breaches of medical data, with 132 million records breached this way in 2017.
- In order to utilize health insurance (if your policy covers it) one person in the couple must be given a diagnosis. After one of you has volunteered to be “the sick one” couples therapy then is, as far as insurance is concerned, utilized to treat that person’s diagnosis. Though this is sometimes certainly the case for patients, oftentimes, giving one partner an arbitrary diagnosis in order to go through insurance is fraudulent.
- Some people may be reluctant to seek a mental health diagnosis because having one on record can complicate the possibility of getting healthcare coverage in the future. It may also compromise employment opportunities.
- When insurance companies do agree to “cover” mental health, it is often with limitations on number of sessions, which practitioner a patient may see, and continual verification that the patient is still “sick,” in order for insurance to pay for a portion their session fees.
More premarital therapy questions?
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