Has premarital counseling helped anyone before their wedding?

My fiancée and I are together 7 years and in the beginning had very similar struggles with communication. We went to couples counseling for about a year and it helped tremendously. I will say it can get much better as long as both parties are really committed to being open and learning and adapting!

View Quoted Comment Thank you so much because this gives me hope. He’s super stubborn and he honestly thinks counseling is a waste of time and money but if it helps us later on especially if we’re getting married soon I believe it’ll benefit us more than anything.

Definitely! We started our premarital sessions about two months ago and we’ve shed tears, we’ve discussed things that I thought we’ve moved past, we’ve shared laughs, and even been reminded of little things that are special to us. The communication has gotten better, each session we come away with key points to practice that have helped us. Two that stick out to me are: 1.) Is that helpful or hurtful and 2.) Do you want advice or want me to just listen

View Quoted Comment Those are such great points because it’s so relatable. It’s one thing to ask for advice but when I don’t even ask he would continue to talk and “correct” me and it’s s starting to get to me. He criticizes and belittles a lot and I don’t think he realizes that a lot of things he says and how he says it hurts my feelings.

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Yes! I think it would be a good idea. I know our officiant started off with an assessment which we did separately. He reviews the results which just shows how you answered, if you’re on the same page/agree or disagree with certain things. He has work books that we may use during our sessions, his main goal is to get us on the same page if we are not. And the best part is that the sessions are for life. Yes, even after the wedding we can still go to him for counseling.

We've been together 5 years and started going last year. It brought out issues we didn't know we had, and I think we're so much better off now. I think every couple could benefit from counseling.

It has helped us greatly we found tools to help us better communicate and learn that basically when you focus on loving each other a lot of the arguments go away.

Absolutely it will! We did it last year and it was a tremendous help to identifying communicative patterns that are destructive. This is key for me as I often have to deal with his tortured creative side that emerged when things are not going well in his industry. So I have learned to let him experience that without me taking ownership of it. So it was awesome and highly recommended. I honestly think that’s what fast tracked our engagement by the way.

I would definitely try it, it’s helped a lot of people! And you could always continue with marriage counseling after the wedding if you feel like you still need to improve communication. For me personally, it didn’t help a lot. We were going to have the pastor at our church officiate the wedding and do counseling with us. However, he was unavailable that weekend and we asked one of my old family friends to officiate. He wanted to do premarital counseling beforehand as well. He has only done one wedding in the past. He was trying to be helpful but didn’t bring up anything that FH and I didn’t already know. Because he doesn’t do this regularly, I don’t think he had as much of a “plan.” So my best advice is to find someone who does it frequently and actually has an outline, whether that’s a pastor or an actual counselor.

Just wanted to check in and see how things are going now 🙂


My FH and I have horrible communication lately and it’s been this way for going in months and I know we need premarital counseling but he absolutely refuses. Idk what to do 😞

View Quoted Comment We have yet to do any counseling. My fiancé thinks it’s a waste of time and money. We’ve kinda talked it out and so far we haven’t had any major arguments but we still have some miscommunication here and there. I just hate it when he says things like “why don’t you use your brain? Why can’t you understand?”

I am a FIRM believer in premarital counseling! It opened my fiancé and my eyes up to soooo much! We took counseling prior to getting engaged, once we knew we were in it for the long run. Also I loved that we were challenged to think about things prior to marriage that most couples encounter after marriage. It felt like they were equipping us to be able to weather the storms or lessen the impact of them should they arise. Also yes it definitely helped with our communication 🙂.