Online Marriage Preparation Courses?

I havent done any online ones, but we did go through a book called 131 questions to ask before you get married. It covered every topic in a long term relationship. I jave also been told the book called the 7 languages if love is also very good. We havent gone through that yet but I know it is one the reading list for the premarital counselling we have to go through to get married at the church we are having the ceremony at.

I hope it’s ok I ask this... Is premarital counseling/marriage preparation courses a religious tradition? Just wondering.

View Quoted Comment No not really a religious tradition (although it’s required for some religions), just something a lot of people do before marriage. The counseling is supposed to help you talk with your spouse about important issues and learn more about each other before marriage. It apparently helps with lowering the divorce rate, but if I’m being completely honest, I only went to PreCana and I’d never recommend that to anyone. Complete waste of time. I wrote about it the other day in another post about the same topic but let’s just say it was bad. I don’t have experience with other types of counseling so I can’t comment as to its effectiveness. If it were me I wouldn’t spend the money on online courses, instead I would research various marriage issues that come up - children, holidays, budgeting, etc. and have a conversation about them. PreCana taught me that our relationship is between my FH and I, and we don’t need or want anyone else telling us how to feel.

View Quoted Comment That is a fantastic book. I'd recommended you both reading it then having a discussion about it. We all view expressions of love in different ways. My fiancee and I just had a discussion about this yesterday.

My Fiancé and I are not religious and we have been going to a premarital counselor, we had no specific issues to work on but just wanted to cover our basis and we both believe help from professionals won't hurt only help. We set it up for 6 sessions before our wedding and he has us reading the 7 principles to making a marriage work. It's a really good book. It takes us through questions to ask each other, our past so we see how we handle stressful or difficult situations and a lot of other knowledge to help us figure each other out in a deeper connection.

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I think a lot of religious places require them and their content really varies depending on where you go. We have to do ours with our church but it's definitely more counselling that it is anything faith related. It goes over stress management, communication, conflict resolution, expectations for household maintenance, and financial management. It even touches on personality traits and how you spend time together/your level of activity (introverted/extraverted).

So far it has surpassed my expectations since we've been together for 8 years and they do treat us like an established couple, just provide a couple of tools that are very helpful. Definitely better than the "don't use birth control" I had expected because of previous talks with friends.

This is a really useful tool: couplecheckup.com

You linked an Indian matchmaking website? Wedding Wire is mostly people who are engaged and planning weddings. I am engaged, which is why I was asking about premarital counseling.

Prepare and Enrich! They have a religious and a secular option. You can find counselors that facilitate the program on their website. We're doing it through our church in March and we are SO excited. I'm getting my master's in counseling so I really geek out about going through this program, it's incredible!

I guess you missed the part where she says “we”; she is in a relationship.

Yes! We have been doing Prologue together, but I'm sure there are others. It really helps to have a dialogue together about our future together, our expectations of the marriage, and work on some of our individual flaws. We also both want to be better communicators, especially since we both differ in our styles, and it helps with that.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! My Amazon cart is full of great books now! FH is about to get some homework, haha!

The Love Languages book is SUCH a good resource! NYT also did a column a couple years ago about a set of 36 questions that make you "fall in love with anyone" if you go through them together--interesting stuff, and kind of a neat exercise to do with your partner: http://36questionsinlove.com/