Indianapolis Marriage Counseling

Is Pre Marital Counseling Right For You?
By Matt Chang

 Marital counseling although often misunderstood, is an excellent way to enrich your relationship and help it grow into a satisfying and stable marriage. Marital counseling help is somewhat different from that of premarital counseling. Whereas pre-marital counseling is designed to help insure that your love grows and flourishes, marital counseling is more geared towards married couples that are experiencing marital difficulties and have a willingness to work things out.


When you engage in coaching sessions to help make your marriage a success, you create an awareness of marital issues and problems that might occur in marital relationship. Marriage counseling also assists people in determining if they are fully ready for marriage. Counseling sessions range from two or more meetings to relatively long discussions.

Religious counselors commonly give counseling. Pastoral counselors provide spiritual as well as psychological resources to improve communication among couples. Pastoral counseling programs are designed to assist the couple in building a biblical understanding and foundation for their married life. Depending on your religious background, religious counseling may be a good idea. The only challenge with this type of counseling is that quite often the coaching as a religious slant to it.

Religious institutions, colleges and other educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and professional marriage counselors offer pre-marriage counseling courses. Counseling courses generally cover topics such as identifying strength and growth areas, developing conflict resolution skills, intimacy and sexuality issues, values and beliefs, setting up family goals, personality types, family origin issues, role relationships, communication skills, marriage expectations, children and parenting issues, and, the most important of all, financial issues.

In addition to the above, marriage counseling courses share group experiences, and encourage reading and homework activities. These activities help couples build a solid foundation for their life. Pre-marriage counseling programs are also offered online. A number of online pre-marriage counseling programs present a wedding information packet to the couple in the beginning.

Before choosing a pre-marriage counselor, check his certification, educational background, professional associations, and training. Also, check whether he has experience with the job, because that can be an important factor.

Often misunderstood, many people think that marital counseling is only for marriages in trouble. In actuality, marital counseling help is therapeutic not only for the relationship, but for each individual in that relationship. The perceived stigma against seeking marital counseling is often not real.

It is important that you realize that investing in marital counseling help is always less costly (monetarily and emotionally) than investing in a divorce. It is the opinion of many experts that pre-marital and marital counseling help are definitely a positive step in the right direction towards making a marriage work, rather than ending it.

For more information on pre marriage counseling visit newlywedsurvivalguide.com for marriage counseling tips and a guide to counseling for marriage.