Why we do marriage preparation the way we do.
So here’s the deal about marriage: it’s really hard. Even when all the stars are aligned in your favor, it’s still hard. Even if you marry your 10/10, you adore each other’s families, you share the same faith and culture, your finances are in tip top shape, you agree on everything, and you can’t get enough of each other — it’s still hard. Why? Well, for starters, the scenario I just described in that massive run-on sentence is right out of a Hallmark movie and therefore removed from reality. The more realistic setup is that two lovely but flawed people fall in love, and after a period of dating, decide to commit to spending the rest of their lives together.
The rest of their lives together. Think about that statement for a minute. It’s such a cliche phrase, uttered in the most nonchalant ways, and yet it means serious stuff. As the marriage vows go, you promise to love and honor each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, through good times and bad, for richer and for poorer, until death do you part. It means sticking together in a future unknown, no matter what life throws at you. It means committing to permanence even though everything else, including your lovely messy selves, will change. For better or for worse, time and time again.
This is a tall order and you might be wondering: is this gig even possible? I once heard someone say that marriage is humanly impossible. It certainly seems that way at times. But. If we insert God in the equation of love, then marriage isn’t just possible, but a happy marriage is actually, well and truly, within your reach.
So, what can one do to live out a happy marriage? Well, you can invest in a solid marriage preparation course. I don’t mean taking one of those weekend crash courses where they zip through a bunch of topics over the span of 12-16 hours, and by the end of it your head is spinning from information overload. And let’s be honest, by Sunday night, do you feel properly prepared for the biggest decision of your life? I recognize that something is better than nothing (maybe?), and I do appreciate the effort that parishes make to prepare their engaged couples.
What would be a better way to prepare for the life that happens after the wedding? This is the question that I’ve tried to answer since my own experience as a bride. The year before we married, we actually took two marriage preparation courses. The first was your vanilla version with a million couples, and it truly felt like most of us were there just to get the certificate of completion. It was such a meh course that we ended up asking a trusted friend of ours, with a lot of mileage in marriage and family life, if he could prepare us better. He graciously agreed, and we spent the next four months meeting with him. We learned so much about our faith, about God’s plan for marriage, as well as the practicalities and challenges of married life. Feeling eternally grateful for having received this level of preparation, my husband and I decided to pay it forward and help engaged couples as part of our ministry.
The kind of marriage preparation we offer isn’t an easy sell sometimes. It takes time, commitment and a bit of money. In a world where we are used to getting things quickly, it’s hard to convince couples as to why they should invest time and money to this enterprise (especially when their local parish is offering the crash course for a tenth of the time and cost). I invite couples to think of all the months of preparation and thousands upon thousands of dollars spent on the Wedding Day. Don’t get me wrong, I loved our wedding day to the max and yes, it was An Event all right. But perhaps we can do a bit of quick math and think of how much we’re spending on one day versus how much we’re spending on multiple decades together. It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?
So let’s do this right.
Our particular flavor of marriage prep provides plenty of guided time to prepare for your life together. Through a combination of seminars, exercises and coaching sessions, we aim to provide you with a solid understanding of what marriage, why it matters, and how to live it in a way that when you look back on you life, you can be one of the fortunate couples to say, “our marriage just got better and better through the years.” Is this hard to do? You bet. Is it possible? Yes, absolutely, because with God all things are possible.
Speaking of God, we believe that He is the author of marriage and that He is ever present in each marriage. In fact, it takes Three to Get Married. Therefore, we always start our course by defining what marriage actually is (this takes a bit of time, given our current climate) and explain how and why it is a covenant, a common good, a vocation, and a sacrament. I call these the first principles, since everything else will flow from these beliefs.
We then divide the course into two parts. The first part is theoretical in nature and covers key areas of a marriage, such as communication, conflict resolution, expectations, faith, sex and intimacy, children, in laws, finances, etc. We do a deep dive on each topic and then give the couple the opportunity to discuss with each other their experiences and hopes.
The second part of the course is more focused on relationship coaching. It aims to give the couple an awareness of specific issues in their relationship that could potentially cause problems in the future. We do this by administering an in-depth assessment called Prepare/Enrich. By completing the assessment and then discussing the results, couples gain a deeper understanding of each other and bring to awareness existing and potential issues. We give the couple the space they need to work through the issues, as well as tools for conflict resolution. The aim is not to solve the problem for them, but to give them a blueprint for resolving issues as they arise down the road.
As you can see, the purpose of this course is to be both thorough in the theory and personalized to the unique reality of the couple. Our hope is that by the end of the program, the couple will take with them a solid understanding of the Catholic Church’s teachings on marriage and family, a deeper understanding of each other and their relationship dynamic, and finally, a set of tools and resources that they can tap into as needed.
This is our humble attempt at helping couples experience the greatest adventure of their lives to the fullest, come what may. A happy marriage is a priceless treasure and one that can change the course of many people’s lives for the better. If you are currently engaged or considering marriage and would like to know more, I’d love to hear from you!
