For about the cost of the wedding cake, you and your partner can share an experience that will pay rich dividends for your life as a couple: premarital counseling. Encouraged by some religious institutions and required by others, premarital counseling offers couples an opportunity to reflect on your life together, identifying strengths and areas for growth in your relationship.
With a trained counselor, you will look at areas such as:
How you communicate: how do you let your partner know what you want? How do you share your feelings such as: hurt, disappointment, appreciation, tenderness?
How you deal with conflict (including how you fight). Learn the difference between “You” messages, which often attack or blame, and “I” messages, which convey your wishes and feelings.
Areas of stress in your current life and how you care for yourself and each other. (How do you soothe your partner? Yourself? What do you find comforting? Encouraging?)
Financial management: making a budget; who pays the bills; exploring attitudes towards money and power sharing.
Your families of origin: What are your traditions? How are they similar, different? What templates or norms are you bringing into your new relationship from the family you grew up in? Did they talk openly, share feelings, listen, collaborate?
How do you arrange time alone and time together?
How do (or will) you divide up and share household responsibilities?
How do you talk about sexual matters? Are you free to say what you want?
What’s important to you as you raise children?
How are your spiritual traditions similar and different? What do you value?
Couples often find that this time for reflection and dialogue is an oasis in the midst of busy work lives and wedding planning. Officiating clergy may welcome this process as an adjunct to their meetings to plan the wedding. We strongly encourage couples to initiate this process at least six months before their wedding date.
For more information or to arrange an appointment, contact:
Premarital Counseling
For about the cost of the wedding cake, you and your partner can share an experience that will pay rich dividends for your life as a couple: premarital counseling. Encouraged by some religious institutions and required by others, premarital counseling offers couples an opportunity to reflect on your life together, identifying strengths and areas for growth in your relationship.
With a trained counselor, you will look at areas such as:
Couples often find that this time for reflection and dialogue is an oasis in the midst of busy work lives and wedding planning. Officiating clergy may welcome this process as an adjunct to their meetings to plan the wedding. We strongly encourage couples to initiate this process at least six months before their wedding date.
For more information or to arrange an appointment, contact:
Lynn Anderson at PSI at St. John’s in the Village: landerson@mindspirit.org
Alan Chisholm at PSI at St. Bart’s: achisholm@mindspirit.org
Gary Hellman at PSI at St. John’s in the Village: ghellman@mindspirit.org
Kim Jones at PSI on the Upper West Side: kjones@mindspirig.org
Julia Kristeller at PSI at Trinity Wall Street: jkristeller@mindspirit.org
Alison Peet at PSI at on the Upper West Side: apeet@mindspirit.org
Mary Ragan at PSI at Trinity Wall Street: mragan@mindspirit.org