Premarital counselling demystified

What really happens in premarital counselling?

One of the first questions that typically clients ask me about premarital counselling is whether they can attend it individually or whether they should attend as a couple. And how will it help them?

• Premarital counselling can be attended individually or as a couple.
• It could help couples who have been in a relationship for a while who want to address their relationship issues before they take the next steps of getting married / take a decision on their relationship.
• It could also help couples who are planning to get married in an arranged marriage set up and may not know each other very well.  The process will facilitate a better understanding of each other and to talk about key topics that are relevant in a long term relationship.
• Individual clients also could benefit from premarital counselling to understand their own ideas and definitions regarding relationship / marriage, address their fears if any and be prepared for the commitments necessary for a marital relationship.
• Pre-marital counselling may take six to eight sessions, if there are no prior significant relationship issues.   Here are some of the topics that are typically discussed in pre-marital counselling.

Your understanding of Marriage:

Each one of you will have a template of what a marriage is, based upon what you have seen in your family, be it your parents or other significant relatives. Also there may be strong messages or modelling regarding how love, care and affection are expressed in your family.  When discussing your understanding of marriage with your partner, it becomes feasible to arrive at a new template of marriage that could work for the both of you. This could be a good time to discuss why you both chose each other and your motivations to get married to each other.

Roles, responsibilities and expectations:

Taking off from your understanding of marriage it is important to discuss the roles and responsibilities that you intend to share with each other. Though it is preferable to have an equitable partnership in terms of responsibilities, it is important to discuss, deliberate and perhaps negotiate on what responsibility each partner will take up and how shared responsibilities will be divided among each other and what you expect from each other. This includes areas like financial contributions, home management responsibilities, every day domestic chores, child rearing and care, elderly care etc.

This discussion also can include the topic of your involvement, extent of support and care needed for both of your parents or other family members.

Extent of family involvement:

It is important to discuss the extent of family involvement in your affairs. This might include where you would stay as a couple, will it be with one of your parents? If your parents are in a different city how often you would visit and stay at your parents and your partners parents?

How to handle situations if either of you is not able to get along with your partner’s parents? How much are parents going to be involved in decisions that you both might make – both major and minor decisions?

Discussion on your values.  What is negotiable and what is not:

It is important to understand what your own values are and what your partner’s values are. It is important that your core values match with each other as much as possible.

For example for Nita – being honest and open with partner is a very important value. She believes that there cannot be any secrets between partners.  And she considers this to be a non negotiable value for herself and relationship.  It is important that her partner Rishab also has similar values or is agreeable to her expectation in this regard.

The Money topic:

A lot of couples consider the topic of money to be awkward and tend to avoid it. This can cause a lot of issues downstream when your partner’s approach and attitude towards money is starkly different from yours. It is important to discuss your overall financial situation, liabilities if any with your future partner.

If both partners are employed, or if one is employed, either way it is important to discuss what will be the financial contribution to the family/house hold and how money matters will be discussed and decisions made up on. It is important to know the attitude of your partner towards spending, saving, investments etc. And if it is different, you need to see whether you and your partner are willing to arrive at common ground on these areas.

For example Sushma likes to spend her money and would like to vacation abroad every year and see the world. Her partner Raj prefers to save money for a rainy day. Though he didn’t prefer vacations abroad every year, they negotiated and arrived at a solution that worked for both. They agreed that if either one goes abroad for work, they would plan a vacation by joining the other. And if that doesn’t happen, they would go abroad for a vacation once in two years and have two vacations within the country.

Intimacy and sex:

For many people, their understanding about sex and intimacy comes from reading online adult content or watching adult / x-rated videos, which do not reflect the reality and sets unreasonable expectations among partners.

There could also be misconceptions and misunderstanding regarding sex, or that can affect their body image too. Some might have fears regarding intimacy and sex. Pre-marital counselling is a good platform to discuss and dispel these misconceptions and get the right kind of information.

Plans for Children:

It is important to discuss, whether you are planning to have children and if yes, how many, by when etc and be on the same page.  If both of you don’t want to have children, would that be acceptable to your corresponding families and how and when would this decision be conveyed to them? If there is any resultant conflict how to deal with that. If you want to have children and your partner doesn’t want or vice versa, it is important to find out whether you both are able to arrive at a common ground.

It is also important to talk about situations like, if there is any problem in conceiving or having children what will be the backup plan in such a situation. Would both of you be willing to get tested and treated and look for other scientifically/medically supported ways of having children?  Would you want to look at surrogacy or would you want to adopt?

So are you prepared adequately ?

Marriage is a significant decision in your life. When you are willing to put in a lot of time effort energy into the wedding preparations and festivities, it is a good idea to spend time and effort in understanding yourself and your partner, making a strong foundation for your relationship in the long run.

About the Author:

Kala Balasubramanian is a certified Counselling Psychologist and Psychotherapist with a Masters in Counselling and Psychotherapy, Diplomas in Counselling and has further certifications specializing in couple/marriage/relationship counselling and family counselling. As a trained therapist, she provides professional and confidential counselling services including Individual counselling and Couples counselling / Marriage counselling in Bangalore and Online Counselling over video calls for others residing outside Bangalore and abroad.

Currently with the COVID-19 situation, all counselling services are offered online over video calls.