4 Popular Premarital Counseling Topics that Promote Intimacy

When you get engaged, your life suddenly gets really busy. You are consumed with planning your wedding and the married life after. It’s normal to get so caught up with all the detail, joy, chaos, and stress of planning the wedding that examining and enhancing the actual marriage relationship falls by the wayside.

It’s important to take a look at one another’s expectations and beliefs though so you can assess the realities of what the marriage you are about to enter into will really be like.

This time when you are actively engaged is typically full of excitement and joy is spent excitedly anticipating the big day. It very well also may be a time in which you are highly stressed and encounter conflict with your fiancé as you plan.

Time spent on all the wedding details can easily form a wedge between the two of you, decreasing your pursuit of intimacy. In other words, planning the event that is meant to unite you may ultimately do just the opposite.

Pre-marriage counseling is able to help couples work through the issues that are often experienced during their engagement. It can improve their relationship and make it more intimate, stronger and all around better. It can address topics and issues which can be intentionally talked about in order to enhance your relationship during the engagement and beyond.

Premarital Counseling Topics that Increase Intimacy

There are a number of premarital counseling topics which can help encourage intimacy within your relationship and prepare you both for what is in store for the marriage.

Here are four:

Communication

Typically, couples experience struggles with communication which causes a heightened sense of anxiety in regard to counseling, fearing the subjects they may need to talk about.

Regardless of how uncomfortable it may initially seem, the time while you are engaged is a perfect time to start working on having open and honest communication with the one you love and are committing to spend the rest of your life with. Sometimes, it’s the things that make us uncomfortable that end up being positively life-changing.

Counseling prior to marriage can also provide a safe arena for couples to explore unchartered, specific topics that have not been explored together before, as well as to helping couples to take a look at the styles of communicates they have and how they interact with each other.

We all possess a unique way in which we communicate that seems to make sense (at least to us). That communication style was usually developed through our own individual personalities coupled with the family dynamics in which we grew up.

What makes perfectly good sense to you, however, may not make nearly as much sense to your fiancé though. We tend to assume that our communication style is the norm but many couples discover that they basically speak different languages from each other. That leaves the door wide open for miscommunication, misinterpretations and other communication issues to develop.

Intentionally learning how to speak the same type of language can end up taking a lot of time and effort, but it is far better than the issues that will arise otherwise.

It’s common for couples to think that their significant other, by all rights, should be willing and able to read their thoughts and to just know what they mean and how they feel. But that is not always even possible and certainly isn’t practical. When we attempt to guess how someone else thinks or feels, even more trouble abounds.

Assumptions are often incorrect leading to conflict. Your partner feels misunderstood and you feel confused. You may feel offended when your partner can’t read your mind and may feel even worse if he or she reads it wrong.

Good communication is a skill that is taught in premarital counseling. You can learn how to get in the habit of practicing good communication prior to a disaster before your words are emotionally charged. You can find out how to speak life to one another and promote positivity within your relationship through your communication.

Sexuality

Especially where Christian culture is concerned, the subject of sexuality is often considered to be taboo. But, it is a very important topic which needs to be covered. Sex is a vital instrument in intimately connecting, physically and emotionally, with your significant other, but, sexuality isn’t just about the act of sex.

There is much more to the subject and it is easy for couples just to assume that the sexual relationship in their marriage will develop effortlessly and all will work out so they simply don’t speak of it. Doing so isn’t wise though.

Counseling before marriage is valuable for examining and discussing subjects such as concerns and expectations and going over questions that each significant other may have within. It’s imperative to the success of your future marriage to create an open and honest atmosphere to share your notions and ideas concerning sex.

In addition, it’s also good to determine where your thoughts about sex came from (education, friends, family, etc.) so each partner can express their expectations of intimacy and how they interpret the subject in general.

In the event that you are sexually active already, thoughts and concerns you have on how your sex life may be changed by marriage should be addressed. Ideas you and your partner have in regards to keeping things exciting and intimate on a regular basis are good to share too. If you and your fiancé have chosen to wait for sex until you are married, discussing curiosities and concerns is a healthy thing to do.

As you begin to feel comfortable within your boundaries, you can begin to intentionally set aside time talk about emotional and physical intimacy and how it is will progress with your upcoming marriage.

Practical matters can also be talked about and planned. What about birth control? It’s important to agree on such subjects and to also discuss things such as what it will be like to live with another person if you have been used to living alone.

Marriage isn’t all a bed of roses like the movies would have you believe. It can be quite difficult. Hectic schedules and lack of communication and commitment can destroy your relationship so it is important to cover all the bases so you have the best chance of building a wonderful, healthy marriage.

Inner World 

Typically, we all long for someone to really know us but to love us anyway. The process of letting someone really know us, however, isn’t as easy as we may wish it was. It can be scary to expose our true inner self. But, in order for your marriage to be successful, you must allow yourself to be vulnerable and let your partner get to know the real you.

Exploring one another’s true self and inner world is a great topic within counseling before marriage. It consists of getting to know each other’s desires, fear, likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams and all else that makes them who they are.

Dr. John Gottman and his wife, Dr. Julie Gottman have coined the phrase “love maps” to describe the exploration of what your partner’s inner world is built of. They believe that couples who have detailed such maps tend to have better intimacy and stronger relationships.

The act of building a love map is an evolving and constant process. Just as cities change with growth, time and construction, such is the case with our own inner worlds and with our partner’s inner world too. Intentionally finding out your partner’s dreams, desires, fears, etc. on an ongoing basis keeps your relationship growing and alive.

It is also important for both partners to feel comfortable and safe when sharing their innermost world and that it not be done during an argument or another tense time. Sharing past struggles, joys, memories and talking about fears and hopes about the future is a good place to start. You can also ask each other questions.

As life rolls on, our inner worlds change. If you and your partner don’t know each other from the start, it will become increasingly difficult to do so once life’s shifts begin to change you. But if you already know your partner, you are more able to keep up and continue to get to know them as they go through changes.

Managing Conflict

Prior to marriage, many couples think that they can just eliminate conflict and they will be closer and live without problems. That’s not true though. Conflict can actually bring positives into the marriage and help the two of you grow closer.

Conflict cannot be totally avoided. It’s the way in which it is dealt with that will determine if it makes you and your partner closer or inserts a wedge into your relationship. Learning more about conflict management and healthy ways to accomplish it will help you avoid hurting each other during conflicts and will help you effectively resolve the issues. When you practice healthy conflict managing skills, your relationship will grow stronger.

Learning to go into a topic of conflict without your boxing gloves on or seeking an argument is an investment in your relationship. Knowing that arguments and conflicts are going to take place in your relationship helps you to prepare for them. Determining to work things out together is priceless.

Being open to looking at the current skills you are (or, are not) using will give you a place to start. If your skills need some honing, the time is now. Identifying areas that you can improve on to avoid destructive patterns will help keep the problem from escalating in the future. Conflict cannot be avoided even in the best marriage but it can be resolved, and that is one of the goals of pre-marital counseling.

The Perspective of Christ-focused Premarital Counseling

A Christ-centered counselor is able to assist in initiating conversation topics that help couples work together to improve their relationships and to explore possible conflicts that may be likely to surface later if they go unaddressed.

Depending on the style of counseling your counselor uses, you may be provided learning material, offered some education, be asked to participate in exercises or other activities that can help you learn more about your partner and that can help develop intimacy between the two of you.

One of the main objectives of pre-marital counseling is for the counselor to help you discover, reveal, and examine expectations that each partner brings with them into their relationship. Couples then have the privilege of getting to know each other without threat. It is a wonderful opportunity that a skilled counselor is able to present.

It is God’s desire for us to be able to enjoy openness. Through intimacy and the act of two becoming one, he created us to be intimate. The struggles we will encounter can transform us and our relationships to make a marriage that is in His likeness.

It’s imperative to understand that even with pre-marriage counseling, problems within a marriage won’t be totally eliminated. There will be conflicts. That’s just part of marriage. However, the things learned in counseling can help pinpoint areas of concern so they can be improved. It also gives each partner the tools they need to have a flowing and harmonious marriage.

Marriage is an ever-evolving and continuous journey. Committing to an intentional open line of communication throughout your relationship will help increase your intimacy.

A pre-marriage counselor is able to facilitate the discussion that will help you, as a couple, work through existing conflicts and conflicts that are likely to develop and to build love maps that will strengthen your marriage and deepen the intimacy between the two of you.

The premarital counselors at Los Angeles Christian Counseling would be honored to work alongside you to prepare you for the wonderful marriage God has intended for you to enjoy.