Quoting English poet and playwright Robert Browning, “Success in marriage is more than finding the right person: it is being the right person.”
So, how can you be the right person for your partner to ensure a happy married life?
That is where Premarital Counseling plays a role.
Premarital Counseling
Having been in love and in a steady and satisfying relationship for however long doesn’t equal an equally good marriage between any couple. Because married life has a lot of different needs and conditions that a relationship lacks. People often don’t realize the importance and demands of such a commitment and go into it without enough awareness about the decisions, compromises and the complexity that comes with sharing all aspects of your life with another person.
And this, leads to some common complaining phrases, from either partner like, “Everything was perfect before marriage. Now he/she has changed so much. I don’t even know what we are doing in this.” “Why can’t things go back to the way they were before marriage? We were so happy. Now, look at us.”
Seriously sad, right?
That’s why it is important to know not just yourself and your partner well before marriage, but also the changes and challenges that come with marriage. Premarital counseling in India helps couples to realize and be ready for marriage so as to ensure a strong and secure bonding for life.
Premarital counseling, as its name suggests, is a type of couple therapy that occurs before marriage and focuses on preparing couples for marriage by developing a strong foundation of trust and understanding between them.
What does Premarital Counseling even do?
Premarital counseling is not simply talking about the realities of marriage just to create awareness. It tackles multiple crucial aspects of a healthy relationship. Some of the major focus areas of premarital counseling in India are as follows;
- Constructive communication
- Conflict Resolution
- Mutual understanding and respect
- Efficient decision-making
- Honesty and trust
- Emotional intimacy
- Identifying and eliminating dysfunctional behavior
- Sharing and healthy each other’s expectations and apprehensions about marriage
- Financial planning
- Family planning (Children, House, Responsibilities, Goals)
- Medical testing
- Sexual life
- Better understanding (Morals, values, beliefs – religious, spiritual etc)
In short, premarital counseling makes sure both the individuals are on the same page before entering into marriage and would be able to face and overcome any challenges they may face in the future, together and come out stronger.
Techniques in Premarital Counseling in India
There are many techniques that are employed by couple therapists and counselors to ensure fruitful premarital counseling.
- Gottman Method : A technique developed by John and Julie Gottman, is a commonly used technique in couples therapy. It aims at developing a quality friendship between the couple, increasing intimacy and resolving any conflicts after detailed assessment.
- Psychodynamic therapy : Psychodynamic couples therapy tries to identify, address and solve any underlying factors that influence the relationship.
- Emotionally Focused Therapy : EFT uses a variety of techniques to address emotional issues and attachment among the couple.
- Imago Relationship Therapy : This is to deepen communication, empathy and reduce negative feelings towards the other person through structured exercises.
- Narrative Therapy : In which the couples recount their relationship which helps to clarify the differences in perspective and understand each other better in order to adopt a positive narrative forwards.
In addition to these methods, there are many other techniques like reflective listening, alignment, psychoeducation, solution-focused therapy, etc and many activities including penciling time together, tracking patterns, soulgazing, and so on as well that are used in premarital counseling in India.
Is it even necessary?
Depends. It is not essentially necessary.
Such a therapy may sound pointless for many people and some may not even be in need of it. Especially, premarital counseling in India might seem to be a stretch as according to statistics, divorce rates in India is around 1% – significantly lower than a large number of countries in the world.
The truth is that, lack of divorce doesn’t mean all the married couples are happy and satisfied in their married life. We, being the collectivists we are, just have the tendency to suffer through unfulfilling and often bad married lives for many other reasons including but not limited to;
- Children
- Family pressure
- Stigma associated with divorce
- Social standing and honor issues
- Financial issues
In our current social scenario where more and more divorce cases are arising, premarital counseling in India can become a saving grace in not just improving couples’ existing relationship, but also in enabling a healthier and happier bond farther into the marriage and future as well.
Why CoachForMind?
- Experienced Psychologists: We are a team of licensed RCI-registered clinical psychologists. Our team is well-experienced in various forms of therapy such as CBT, EFT, DBT, Narrative Therapy, and other therapeutic techniques used in Premarital Counseling.
- Personalized Approach: We are dedicated to treating our clients in the best-suited way, carefully curated as per the client’s needs, and adhering to one-on-one, client-centered therapy.
- Scientific Techniques: Our treatment plans and therapeutic methods are based on highly researched scientific findings such as CBT, EFT, DBT, and Narrative Therapy among many other therapeutic techniques that are used in premarital counseling by therapists.
- Quality service: We at CoachForMind ensure quality services in our treatment regime and therapeutic approaches. Our clients hold most value to us, so we ground our techniques in empathy while maintaining professionalism.
For more information, please visit our website or contact us directly at coachformind@gmail.com
