A lot of times we can get caught up in everything wedding that we loose focus of the real reason we are doing all this. Moving forward from September 26th I am finished creating a wedding, I am ...
Now what does that entail? Well to be honest I'll be figuring that out as I go along but I plan to share with you {like I do all my creations} everything that I find, is part of creating a marriage.
What I'd like to share today is what Mike and I did to help get us off on the right foot - Premarital Counseling. While this was something that our pastor required we found it not only helpful but fun too. We used the book "Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts" by Drs. Les & Leslie Parrott, along with the books we had a Workbook For Men and Workbook For Women.
The idea was that each week we would read one or two chapters and fill out the exercises in our workbooks {separately} - then we would sit down and go over our answers. This usually sparked conversation that we might otherwise would not have had if we weren't prompted to. We would than go and sit down with our pastor and discuss with him what we talked about.
Full Disclaimer - Mike and I have been together for 6 years and have lived together for 3 of those. There were some exercises in the book that were a little redundant for us having already worked out some of the tweaks that come along with living together and sharing some life responsibilities.
That being said there were some exercises that really opened our eyes to things about each other that we didn't know after 6 years or that we thought we knew but didn't fully understand.
It covers:
- Your personal rules as an individual
- Dividing home and life duties
- Having realistic expectations of your partner
- Addressing your self image
- Defining your love
- Your sex life
- Cultivating Intimacy
- Listening to your self-talk
- Avoiding the blame game
- How well do you communicate
- Daily Temperature Reading
- Couple's Inventory
- Your top ten needs
- Identifying Your Hot Topics
- Money
- Mind Reading
- Your spiritual journey
I really believe going through this brought us closer and strengthened our bond. It forced us to talk about uncomfortable things, come to resolutions to fights that could have broken out if we did not confront it, and learn more about each other.
I would highly recommend this book and workbooks to anyone that is engaged to be married, I would also recommend this book to people who are already married. I felt it really helped us.
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