Be abnormal. Get pre-marital counseling.
Posted by admin in Featured Articles, Holy Freaking Matrimony on Jul 31st, 2009 | 0 comments
I’ve seen a lot of marriages come and go in my 18 years of ministry and couneling. Below is my short list of why marriages fail.
People don’t do pre-marital counseling.
Let me be clear. You’re exercising really bad judgment if you don’t do premarital counseling. The next four things I mention and a lot more can be discussed and game-planned for before they come up later.
A study (Journal of Family Psychology (March 2006, Vol. 20, No. 1, 117-126) showed that couples that participated in pre-marital counseling were, on average, 31% less likely to divorce in any given year of their marriage than couples who did not benefit from this counseling.
People marry the wrong person.
Far too many people ask themselves, “What was I thinking?” in the first few months of marriage. It’s completely preventable. I’ve even told a few couples to not get married. There are some relationships that just won’t work no matter how attracted you are to them physically and emotionally.
People go into marriage with unrealistic expectations.
This is pretty much the majority of people that decide to get married. High idealism = high divorce rate.
People don’t know how to communicate well.
Okay, maybe it’s mostly us guys that don’t know how to communicate basic things well. The fact is, it’s rare when someone has been taught how to communicate well by their family system. We all need to get better at exchanging information instead of emotional salvos.
People don’t understand and know how do deal with extended family dynamics.
You have to know how each spouses family (in-laws) dynamics will affect your marriage. Most people don’t. If you choose to neglect his huge part of being married….let the fighting begin.
Find a counselor. Go to pre-marital counseling. Don’t know where to start? Click here and find someone in your area.
